“Fair enough. Sometimes those sorts of relationships make us do things we wouldn’t normally do,” he said.
“Right. So anyway, somehow Lee found out about the two of us being together and decided that he was going to have us followed to try and create more drama and buzz for the show we were making,” I said.
“That’s a pretty bold allegation, Jeff.”
“I know, but it’s true, and I have the smoking gun. Look, toward the end of filming, when Kile gave his second speech, there was a moment between us that got kind of heated. He and I were on the ropes at that point as a couple and we were having a discussion that Ross, one of the cameramen, recorded without us knowing it. I asked for the memory card in the camera and smashed it, but somehow that footage still ended up in the preview for the second episode of the series. How else do you explain something like that?” I asked, and I realized the answer even as I asked the question. There must’ve been more than one memory card in the camera, or there must’ve been another camera recording the moment.
Wade was silent for a few moments, probably turning over the information in his head.
“That’s fishy, for sure,” he admitted.
“Exactly. And all of that leads me to believe that the photos that were printed of Kile and me in the District Inquirer were tip-offs by Lee, and I say that only because Lee met with Kile separately to try to blackmail him into allowing footage of our personal relationship into the show,” I said. It all sounded so tangled, so scandalous, now that I said it out loud, but every ounce of it was true. It struck me then how perfect all of this was as the sort of tabloid headline scandal that Kile and I had been trying to avoid all along.
“Wait, what? You think that Lee was tipping paparazzi off to your location to have photos of the two of you taken together? Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s desperate for ratings, clicks, and views. You know, it goes back to something he said to me early on, when I met him for the first time during my interview. He said that he was no more moral than the people he covers. Look, Wade, I don’t know you from Adam, and I know based on recent events in my past I probably sound like a raving crazy person, but you have to believe me. Lee’s a crook and god only knows what else he’s done,” I said, my voice speeding up as I spoke.
It felt good, cathartic, even, to get it all out. Wade might not take any action at all, might laugh me off for being out of my mind like it no doubt sounded to him I was, but at least I’d tried. At least someone with some real power and influence over Lee and the rest of NewSpin knew.
“Does anyone else know about all of this?” he asked. I looked over at Dylan, searching his face for permission to include him. He nodded and leaned over eagerly to hear what Wade had to say.
“There’s one person. His name’s Dylan, he’s sitting here next to me now. He’s the only person at NewSpin I ever really trusted or got to know. He’s been there for a while, he can verify everything I’ve just told you,” I said.
“That won’t be necessary. I believe you,” Wade said and for a moment my heart stopped beating.
“You do?” I asked, incredulous.
“I do. A lot of what you’re saying is, well, appalling, to be honest. I don’t know that we’ll be able to prove any of it and I don’t know if that matters, but I do know that we’ve gotten several other complaints from NewSpin staffers about him. Nothing as substantial or serious as this, but you’re definitely not alone in your feelings about him,” Wade said and I felt validated and vindicated, like I’d just been told by a doctor that I wasn’t clinically insane.
For weeks, I’d been convinced that Lee was going to get away with this and that my word meant nothing compared to his, especially thanks to my meltdown at GNN, but the President of NewsAmp was on the line telling me he believed me and that others had complained about Lee, too.
“So what do we do, then?” I asked.
“You don’t need to do anything. For now, I want you to lay low, stay out of the spotlight—and stay away from Avery, too,” he said.
“Understood,” I said, and I meant it. Seeing Kile now would be catastrophic for all of us, though I desperately wanted to. The last time I’d seen his face, he’d been on the verge of tears as the elevator doors closed in front of him, no doubt convinced that I’d been plotting with Lee all along. Now, I had my chance to prove to him that wasn’t the case, and I wasn’t about to do anything to jeopardize it.
“But what about Lee? What are you going to do?”
“Don’t worry about Lee. I’ll take care of it,” Wade said and I eyed Dylan, who was grinning giddily.
“Alright. Should I call you back in a while or…?”
“I’ll call you when we figure this all out.”
“Thank you, Wade. Thank you,” I said and I meant it.
“Hey, we ex-GNNers have to stick together, right?” he said and a smile spread across my face despite myself.
“Yeah, exactly,” I said.
“Take care, Jeff. I’ll be in touch soon,” he said.
“You do the same,” I said and hung up. Dylan leapt off the couch and pumped his fists in the air, a wild sound coming out of his mouth.
“Fuck yeah, dude! I told you this would work!” he shouted and though the sound felt like a sledgehammer against my throbbing head, I couldn’t help jumping up and throwing my arms around him.
“I owe you big time,” I said.
“I know. Don’t worry, I’ll cash in on that favor when it’s most inconvenient for you,” he said with a smile.
I fell back down onto the sofa and stared at my phone, Wade’s phone number burning into my mind. I had no idea what was going to happen now that he was on the case, but I only hoped that Lee went down in flames and that I was there to see it happen. I couldn’t wait to see Kile’s reaction when the truth finally got out there and he realized he’d been mistaken all along. I hoped he’d forgive me, and I trusted he would—because what reason could he have not to?—but only time would tell.
