Emma seemed to decide that the direct route was best. She dropped her hands to her sides and stood tall.
“They think we’re in a relationship,” she said.
Jo pressed her lips together. “How novel,” she said. “This is perhaps the first time two women seen together weren’t labeled gal pals.”
Emma offered a tight smile. If this were anything else, she would joke with Jo about it, her goofy grin coming easily.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“What are we going to do?” Jo parroted back at her.
Emma flailed more than shrugged. “How are we going to deal with this?”
Jo told Emma what she told Amir. “I’ve never once commented on my love life,” she said. “I’m not about to start now.”
Emma looked like a goldfish, her mouth opening and closing but nothing coming out.
Jo opened her computer and logged on. Perhaps she should actually read what people were saying.
“Jo, I—” Emma started. “Ms. Jones. It’s inappropriate. That people should think this. About either of us.”
Jo fluttered a hand. “If I got upset every time people thought I was sleeping with someone I shouldn’t, I’d be a lot less well-adjusted. Let it pass. They’ll move on eventually.”
“They’ve found my Instagram,” Emma said. “I’ve gained nine thousand followers since last night.”
Jo couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Enjoy your newfound stardom.”
“I don’t want to enjoy any stardom,” Emma snapped. “I don’t want to be known as the girl sleeping with her boss! We have to say something about this.”
Jo looked away from her computer before getting to TMZ. She leveled a stare at Emma.
“I have not once, in almost three decades in this business, commented on my love life,” she said. “I will not be starting now just because you’re embarrassed to be associated with me in this manner. Is that why you didn’t want to stand near me on the red carpet?”
Jo hadn’t meant to ask, had figured it was Emma’s nerves that made her freeze up. But as soon as the question was out of Jo’s mouth, Emma blushed and tripped over herself to refute the accusation. Better to distract Emma from her discomfort than let her descend into panic.
“No, of course not, Ms. Jones,” she said. “I—”
“You what, Ms. Kaplan?”
“Jo.” Emma swallowed. “You’re an amazing woman. I’m just—I’m not used to being in the spotlight.”
Jo was the level of famous that people tended to tell her whatever she wanted to hear. It was probably worse with her employees, but for some reason she couldn’t help but believe Emma when she complimented her. Emma seemed genuine with everyone, but especially with Jo. It was ridiculous. She was probably just good at her job, at making her boss happy. Jo didn’t let herself dwell on the thought.
“You’ll be fine,” Jo said. “They’ll forget about it within a week if we don’t comment.” She finally looked at the article on her computer and sucked in a breath at the photo. “Well. They certainly got a good picture, didn’t they?”
Emma came around Jo’s desk to look at it with her. It was a completely normal action, and yet it set Jo on edge. She rolled her eyes at herself.
“Yeah,” Emma said quietly. “It’s quite the photo. Must have been when you called me an Amazon.”
It wasn’t the moment Jo called Emma an Amazon so much as the moment after it, when they were laughing together. Jo’s fingers were wrapped tightly around Emma’s wrist, and Emma leaned toward her slightly, looking right at her instead of at any of the cameras. Emma’s nose scrunched up with her smile, and Jo was grinning, too, staring right back at her. They looked like there was no one else in the world. Jo remembered it all happening, but hadn’t realized they had looked quite so . . . well. She understood why this rumor got off the ground so quickly.
“Wearing matching jewelry didn’t exactly help,” Jo said.
Emma took a step back. “We wore matching jewelry?”
“Your bracelet and my necklace were part of a set, but I thought it was too much to wear both.”
Emma paced to the other side of Jo’s desk. She blinked a few times, then looked at Jo. “Why’d you let me wear it?”
Jo considered. “You looked nice.”
Emma looked at the floor, her cheeks flushing. It was the truth—she had looked beautiful. But Jo also knew Emma wasn’t exactly comfortable with the whole thing. She hadn’t wanted to exacerbate that by making her change the jewelry she’d picked.
“Perhaps you should make your social media private,” Jo said.
Emma nodded. “Yeah. Already done.”
“Right. Well.” Jo closed the tab and Emma straightened up. “I’ll be writing all morning. No calls unless it’s an emergency.”
“Yes, boss,” Emma said. She headed for her own desk. “Door closed?” she asked over her shoulder.
Jo hesitated. “Yes, please.”
She always wrote with the door closed. No distractions. She didn’t know what made her hesitate today. Emma didn’t need Jo watching over her. The rumors were meaningless; they weren’t going to affect Emma’s workday. Even if they did, Emma could handle it. She’d handled everything that came with the job, thus far. Jo didn’t need to worry about her.
The door closed behind Emma. Jo knew she should get to writing, but she opened her browser again anyway. She wouldn’t normally read the gossip columns, but for some reason, she was interested.
She and Emma were apparently dating, which was all Amir let her know that morning. None of the sites reporting on it seemed to be able to decide when they’d moved beyond the boss-assistant relationship. Some claimed they’d been dating from the start. Many had collected pictures of the two of them, on set or at studio events, as though Emma standing near Jo was evidence of a relationship. The red-carpet picture was the most prominent, though, no matter what site Jo visited. She understood why. Looking at it, even she was almost convinced there was something there.
