She smiled like Jo was made of glass. Jo gave Emma a nod and headed into her office.
Perhaps the other shoe had already dropped in the form of Barry Davis. After Emma had left Tuesday, after she told Jo Barry harassed her, Jo stood silently in her office. She had wanted to scream. She still did, a little. Barry’s assistant had called yesterday, but Jo couldn’t answer the phone. She’d tear into him if she talked to him right now, and that wasn’t going to help anyone. She had to get it together. Had to figure out how to turn him down and ruin his career without any fallout for Emma.
Emma didn’t want to release a statement, and as much as Jo hated that, she understood. This was the industry that ostracized Jo for calling out racism, and that was when she was a household name. Emma was an assistant. But Jo was rich enough now, established enough. This was something she had to do.
* * *
—
Avery called Jo midmorning. Jo could hear the rage in her voice when she said hello.
“You’re doing something about this, yeah?” Avery said, no small talk first.
“Of course,” Jo said. “It may take some time but—yes. Of course I’m doing something.”
“When she told me—God, I want to kill him.”
“I brought him here, Avery.” Jo said the thing that had been bothering her since she found out. “I invited him into our workplace. I’m the one who fucking introduced them.”
“He’s the asshole who did it, Jo,” Avery said. “This isn’t on you any more than it’s on Emma, and you know it’s not on her.”
Of course it wasn’t on Emma. But she should’ve known. She shared an industry with Barry Davis. She should have heard something.
“You’re really rich,” Avery said. “Surely you have enough money to have him murdered.”
Jo barked a laugh at that. “I can’t say I haven’t considered it.”
The tension broke a little. Jo could hear the grin in Avery’s voice as she joked, “Is this a secure line?”
They spent fifteen minutes sharing more and more gruesome ideas about what to do with Barry Davis. If anyone were listening on the line, Jo and Avery would probably both be arrested.
Jo hung up feeling better than she had in a week.
* * *
—
Emma ran home to change before they left. She returned in jean shorts and a thin plaid button-down over a white tank top.
Jo drove to the game, telling herself the whole ride that this didn’t have to be awkward. She and Emma had been in a car together plenty of times. But it was strange to have Emma in a car that was actually hers, that didn’t belong to a car service and get switched out every day so it was always perfectly clean. Instead there was a receipt on the floor beneath Emma’s feet. Jo’s travel mug was in the cup holder between them. The coffee Emma handed her every morning was always at least the second cup of the day, sometimes the third.
After surviving the stilted conversation in the car, they arrived, late enough that Avery, Dylan, Vincent, and Sally were all already seated. Avery and Vincent smirked at them as they climbed the bleachers.
“Your jerk boss let you take the afternoon off?” Vincent asked Emma.
Emma gave him a little smile. Jo rolled her eyes. She hugged Sally and gave Thomas, her younger nephew, a high five.
“You ready for ice cream after the game?” she asked him.
“Yeah!” he shouted. He tugged on his dad’s arm. “Ice cream! Ice cream!”
“Thanks for that,” Vincent muttered when he hugged her.
Jo said hello to Dylan and Avery, who slid down the bleachers a bit to make room.
Not much room, though. There were exactly two seats between Avery and Vincent. It was fine, sitting next to Emma. They went so long without really talking and now they sat close enough that their thighs almost touched. Jo edged closer to her brother, making him shuffle sideways. It gave her some breathing room. She hoped none of the parents were the type to sell a picture to tabloids. The rumors would’ve kicked right back up if people saw them like this, looking like lesbian aunts cheering on their siblings’ kids. Emma was even wearing plaid.
Avery bumped Emma’s shoulder.
“How are you doing?” She said it quietly. Jo was sure she wasn’t supposed to hear.
“I’m good,” Emma said, bumping Avery’s shoulder back.
Jo took a breath and relaxed.
The game was pretty much like any other game. Emma sat with them, which was new, but she didn’t change much. The parents still talked sparingly, Vincent and Avery both giving Jo more trouble than she deserved, as always. At one point, as Vincent joked about how annoying it was that whenever anyone found out Jo was his sister she was all they cared about, Emma scoffed.
“Oh yes,” she said. “I’m sure it’s very tough for you to have a famous sister with whom you don’t share a last name. Her fame is probably worse for you than it is for her, who has paparazzi ruminate about her sex life. It sounds really hard for you.”
Avery burst out laughing, and Vincent promptly shut his mouth. Jo bit down on her grin.
“Thank God,” she said. “I don’t usually have anyone on my side here.”
“Siblings are the worst,” Emma said, as though her sister weren’t her best friend.
Vincent would probably have argued his case, but it was Ethan’s turn at bat.
Ethan already had a double, for which Jo’s whole row had stomped their feet against the bleachers beneath them. He didn’t look over before he got in the batter’s box. He used to—when he was younger he always sought out his family in the crowd for reassurance before he went up to swing. Jo could hardly believe how fast he was growing up. She still had a flutter of nerves every time he was up.
The first pitch was a ball.
Vincent clapped. “Good eye!”
