by Tamara Lush
Another reporter wants to know about a rumor that the paper will go all-digital and stop printing a daily product.
“Not if I can help it.” I glance to Rafael, and his smile has vanished. I chew on the inside of my cheek.
A reporter raises her hand. “Now that we have all this money, can we get the coffee service back?”
Rafa shoots me a confused smile and fiddles with his Rolex.
“My dad stopped the coffee service because he couldn’t afford it,” I murmur.
Rafa holds up a hand.
“Folks, I’m going to buy you some state-of-the-art machines and set up gourmet coffee delivery. Think of it as my gift to you for the hard work you did to win those awards.”
Huge applause. I grin. Coffee is the way to journalists’ hearts. And a happy staff is the way to my heart.
“Well. On that positive note, Mr. Menendez and I have an appointment with circulation soon. You can continue your news meeting.”
We walk out of the room and into the elevator. Smiling, I push the button for the fourth floor. I want to have a private word with Mr. Menendez.
He leans against the wall, appraising me with those burning eyes.
“You were great with your staff. I’m surprised how confident you are.”
I frown. “Why are you surprised?”
He shrugs. “You used to be so timid when we met. You’ve changed a lot. I like it. I guess I didn’t give you enough credit when I first arrived. You’re a good leader.”
This makes me laugh. “It’s always like men to underestimate women in positions of power.”
He smiles, a sweet grin. “Justi, isn’t circulation on the first floor? And when’s the next meeting?”
“We’ve got a half-hour. I need to show you something important about the paper up here. Come.” I sweep out of the elevator and down an empty hallway, my black flats padding on the chipped linoleum floor.
“This area used to be where paste-up physically put the paper together, before digital.” I take a ring of keys out of my purse and unlock a door leading into a musty, warm room.
“And now this is…storage?” Rafael scans the room, which is filled with dusty furniture and other assorted junk from over the years.
I jab at the locking button on the doorknob.
“This is where I thank you for being so wonderful to my staff.” I deposit my purse on a table and press Rafa against a desk, running a finger down his black-and-blue-striped tie. I kiss him fiercely. My mouth finds his throat, and I mash my nose against his skin, wanting to savor his scent forever. I kiss and bite him while rubbing my hand over his growing erection.
He chuckles low as he trails his hands down my back, cupping my ass.
“I like this reward incentive program you’ve instituted, Ms. Lavoie.”
I keep my eyes locked on his as I slowly unbuckle and unzip his pants. Sliding down his body, I can already feel him breathing laboriously. Once I’m on my knees, I pull his pants and black boxer briefs down to reveal his erection. He hums as I slowly stroke him.
I open my mouth, and he wraps my ponytail around his big hand while I trace his tip with my tongue.
“Coño, I love seeing your mouth on my cock like that.” His eyes glitter in the sunlight filtering through windows that haven’t been cleaned in years.
I lick and tease until he pulls the elastic out and fists my hair with both hands, hard. “Justine, stop teasing and take me all the way in. Now, please…”
I continue to run my tongue over his hard ridges and the veins of his cock, gazing up at him as he shudders. I love this feeling, this wild, powerful knowledge of being able to control him. There was a time, long ago when we first met, when I didn’t know what to do with him in my mouth. Through lots of exploration, I discovered how to drive him insane and have never forgotten.
Today, I’m using it to my advantage. And my satisfaction. Stroking him slowly, I grin and look up at him. “Do you want me to continue?” I lick and suck the tip, hard.
After a low, feral laugh, Rafa lets out a string of sentences in Spanish, ending with a few in English: “Please? Make me come, please. Take all of me inside your mouth. Now. I’m begging you. Te lo ruego.”
I move my hand up and down his shaft. One of his hands grips the side of the desk, while the other is on the back of my head, gently pressing me toward his erection. I put the tip in between my lips and swirl my tongue.
“Por favor…I’m going out of my mind,” he chokes out.