26
Kile
Sunday afternoon at The Flame. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d set foot here on a weekend. It’d been at least a year, if not longer. Once I’d expanded the staff to include Nate, Lane, and the rest, weekend work—if and when it came up—never fell on my shoulders. The benefits of being the boss, I thought. At least I still have some small element of control over this part of my life, but who knows how much longer that’ll last.
Truthfully, I didn’t know why I was there. I had no real reason to be. There wasn’t any work to be done, or at least nothing pressing that couldn’t wait until Monday. But it wasn’t really about work, it was about being a creature of comfort and savoring the space of the so-called War Room before it disappeared—because The Flame was almost certainly doomed, as cooked and done as my reputation was. So there wasn’t really anything all that comforting about being in the office, but I didn’t want to be home, didn’t want to deal with the gaggle of paparazzi who’d set up permanent camp at the entrance to my building, and I didn’t want company, either.
I just wanted to be alone, in the silence of the office.
After what’d happened during the live stream last night, I didn’t want anyone to see my face ever again. It was easily the most humiliating thing I’d ever been through. I’d been exposed as a liar on several different levels to millions of people and had the wool pulled over my eyes thanks to Jeff and Lee. They’d orchestrated the entire thing together, they must have, and perfectly set it up to spring the trap on me during the stream so I couldn’t get away while social media engagement peaked. They’d probably even planned for me to storm away like I had, so maybe I played right into their hands when I shouldn’t have, but it didn’t matter now.
Nothing I could’ve done would’ve softened the blows I’d already taken and the blows that were sure to come. I’d turned my phone off when I left NewSpin last night and hadn’t bothered to turn it back on since then because I didn’t want to be inund
ated with texts and phone calls all asking for comment and clarification. I couldn’t give them what they wanted because I wasn’t even sure what’d happened. I didn’t have words to adequately express how I felt, but betrayed and crushed were pretty good ones to start with.
“Somehow I knew I’d find you here,” a voice said, startling me. I whirled around in my chair to find Joel standing in the entrance, a sad half-smile on his face.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You know damn well what I’m doing here. You fell off the face of the earth last night, understandably so, and haven’t been returning any of your texts or calls. I was worried about you, like, really worried. I thought you’d… done something stupid,” he said and a wave of guilt swept over me.
“Jesus, Joel, no… I’m fucked up right now but I’m nowhere near that level,” I said. He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around me, and for the first time, I felt like it was OK to cry, to grieve what’d happened. I hadn’t allowed myself to shed a single tear since I left the NewSpin offices, because I refused to give Jeff and Lee the satisfaction, even if they couldn’t see me crying.
“It’s OK, let it out. You deserve to,” he said, rubbing my back. We stayed that way for what seemed like forever, and I cried so much that eventually I didn’t have any water left to shed. When I’d settled down enough, he pulled back and sat down in the chair next to me, reaching over to take my hand in his.
“I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through this,” he said.
“For a second, I really thought you were going to say ‘I told you so’ and I was going to punch you so fucking hard if you did,” I said and he laughed.
“I do enjoy saying that to you, but not this time. Nothing about this situation makes me happy,” he said.
“You’re not alone,” I laughed, wiping my eyes. I felt childish for being so upset and for letting Joel see it, but if I couldn’t let it out with my best friend, then who could I let it out with?
“You know we’re going to lose all of this, right?” I asked, waving an arm around the office.
“I know,” he said. “I knew it from the second you agreed to shoot this series, though I would never have guessed it’d go down like this.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said and he laughed.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I just knew that as soon as you landed that gig, you weren’t coming back here. Like, I knew that things would never be the same again. You’d go off and become some celebrity and get your own show or whatever and we’d be here in the dust without you trying to figure out how to keep the ship afloat,” he said.
“Well, I definitely became a celebrity and for all of the wrong reasons,” I laughed.
“Yeah, that’s what I meant when I said I didn’t think it’d go down that way.”
“And yet here we are. I’m so sorry, Joel. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been so greedy, so short-sighted, none of this would’ve happened.”
“Bullshit. I’m not buying any of that so you can stop right now. You would’ve been stupid not to take the chance with NewSpin and the documentary. It was a risk, a big one, and it might not have panned out the way we wanted it to, but you couldn’t have afforded not to take it. High risk, high reward,” he said.
“Yeah, but at what cost? The Flame’s been snuffed out, you’re all going to lose your jobs, and God only knows what’s going to happen to me. I haven’t dared to look online to see what people are saying about me. How bad is it?”
“It’s bad. Like, really bad. It’s a good thing you haven’t looked. I was hoping you hadn’t been sitting and obsessing about all of that,” he said. “But you’ll be fine, one way or another. You’re too smart, too talented for it to go any other way.”
“That’s sweet of you to say but now’s really not the time to kiss my ass,” I said and he chuckled.
“I’m not kissing your ass, I’m telling you like it is.”