She allowed herself ten minutes of perusing the internet before closing it all and opening her script document. She was almost finished with the first draft of the finale. She laced her fingers together and stretched her arms in front of her, palms out. Time to get to work.
* * *
—
Jo was beginning to get into the groove of writing when her cell phone rang. The caller ID made her roll her eyes affectionately. She should have expected this.
“Hello?”
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Nice to talk to you, too, Ev.”
Evelyn scoffed. “Oh, don’t pretend like you bother with niceties when you call me.”
True. Jo had a tendency to start phone calls with her best friend with you won’t believe what this fucking idiot did—Evelyn had always been her favorite person to complain to.
“Nothing is going on,” Jo said, leaning back in her chair.
“Nothing is going on? But you took someone to an awards show? And that someone happened to be your assistant? And not the frumpy assistant I expected—she fit in just fine on the red carpet.”
“Yes, well, I bought the dress for her, didn’t I?”
“Are you serious?”
Jo almost paused at the incredulity in Evelyn’s voice, but better not to give an inch. “Of course,” she said. “You think I was going to trust her to find one herself? Or make her buy a dress she’ll likely only wear once?”
“How else could you have fixed that problem?” Evelyn said. She hmmed. “Let me think. Oh, I know! You could have not invited her. Then she wouldn’t have needed a dress that she would only wear once.”
“You’re just jealous I’ve never taken you to an awards show,” Jo said.
Evelyn laughed. “I haven’t wanted to go to an awards
show with you since we were teenagers.”
Evelyn and Jo had grown up together in LA’s Chinatown. Evelyn was the only person outside of Jo’s family who didn’t treat her any differently after she got famous. Younger people acted like celebrity made Jo suddenly special; older people in their community tutted over Jo taking a stage name, as though it were her fault Hollywood didn’t want Jo Cheung. When Jo told Evelyn she landed her breakout role, Ev said, “Cool,” and kept dealing cards for big two.
Jo glanced at the closed door. She was sure Emma had heard plenty of her phone conversations—raised voices with the network or, worse, with her father. Jo spoke quietly.
“I didn’t want to deal with the rumors about Agent Silver,” she said. “About whether or not I could hack it in film. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I needed a buffer. Emma filled that role well.”
Evelyn let Jo’s rare moment of vulnerability slide. “You admitting you took the girl as a buffer isn’t helping your case,” she said. “You brought her so you didn’t have to deal with people you don’t like. Ergo, she is not in the category of people you don’t like.”
“Yes, Evelyn, I like my assistant. That’s not some ‘gotcha’ situation.”
“Oh God,” Evelyn said. “I know you haven’t accidentally texted me when you meant to text her in a while. But if you start sexting, please make sure you find the right contact in your phone first.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Jo rubbed the bridge of her nose.
Evelyn had a point about the accidental texts, though. It happened more often than Jo would like, generally when she’d taken her contacts out and wasn’t looking closely at her phone. Emma and Evelyn were next to each other in Jo’s contact list.
“She looked gorgeous, Jo,” Evelyn said.
“I’m not going to deny that,” Jo said. It would be a lie. Emma had already looked good when she arrived at the suite the day before. Jo’s prep team didn’t need to help much. “She’s twenty-seven years old and looks like she could be goddamn Wonder Woman. And yes, I enjoy her company over that of obnoxious, self-important actors, especially at a night designed to celebrate their self-importance. The rest is so-called journalists speculating about things to get clicks.”
Evelyn was quiet for a moment, and Jo considered that maybe she’d convinced her.
Instead, Evelyn said, “When you give in to the inevitable way you guys were looking at each other, will you call me?”
“Do you want me to ever call you before then,” Jo asked, “or would you rather never hear from me again?”
Evelyn hung up without responding. Jo went back to her script.
* * *
—
Innocents centered on a group of lawyers working to exonerate the wrongly convicted. It was Jo’s second TV show, even more successful than the first. As they approached the fifth-season finale, Jo was ready to move on. She loved her characters, but she knew them by this point. There wasn’t as much to explore, weren’t as many new ways for Jo to challenge herself.
So she turned to an action franchise with six decades of history; Agent Silver wasn’t like anything she’d done before. The announcement of Jo as writer was scheduled for Thursday, but the whispers about how people expected her to fail were already everywhere. Jo would never admit to being nervous, especially because terrified might be the more appropriate adjective. But she couldn’t get better unless she pushed her limits.
Jo imagined leaving Innocents would feel like what parents experience when their children go off to college. Her baby, suddenly grown up and not under her roof anymore. She’d already delegated a lot of her show-running duties to her co–executive producer, Chantal. Jo trusted her. She knew Chantal was more than capable of running the day-to-day.
Plus, Jo liked the way she was always prepared to step back when Jo showed up on set. Chantal ran things while Jo was away and offered to hand over the reins in her presence. Today, she nodded at Jo, her corkscrew curls bouncing. Jo waved her off. She wanted to watch a bit, clear her head from all the words jumbled inside it.