“Now? Do you think you can come for me now?”
When he tilts his head back and exhales with a throaty groan, I slide all of him in my mouth, taking him deeper and deeper.
Clutching the desk with both hands, he comes in long, hot spurts and I swallow it all. I slide up his torso and nuzzle his neck with my nose, feeling the strong throbbing of his pulse against my lips.
He’s trembling. Good. Exactly what I want.
“What are you doing to me, Justine?” he asks in a gravelly voice.
I pull away and stare into his velvet-brown eyes. I use a dainty finger to wipe the corner of my mouth and smile.
***
I held the white rose in my hands, running my index finger over the velvety outer layers.
“I feel bad for doing this because they’re so gorgeous, but…” I tore the flower from its stem, letting the green stalk drop into the water. Opening my cupped hand, I separated the delicate petals, then clasped my fingers around them, creating a cocoon.
I leaned into Rafael’s body, and he slipped his arm around my waist. Kissed the side of my head. We were standing in knee-deep water on a beach in the Florida Keys, and the sun was bright, intense, making the sky a pretty, white-blue.
This was my way of marking the day that my mom and brother were killed in the crash. It’d been three years. Usually I did it alone, but that year, I’d asked Rafa to come with me.
Slowly, I raised my arm and twisted my hand so my fingers faced the water. I released the white petals, and they fluttered downward, into the pale blue water.
“My mom loved white roses.” I sniffled a noseful of salt air as Rafa handed me a second rose. I again plucked the bud from the stem, separating the petals and tucking them into a soft fist. After a moment of silence, I scattered them into the glass-clear water. The petals bobbed and floated around our legs.
“Sometimes I feel so guilty.”
“Why?” Rafa asked. “You didn’t cause the crash.”
“Because I’m the one who lived. My brother was the one with all the promise.”
“Justine, stop. That’s not true.” He pulled me toward him roughly.
“No. I can see it in my father’s eyes. He also wishes my brother had lived, so he could take over the paper. I’m useless to him. I’m a writer. I can’t take over the family business. If anyone should have died, it should have been me. I’ve wished it had been me. Why was I the only one in the car who lived? I didn’t have a scratch.”
He tightened his grip on my arm. “Don’t ever say that again. Don’t ever wish you weren’t alive. If you hadn’t lived, we wouldn’t have met.”
I nodded and rested my head on his chest.
“I haven’t felt awful lately. Not since meeting you. It’s today, the anniversary, that’s getting to me.”
I turned to look at the ocean. Rafael was still holding a white rose in his hand.
“Who’s that for?”
Rafael tore the bud from the stem.
“My mother.”
“Do you even know that she’s dead?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t talked to her since she put me on that boat with my aunt and uncle. She might as well be dead.”
Pointing with the stem toward the horizon, Rafael squinted into the sun. “I left Cuba from right about there.”
He flung the stem into the sky. It made a buzzing noise as it flew through the air.
“She probably had a really good reason for sending you to Florida with Tio Marcello and Tia Rosa. So you’d
have a better life.”
I was shocked to see him close an angry fist around the bud, crushing the delicate petals. He opened his hand, and the crumpled flower fluttered to the water.
“Maybe she did. Or maybe she just didn’t want to be a mom.” His voice was bitter.
“No. I refuse to believe that. And like you just told me, don’t be angry or bitter or sad. If your mom hadn’t put you on that boat, we wouldn’t have met.”
I wrapped my arms around him and nuzzled my nose into his collarbone.
He kissed the top of my head. “We’re kind of broken, aren’t we?”
I peered into his face and smiled. “Yeah. But together, we’re like one whole person.”
Rafael grinned. “I like that. One whole person.”
That was what I loved about him—that he accepted me, understood me, gave me space for my grief. “Kiss me, Rafa.”
As he did, the last of the white rose petals floated away.
