Pilot Partnership, After Midnight

The lock on the conference room door engaged with a heavy, metallic thud that sounded entirely too permanent for my liking. “Did she just lock us in?” I asked, staring at the heavy oak door. Holden Keane leaned back in his swivel chair, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. He looked entirely too comfortable for a man whose career was currently tied to a ticking time bomb. “Tamsin is a crisis director, Anouk. She does not ask politely when a category-five PR disaster is looming. She quarantines the problem.” “We are not the problem,” I muttered, dragging my laptop closer across the scarred oak table. “Marcos Ellery going live at dawn to nuke The Arrangement Desk with the toxic reconciliation contract we built for him three years ago is the problem. We are just the collateral damage Tamsin is using to draft a new ‘Pilot Public Partnership Framework’.” “A framework that happens to have our names on it,” Holden pointed out. He tapped a manicured finger against the single, unsigned cream page resting in the center of the table. “We have less than two hours before Marcos hits broadcast. If we do not have a radically ethical, airtight fake-dating contract signed by the time the sun comes up over Los Angeles, the agency burns, and our careers go up in the smoke.” The humming fluorescent lights above us buzzed like angry hornets. The air conditioning in this windowless bunker was set to absolute zero, raising goosebumps on my arms. I reached for my yellow highlighter, uncapping it with a sharp snap. “Fine. If we are doing this, we are doing it my way,” I said, my voice deadpan as I pulled the draft closer. “I want ironclad exit language. I want termination for convenience clauses. I want a mandatory mental-health addendum. I am not writing another cage, Holden. I am not doing to us what we did to Marcos.” Holden’s charm slipped, just a fraction. It was the crack in the golden-boy armor I rarely saw during his daytime image-architect pitches. “I know,” he said quietly. “I sold that Marcos spin. I told everyone it was a beautiful comeback story. I believed my own bullshit.” “And I wrote the legalese that made the bullshit legally binding,” I replied, the guilt souring the back of my throat. I chewed on a piece of cinnamon gum, trying to focus.…