Emma stood beside her, working on something on her tablet. Normally, Emma’s presence on set was filled with hellos from PAs. Today, acknowledgment of her was noticeably subdued. Before Jo could give it much thought, Chantal called for a five-minute break while they adjusted lighting, and Tate, one of the leading actors, headed her way.
“You got that finale script for us yet?” he asked.
Jo managed not to roll her eyes at him. As an actor, he wouldn’t get the script for weeks, after it went through revisions and rewrites, but he always liked to meddle.
“I’m surprised I get any writing done,” Jo said breezily. “What with how much Emma and I are apparently fooling around in my office.”
Tate laughed, big and booming, and the crew joined in, albeit less enthusiastically. Jo smirked. Emma was the color of a tomato.
“You take your time with that,” Tate said, his white-toothed grin standing out against his hickory skin. He glanced at Emma and chuckled. “You okay there, Emma?”
“I hate you,” Emma told him. Then: “Ms. Jones, let me get you a refill.”
She took the tumbler right out of Jo’s hand and marched off. Jo didn’t bother to point out that it was still mostly full.
“Go easy on her,” Tate said.
“She can handle it,” Jo said, fluttering a hand like she wasn’t worried about how this all might affect Emma. “Your break’s almost up.”
It had barely been a minute, but Jo didn’t want to deal with him anymore.
“Yours, too,” he said, then left her alone.
Jo tried to be unobtrusive on set. People were working, and she was only there to clear her head. But she could feel eyes on her, darting away when she looked back. At least some of these people believed the rumors, which was unfortunate. Not worth doing anything about, but unfortunate nonetheless.
Emma hadn’t returned with her promised refill, and loath as Jo was to admit it, Tate was right; she had to get back to writing. She headed to her office. Emma would figure out where she went.
But Emma didn’t have to figure anything out, because she was sitting at her own desk when Jo got back.
“Your refill, Ms. Jones,” she said, offering the tumbler without making eye contact.
Jo took the cup and decided she needed to face this head-on.
“I apologize if I made you uncomfortable,” she said. “The rumors are something that needed to be addressed without being taken seriously. Tate provided me an easy opportunity.”
“It’s fine,” Emma said.
Jo could have left it at that, but she was the one who got Emma into this mess.
“If it upset you, it’s not. I won’t joke about it again.”
Emma stared at the papers on her desk. “Thank you.”
“It really will just go away,” Jo said. “It always does.”
Emma didn’t look up. Jo was pretty sure she didn’t believe her.
“Did you at least have a good time?” Jo asked. “Since you have to deal with all of this, I hope you at least had fun.”
“I did,” Emma said, finally making eye contact. Her smile was soft.
“Good. I’m glad I took you.”
She was. She had thought—both before asking Emma and after—that maybe she shouldn’t.
Jo’s mom had accompanied her to every awards show of her career until the cancer diagnosis. Jo skipped the red carpets when she was twenty, watching from the hospital instead. Her mom was gone before Jo turned twenty-one. Jo hadn’t taken anyone to an awards show since. Her brother was younger and busy, and her father was too uninterested to bother.
Jo had known the press would make something of her taking Emma, but she had to—she was hideously bored of awards by this point. While she was proud of the work she put out, proud of the work everyone did on her sh
ow, awards were too often political, too rarely went to the right people. Ceremonies were an excuse for everyone to schmooze and drink and celebrate themselves. Even before the speculation about Agent Silver, Jo had considered asking Emma. Her assistant’s company was a lot better than that of any of the drunk schmoozers.
“Why did . . . ,” Emma started. She looked down, then back up at Jo. “Why did you take me? I mean, I know I was supposed to be a buffer for Agent Silver stuff, but besides the red carpet, no one even asked you about it. And we know how well my intervening on the red carpet worked out.”
Jo sighed. “Because I was sick of getting hit on by people who thought since I was alone I was interested.” It was true enough. Without a date, she had no way to avoid conversations with people she didn’t want to talk to. She rubbed her temples. “I expected the story to be ‘Jo Jones is so obsessed with work she brought her assistant to an awards show,’ not ‘Jo Jones is dating her assistant.’”
“You knew there’d be a story?” Emma asked.
“There’s always a story.”
Jo had dealt with the press, with journalists and people who shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves journalists, since she was a teenager. She should’ve known better.
“If anyone makes you uncomfortable, let me know, yes?” Jo said. “I’ll have it taken care of.”
Emma half rolled her eyes. “Sure, boss,” she said. “But I’m fine.”
“Any inquiries go to Amir,” Jo said. “All comments, even no-comment comments, need to come from my publicist.”
“Of course,” Emma said. “But why would I get inquiries anyway?”
“Just in case.”
If Emma hadn’t realized that reporters might find her phone number, might find out where she lived, Jo wasn’t going to put the idea in her head. She truly did believe this rumor would pass quickly enough that Emma would never be bothered.
* * *
—
The next morning, though, reporters had discovered the phone number at Emma’s desk. Jo told her to turn off the ringer. Anyone who truly needed her had other ways of getting in touch.
Something to Talk About Page 4