25
It’s Called a Heart
A few days after the announcement that Rafa is investing in the paper, I cross my arms and glare at Ethan, the paper’s managing editor. We're in a standoff, in his office.
“I know this article could take a couple of weeks, maybe even a month, to report and write, but I think it’s a story we need to tell. We have to find a reporter to write this.” Why am I the one fighting to get a story in the paper? Ethan should be convincing me to spend money and resources on a series of articles. This is ridiculous.
I pace Ethan’s small office. I don’t need this bullshit, not today. “This shouldn’t be my job to sell you on a story. I’m the publisher. It just so happens that a former source of mine called me with the information. God knows what would have happened had she called you.”
I plop into a hard plastic chair. He clasps his pudgy hands over his newly sprouted potbelly. Journalism hasn’t been kind to his physique. He stares at me with sneering blue eyes.
He’s second-guessing me. Again. He does this often, especially when he doesn’t agree with my decisions. I snort out loud at all the times he's acted like this, and Ethan stares at me petulantly.
“Your father always liked my news judgment.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ethan.” I couldn’t believe he was bringing up my dad.
He and my father had been friends. My dad had hired him as a hotshot city editor, right about the time I’d returned from Latin America and become managing editor. Ethan took my place when my dad died, and I became publisher. But he’d not-so-secretly hoped my dad would bestow the title of publisher on him—a ridiculous thought if there ever was one. My father, for all of his faults, was intensely loyal to his family. This paper was mine—well, mine and my brother’s—from birth.
Ethan still somehow thinks he knows more than me because he’s a digital media whiz and because he’s a guy. More than journalism, mansplaining is his true talent.
“When you became publisher after Edward died, you said you wouldn’t interfere on the editorial side.” He rolls his eyes, which annoys me.
He never acted like this with my father.
I shake my head and throw my hands in the air. Ethan and I have been at odds on several stories over the past several months, with him pushing me to take the paper in a fluffier, softer direction. I wouldn’t have minded his opinion if he hadn’t been such a dick.
I’d been skeptical when he suggested that we run slideshows every Monday of readers’ pets—something that I later conceded was a good idea after we did a trial run and traffic spiked on the paper’s website.
“I said I would try not to interfere. In my heart, I’m a journalist. You know that. And we need to pursue this story about children of migrant workers. It’s important. We could uncover something that no one else has. No other Florida paper has written about this.”
“And I told you that we don’t have any Spanish speakers to do the interview properly.”
I sigh softly, not wanting to raise my voice. This is another effing problem in a year filled with them.
Even though we’re in Ethan’s office with the door closed, sound carries through the thin walls and the two giant windows that overlook the newsroom. Every reporter and editor is hyper-aware that Ethan and I are having an animated discussion. Will this end up in the media gossip column on Saint Augustblog? The blogger has been tweeting non-stop all week about Rafael’s investment in the paper.
“We’ll find someone. I can do it, in the worst-case scenario, if we reschedule the interview. I just can’t go this afternoon.”
“Come on. Is this story worth the publisher stepping in to report it herself? I don’t think so.” Ethan scoffs. “It’s not a particularly sexy story. Who cares about migrant kids, really? Do any of our readers want to read another tale of woe about poor people? That feature on the needy kids at Christmas barely got any clicks.”
I snort. “I can’t believe you’d say that. It’s our job to make readers care.”
“Our readers think migrant kids are illegals and should be deported. They want lighter news. Cat videos. Celebrities. Funny jail mugshots.”
Sucking in an angry breath, I count to ten before I speak. “We’re still a newspaper, last time I checked. We’re not some website that runs cute animal slideshows. I’m the publisher, and I want us to cover this story. Who needs stories about mugshots or cat videos?”
We glare at each other.
“We had this same conversation when I pushed for the police scandal series, Ethan. And what happened then? We won awards.”
He lifts his shoulders in a bored shrug. “Yeah, we won awards, but they don’t mean shit. They didn’t get us a bump in circulation. You know that.”
