closing her folder. “I’m tying to work with you, but I can’t do it by myself. I can’t be that little white angel on your one shoulder when I’m in direct competition with the devil on the other side.” She pushes away from the table and bends to put the papers in her purse. “I obviously can’t do this job. I thought I could, but I can’t.” She picks up her purse and then turns to walk away.
I watch her, and the words that Jeff said yesterday replay in my head. “Don’t fuck this up.”
“Wait,” I say to her, and she stops right before she walks into the house. “Listen, I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah, you are pretty good at not knowing what to say or how to act,” she says, and she isn’t wrong. “I don’t care what you do and who you do it with. I care that I was given a job. A job that is huge for me right now.”
“How so?” I ask her, and she turns to me, shaking her head.
“Doesn’t matter,” she says and then turns around to walk into the house. I wait for the door to slam before my feet move, and I run around the side of the house. Taking the side steps two by two, I get to her car the same time as she is opening the door.
“Wait . . . please, Erin,” I say, panting. When she looks at me, I can tell she is either upset or pissed, and I feel like a jerk for doing that to her. “Just . . . we might have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
“The wrong foot?” She shakes her head, and I know she’s pissed. Her tone is that kind of “I want to kill you” tone I get quite often. I mean, often enough to know it, but usually, I shrug it off. This time, though, it does something.
“I’m sorry. I should have just listened instead of trying to justify every sordid moment of my past that’s been captured on video,” I say, and she crosses her arms over her chest.
“Do you know they have a nickname for your penis?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Do you know there is a website that has the number of women you have slept with on a ticker? Do you know the names of half the women you have slept with? Have you ever slept with the same person twice?”
“Yes?” I say to her on the last one. I mean, come on.
“I don’t mean twice in the same night. I mean, twice in the same week?” Okay, now she is getting picky. “There were pictures of you last week. You are pictured with ten different women.”
“So?” I say to her now, crossing my arms over my own chest.
“There are only seven days in the week.” Okay, fine, she got me there, but it isn’t my fault.
“I have a high sex drive,” I tell her, not even sure why I have to tell her details that are really none of her damn business.
“I don’t give a shit,” she says, and the way she swears makes me want to laugh. “I don’t care if you fuck up to five times an hour. What I care about is you doing it and it being on an Instagram or in a Snapchat video for the world to see.”
“I’m confused. Do you care or not?” I try to make a joke, but she just glares at me, so I hold up my hands. “Okay, how about we go back in, and we can talk about things?” I see that she isn’t falling for the old Carter Johnson charm. In fact, I think it’s the opposite. Can she be immune to it? “Grab your bag, and we can do all the brainstorming you want.”
She looks at me, and I can see that she doesn’t trust me. “I swear. I promise to be on my best behavior, and if I’m not, you can leave.”
“Fine,” she says, grabbing her bag and turning to walk back down the side stairs with me. We sit down, and I’m ready for whatever she throws at me. We go through all my Facebook accounts, and that one isn’t as bad as the rest are. I don’t tell her it’s because Jeff takes care of that one. Heck, she was actually excited about the state it was in. When we finish that, I look at the time and see it’s almost