The next pitch was wild as soon as it was out of the pitcher’s hand. It hit Ethan right in the wrist. Jo’s heart jumped to her throat. She wanted to leap to her feet and yell at the pitcher. They were only kids, it wasn’t intentional, but the ball hit her nephew in the wrist and he was crouched down, head between his knees, holding the injured arm to his chest. Vincent and Sally were both tense beside her.
Jo clutched the edge of the bleacher as the coach took a look at Ethan’s arm. He was moving it, but he was also crying, Jo could tell from the stands. Jo had broken her arm as a kid; she still remembered that sharp, agonizing pain when she landed wrong in the middle of trying a gymnastics routine she was obviously not talented enough for. She was ready to throw Ethan in the back seat of her car and speed to a hospital.
Emma’s hand came down, not quite on top of Jo’s, but right next to it. Her pinkie hooked over Jo’s. Jo looked at their hands, looked at Emma.
“He’s okay,” Emma told her. “Look at him, so tough—he’s not even coming out of the game.”
Emma removed her hand to clap as Ethan jogged toward first base. Jo and the rest of the parents joined in the applause. She shared a relieved look with Sally.
* * *
—
The team won, which was a nice way to end the season even if they were too far back in the league to make the playoffs. Everyone went to ice cream afterward, Emma squished into Avery’s back seat with the twins for the ride.
Ethan’s wrist was a little swollen, but he wasn’t much worse for wear. Still, Jo ruffled his hair.
“A banana split for the injured hero,” she suggested.
Ethan beamed at her. His parents did not. She didn’t care at all. He deserved as much ice cream as he wanted.
She didn’t order anything for herself, knowing she’d be able to polish off what was left of Ethan’s.
She sat on the edge of a picnic table bench, and the others joined her as they got their ice cream. Emma climbed onto the middle of the bench at first, but
when Dani and Ezra followed suit, she slid toward the edge, right up against Jo. She gave her a smile of apology but didn’t move away. Jo shifted, just a little, just enough to give them both some more room for their upper bodies. Their hips and thighs were still pressed tight together.
No one gave them a second glance. Not even Avery smirked at her. Ethan was at the other end of the bench, half hanging off the edge but not complaining. Then there was Dani, Ezra, and Emma, with Jo on the end. Avery, Vincent, and Sally—with Thomas in her lap—sat on the other side of the table. Dylan stood behind Avery. The rest of the team and their parents were around, too—they took up every last one of the picnic tables at this place. Everyone was loud and laughing and not paying any attention to Emma, crushed into Jo’s side. Emma didn’t seem to mind, either. Perhaps Jo didn’t need to worry about rumors that had already passed, and could just enjoy the evening. She relaxed, her shoulder coming to rest against Emma’s. Emma never even paused in her discussion of the best flurry toppings with the kids.
Ethan hadn’t eaten half of his ice cream when he slid it down the picnic table toward Jo. When it passed Emma, she plucked the one leftover cherry out of the whipped cream and popped it into her mouth. She didn’t look contrite in the least, giving Jo a grin before doing a long lick around the edge of her ice cream. Jo looked at the leftovers of Ethan’s split.
Really, Jo didn’t know how to explain how glad she was that she and Emma were okay. She missed her. There had been a few moments where she thought Emma might just quit, and Jo was so grateful that she hadn’t. She was so grateful that instead they were smiling at each other over ice cream.
After everyone was finished, the kids tired themselves out running around and playing on the ice cream shop’s jungle gym. Players and their families slowly filtered out. Jo drifted in and out of her brother’s conversation with Dylan, when she overheard Emma and Avery arguing.
“I took the bus back to work,” Emma was saying. “You don’t have to take me to the studio, just home. C’mon, Avery.”
Jo cleared her throat. The sisters turned to her.
“I drove you here,” Jo said. “I can drive you home. You’re mostly on my way.”
Emma smiled. “That’d be great.”
Jo caught the smirk on Avery’s face as she turned away, but she tried not to think about it too much.
Together in Jo’s car once more, there was no semblance of awkward tension. Instead, Emma launched into a play-by-play of the game of tag she’d played with half the team after ice cream. She talked about Ethan getting hit by the ball, about how Dani wanted to play catcher but her parents were worried about misread pitches, foul balls, and backswings. She was so enthusiastic. Jo couldn’t do anything but let her talk the whole ride.
Jo didn’t consider that it might be a bad idea to be seen personally dropping Emma off at her apartment until Emma directed her onto her street.
“I’m the third building on the right,” Emma said.
Jo went tense then, trying to look for paparazzi but not look like she was doing it.
Emma noticed anyway. “Oh, right,” she said, like she’d also just remembered this wasn’t the best idea. “But, like, I think they’ve lost interest. They were around after our ‘breakup’ and all. But once I wasn’t sobbing or dressed like a slob who’d just had her heart broken, I think they gave up.”
Jo hadn’t been certain they’d even found where Emma lived. She wasn’t sure what to make of the nonchalant way Emma brushed the idea off. How often had they been here?
“Okay,” Jo said as she put on her blinker and pulled over at the steps to Emma’s building.
“Thanks for driving me, boss,” Emma said. “And for telling me I had to come.”
Jo chuckled.