I rear back. Why is he so fucking stubborn? My gaze skitters out the windows into the newsroom, and I spy a few reporters glancing in our direction. Spirited arguments aren’t uncommon in the Times newsroom, but it’s rare to see the publisher and managing editor going at it behind a closed door.
“What do you mean?” I hiss. “Of course awards mean something. They’re a morale booster for the staff. They help sell ads.”
“Then why is Saint Augustblog clearing twenty grand in new ad revenue this month? I heard they’re taking ad accounts away from us. They already took away our sports columnist. That’s who we’re competing with, Justine. A blogger who’s retweeting kitten photos from the fire department and covering the hell out of high school sports.”
I press my lips together hard. I wonder if Ethan is the one who is leaking the information to the blogger about Rafa’s presence in the newsroom. This isn’t a fight I want to have, not today, and I rub my temple with my index finger.
“Saint Augustblog also writes puff pieces about politicians after taking their money for campaign ads. You know the blog is totally unethical.”
Ethan smirks. “Let’s be real. Ethical journalism? We don’t have enough clout or money to spend all day debating ethics. And your Miami friend has already agreed to buy the paper, so we’re solid for a few more years. We don’t need to impress him. Like he cares what we put in the newspaper. He doesn’t know an investigative story from a cartoon. You know as well as I do that he’s here to make a profit, like all private equity firms.”
I allow that last sentence to hang in the air without a response.
Ethan continues, raising his eyebrows and looking at me pointedly. “Or…maybe he’s here for something else.”
He went there. He really went there. Asshole.
I stand and fix a hard stare at Ethan. “I’m not going to fire you instantly for that comment, because I need someone to put out tomorrow’s paper. But I suggest you start searching for a new job. Because my father liked you, and because I know you haven’t paid off that piece of shit SUV you bought two years ago, I’ll give you six weeks before you need to gather your things and get out.”
I tap on Ethan’s desk with my red fingernail before turning to walk out, already promising myself that I won’t mention this conversati
on to Rafa because there’s no telling how he’ll react. Twisting the doorknob, I swivel my head back at Ethan, whose eyes are wide with shock.
“Assign a reporter to the migrant worker story right now. I’ll find a Spanish speaker to translate.”
I stalk into my office and shut the door with a firm bang. Immediately I draw the blinds to the window that looks out into the newsroom. I don’t want the reporters and editors trying to read my lips while I talk to Rafa.
Meanwhile, he’s a picture of Zen calm. He looks up, amused, and studies me over the frame of his laptop.
“You look annoyed. That must have been some meeting.”
I smile at him grimly and plop onto the new, black leather sofa. God, it feels so comfortable I could almost curl up and nap if it wasn’t for the fact that my paper was imploding.
I groan and kick off my heels. “The newsroom is onto a great story. A group that helps migrant worker families has finally granted us an interview with some of the fieldworkers, including the children. We think some of the kids are actually skipping school and picking crops for eight or more hours a day. Little kids. Which is completely illegal.”
Rafa raises his eyebrows. “Sounds interesting. Is there a problem?”
I roll my ankles. He just doesn’t yet understand how dire things are here at the paper. “We lost our two Spanish speakers in the last six months. One went to an online startup, the other to the dark side.”
Rafa looks confused. “The dark side?”
“Public relations,” I say quickly. I pause and think about how to explain why PR is considered the dark side to journalists, then move on, figuring that Rafa doesn’t care anyway. “Now we have all the time we need to interview these people, but no one who speaks their language. It’s ridiculous. We haven’t been able to hire anyone to replace the reporters, so we either have to pay a translator or skip the story. Or I could go and help with the interviews.”
“You should. You’re fluent. You miss reporting, you told me that a hundred times this week.” Rafa’s eyes wander back to his computer. He definitely doesn’t share my zeal for writing. He’ll probably never understand my love for newspapers, but unless you grew up in it like I did, it’s a difficult love to comprehend.