“Even at my lowest, I can always count on you to keep it real,” I laughed. He smiled at me and for a brief moment I felt like maybe it all would be OK, like maybe I would land on my feet after all of the dust had settled. A few moments passed while we looked at each other and around the office, admiring what we’d built together.
“Have you heard from Jeff?” he asked and my heart lurched.
“No. And I don’t want to. What could he possibly have to say to me at this point?” I asked and he shook his head. “What? You don’t agree?”
“No, it’s not that… it’s just that I think you’re being, well, a little irrational,” he said.
“Keeping it real, indeed,” I scoffed. “Irrational? How the hell am I being irrational, Joel? For fuck’s sake, you saw the stream, you saw what happened and what they did. They totally sold me out, played me like a fucking instrument.”
“You don’t really believe that. I know you don’t,” he said.
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, anger rising at the back of my throat.
“I don’t think Jeff had anything to do with this. Kile, I know you don’t want to hear it, but you didn’t see it, the way he looked at you throughout the stream, and the look of horror on his face when that teaser trailer was over,” Joel said.
“The only thing that showed was Jeff trying to swallow the guilt he was feeling, if he even felt any at all,” I said and Joel shook his head again.
“You’re right, it was guilt, but not the kind of guilt you think it was. Taylor’s a hard-ass, no doubt about it, but he’s not like that. He wouldn’t throw you under the bus for his own good.”
“And how do you know that? You don’t even know him, you never met him,” I said.
“True. I don’t know, I can’t explain why, but there’s just something about it that doesn’t feel right in my gut. I listen to that feeling more often than not because it’s almost always right. Like, sometimes when I see people I instantly get a feeling that there’s something about them, like they can’t be trusted or something’s fishy about them, and nine times out of ten that gut instinct is right about those people,” he said and I laughed.
“Well, that’s great and all, but excuse me if I don’t put much stock in your gut when it comes to something like this,” I said.
“I didn’t expect you to,” he said. “But why don’t you at least talk to him? Just to be sure? You’ll never really know until you do.”
“No. Absolutely not,” I said. “I don’t have anything to say to him. He’s the reason we’re going to lose all of this, I don’t think anything he could say could convince me that he’s not a self-serving dirtbag.”
“You’re only saying that because you love him,” he said and I felt like he’d just punched me square in the chest.
“What?”
“You heard me. You love him, and the thought of someone using you, hurting you the way that Brandon did all those years ago, is so painful that you’d rather believe it’s true without really knowing it is just to save yourself the grief of being wrong,” he said. I glared at him.
“You’re treading on shaky ground here, Joel,” I said, my voice low.
“And you’re getting upset because you know I’m right. This is what always happens when things go this way,” he said, wearing a smile. “I’ve known you long enough to know when I’m right. It’s written all over your face, you just don’t want to hear it.”
“Stop.”
“No, I won’t. If you don’t want to hear it, I’ll make you. I saw those pictures in the District Inquirer, I saw the other ones in the teaser trailer at the end of the episode last night… Those photos didn’t look to me like one guy leading another one on. He loves you too, Kile, and I think that’s why you’re so willing to give up on all of this. You think that he worked with Lee to set you up, but really it’s just a convenient way for you to duck the hell out of the relationship before it has a chance to get any more serious,” he said and my head spun. He was right, I didn’t want to hear this,
and I also didn’t want to ever admit that there was truth to what he was saying.
As much as I wanted to believe it, there’d always been a part of me that couldn’t accept that Jeff would do something like this. I’d gotten to know him, or at least I thought I had, and seen a tender side of him that I doubted he showed to many other people. He cared about me, about other people. He had to, or why else would he have gotten so worked up that night I was on his show? He had convictions that ran deep, things he really believed in, and I found it hard to accept that a guy like that would sink so low just to rebuild his own career.
But there was so much evidence that pointed in that direction. How else would Lee have found out where we’d be if Jeff wasn’t ferrying that information back to him? How else could the footage of our argument backstage at the university have made it into the show? Jeff destroyed the memory card, I saw it with my own eyes, and yet I also saw still photos of that same conversation on the teaser trailer, which could only have come from the video camera Ross was using.
“So, let me ask you this,” Joel continued, ripping me out of my thoughts and back into the conversation I didn’t want to have. I looked up at him, totally unaware that I’d looked away until now, and he was staring at me, his eyes hard and intense. “Do you really want to keep pretending in order to make money, or do you want to be happy?” he asked.
“What the hell kind of loaded question is that?” I asked and he laughed.
“It’s not a loaded question, it was an honest one. And I meant it. I want to know the answer. Do you want to make money, or do you want to be happy?”
“Who says they’re mutually exclusive?” I asked and he raised an eyebrow at me.
“Come on, Kile, stop bullshitting me. I’ve been in this business with you long enough to know that you’re not happy. You’re not ever going to find what you want here, not with The Flame or with any other publication like it. Your heart’s not in it anymore. You don’t believe the shit you’re saying and telling other people to believe,” he said.
Clickbait (Off the Record Book 1) Page 27