“It was great.” Emma smiled so big that Jo couldn’t see anything else. “Sorry not sorry I stole your cherry.”
Jo raised her eyebrows, and Emma’s face went bright red.
“I mean—you know what I mean!”
Jo laughed. “I do,” she said. “This was fun.”
Emma ducked her head. “Yeah, it was. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She looked over at Jo, almost through her lashes, before opening her door and heading for her apartment. Jo waited until she was inside before pulling away.
14
JO
Jo still had the picture of her and Emma in the top right drawer of her desk. The original picture. The two of them on the red carpet at the SAG Awards, fancy dresses and shining jewelry and those smiles, bright and focused only on each other. Emma had smiled at her like that after the baseball game, too. Jo had had the picture in her drawer for almost eight months now. She didn’t look at it often, but sometimes . . .
Jo looked at the picture and understood, a little, why people saw something there.
There hadn’t seemed to be any paparazzi outside of Emma’s apartment, nor any parents selling photos from the baseball game to the tabloids. There were no articles about the two of them, no rumors since everyone decided they’d broken up. It was good. Jo never expected it to take so long, but she was glad they’d finally died down. She wondered if denying it might have been the better route, in the end, if damage had already been done to Emma’s reputation, even when she never deserved it. There wasn’t much to be done about that now.
Jo was pulled from her thoughts when Emma knocked on her office door Monday morning. Her jaw was set.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Of course, come in.”
Emma closed the door behind her. Jo sat up straighter.
Emma came to stand in front of her desk. She stood tall, feet firmly planted, like she needed to be in a power pose to say whatever she was going to say.
“I want you to release a statement,” she said. “Not with my name, but explaining why you didn’t offer Barry an episode to direct.”
“Are you sure?” Jo said. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” Emma said. “I talked with my rabbi. I have to do something. I know it might not work—people won’t believe it or they’ll believe it and it won’t matter. But I have to try.”
Jo nodded. She was proud of Emma for dealing with the situation at all, but especially for wanting to stand up.
“We’ll get something drafted,” Jo said. “I’ll make sure you get to see it before we release it.”
“That’d be great, thanks,” Emma said, her body relaxing a bit.
“You’re—” Amazing was the first word that came to mind, but Jo bit it back. “—strong, Ms. Kaplan. There’s no right way to handle this. You’re doing fine.”
Emma gave her a smile. “Thanks, boss.”
Emma went back to her desk while Jo scrolled through her address book to find the number of the publicist she most trusted at the Jones Dynasty.
It had been almost a week since his set visit, but she hadn’t broken the news to Barry yet. She was still too angry to even talk to him on the phone. Breaking it to him through a press release sounded much more fun.
Jo put a rush on the statement. She wanted to get this out as soon as possible. In the meantime, she wasn’t sure it was the best idea, but she called Annabeth Pierce. Annabeth’s first movie had been a Barry Davis movie. She was a big-name actress now, but she was a nobody then, and if Jo knew men like Barry Davis, she knew what that meant.
Annabeth’s agent gave Jo Annabeth’s number without a moment’s hesitation. He probably thought this meant Jo wanted her for a cameo appearance or maybe a role in Agent Silver, and she let him. She had to be delicate about this.
She and Annabeth made the standard small talk for a few minutes before Jo mentioned Barry.
“Barry Davis visited set the other day, actually,” she said breezily. “He directed your first big film, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Annabeth s
aid. “That was Barry.”
Her voice hadn’t changed at all, still nothing but chipper with that hint of a Georgian accent.
“It was possible that he might direct an episode,” Jo said. “Though that is not what is going to happen.” She paused. Annabeth said nothing. “I imagine you might know why that’s not going to happen.”
If Jo was wrong about this . . .
The quiet way Annabeth said, “Why would I know?” confirmed she wasn’t.
“My production company will be releasing a statement, probably tomorrow morning, about exactly why he was not extended an invitation to direct,” Jo said. “Based on his behavior toward a young woman in my employ—his behavior that I will not tolerate. He does not have a heads-up about this, but I wanted you to. Just in case.”
“Right,” Annabeth said.
Jo let the silence hang.
Eventually, Annabeth took a deep breath on the other end of the line. “I really appreciate that, Ms. Jones,” she said. “I don’t mean to rush you off the phone, but I think perhaps I should talk to my publicist.”
“Please call me if you need anything, Ms. Pierce,” Jo said.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for the call.”
* * *
—
Jo had the statement by the afternoon. She should’ve probably trusted the people whose job it was to write these things, but she made a few minor edits anyway. Then she called Emma into her office.
“I have it,” she said, pushing the printed statement across her desk. “I thought you might want to read it in here.”
Jo wanted to give Emma the space to have whatever reaction she needed to.
“I’m going to get a refill,” Jo said. “I’ll close the door behind me and you can open it whenever you’re ready?”
Emma nodded. She looked sick to her stomach. Jo took her tumbler and headed out. She wanted to offer Emma some form of comfort, squeeze her hand or pat her on the back, but she didn’t think it was appropriate, didn’t ever want to touch Emma in a way she didn’t want. Instead she gave Emma the room, closing the door gently behind her.
Something to Talk About Page 18
