Chapter 45

45

A fter a conversation on the phone with Luke that left her seriously worried about her future as a journalist—ruined reputations didn't do well in her line of work—she'd had to field yet another call with Fionna Bennett.

Fionna informed her that after a lengthy chat with Fynn's people, in which Sol hadn't been included and that she wasn't even aware had been taking place, Conceit Fair had decided to unpublish her story from the website and cancel the plans for it to run in their print magazine.

Not only was her article going to be taken down, but since Conceit Fair would need to hire an additional freelance writer to take care of the now empty space in the upcoming issue of their magazine, Sol would not be compensated for her work. Fionna had even floated the idea of not reimbursing Sol for the expenses of the trip to Los Angeles.

Sol was fuming, among feeling many other sentiments. Had she known that she'd end up paying for the trip to LA herself, she'd have booked a first-class flight! She had instead bought a ticket that complied with the magazine's travel guidelines, and for what? Pure discomfort.

Then she remembered that she was broke and panicked. She had forgotten what it was like to constantly worry about money, and now her only source of income had vanished.

If all that wasn't bad enough, she was receiving hate messages and all kinds of colorful emails and direct comments on her personal mail and her social media accounts from some Fynn and Revengers fans. Her favorite so far was a dude under the account name @DroidCop99 who called her an "ignorant feminazi" and argued women shouldn't be allowed to write about action flicks because they didn't get them.

She knew she needed to switch her phone and computers off and go out of the house, but she was feeling so exposed and vulnerable that even the idea of going for a walk seemed too daunting. She was debating whether to call her mom, Laia, Lola, Laura, Lali, Lurdes, or some other L-friend but definitely not Luke, when she heard her doorbell.

She checked the camera on her phone, convinced it would be Fionna Bennett, Christina Jones, or some Revengers Reunite executive producer coming to berate her in person, but it was Luke. She went to let him in.

"Hey," he said when she opened the door. No ciao and certainly no bella for Sol on that miserable day. "Can I come in?"

"Sure," she said, a bit surprised by his abruptness. "Is everything okay?"

"Not really." He followed Sol to her kitchen.

"If it wasn't because I've already had the worst day ever and nothing else could go wrong, I'd be a bit worried," Sol told Luke as they both sat around Sol's table.

Luke avoided his semi-usual spot tucked into the corner with her, instead sitting across the table.

"Since I don't really know how to put this, the best will be for you to see it." He unlocked his phone and handed it to her over the table. "Play the video."

She saw a CCTV video of her leaving what looked to be Josie's building. The video used the feed from several security cameras and followed Sol until she stopped at a traffic light. The recording zoomed into the big weekender bag hanging from her shoulder. The bag, which she always brought to her Pilates excursions, was half open and there seemed to be a stack of papers inside. The video zoomed further into the papers, but it wasn't clear what they were.

"This was published to Voyeur an hour ago," Luke said. "I came here the moment I saw it. The Voyeur article that embedded this video is implying that the papers inside your bag are the stolen script. The CCTV appears to be from February 23."

"What?" Sol's heart fell. Could her day get any worse?

"Do you know what the papers may have really been?" asked Luke.

"No! I carry all sorts of things everywhere, that's why I always buy giant bags and purses. I'm old-school and analogic for some things. I print everything: articles I'm working on, recipes of things I want to cook, lists of questions for my next interview subject—or for my doctor. Those papers could be anything: bank statements, some writing notes, a letter from the V&A museum asking for a donation…"

"There's something else," Luke said.

"Nope!" Sol refused to acknowledge it.

"I shouldn't be the one telling you this, but you need to know," Luke continued. "There's a quote in the article from your ex-husband."

"What?!" she yelled. She thought she knew who the quote was from, but she needed to make sure. "Which one?"

"Your ex-husband?" said Luke, his brows furrowed.

"There are two of them, remember?"

"Right." Luke took his phone from Sol's hands and went through something on it. "Here, David Sparrow."

"The fucking bastard!"

"Yes, that he is," Luke agreed. "He says something about you being oblivious to the idea of earning a living and having probably grabbed the script by mistake but then perhaps turned it into a way of making some quick money?—"

"The scum! I'm gonna kill him!"

"I won't tell you how to deal with your ex-husband—either of them," Luke said cautiously. "But perhaps talk to a friend about this, talk to your family, talk to me if you want, but don't call David. I don't think he deserves the attention."

She was sort of sedated by the severity of the situation, but perhaps Luke was right. Even if she did want to kill David fucking Sparrow and call him all sorts of profane, terrible things, she didn't feel like having a conversation with him, not even then.

"I know this is a mess right now," Luke told her while she was still toying with the many options to get revenge on David.

"You don't even know the full extent of it," Sol said.

"Did something happen?" he asked. "Something else, I mean?"

"Let's say I had a very bad day at work."

"Worse than Saturday?"

"Worse than most. Maybe not worse than the first time I got laid off— and the second time I got laid off. But ranking pretty up there."

"I'm sorry about that, mate."

Mate? Had he really called her mate ? Was that what they were now? No longer sort of together, not even friends, just mates ?

"I was saying I know this is a mess right now," Luke continued, apparently unaware of having downgraded her from occasional lover to mate . "But I want you to know that I'm still trying to figure this out."

"Yes, sure. Thank you." She was exhausted, and being in his presence didn't help.

"I think I should probably leave now," he said as if reading her thoughts. Or perhaps he didn't want to be there. She wasn't the best company at the moment. "But ring me if you need anything and I'll come. And I'll keep you posted about the case. I'm not forgetting about clearing your name."

"Sure," she said and she accompanied him to the door.

She wasn't sure what pleasantries they exchanged before he left. She was in shock and only half-listening, and she hadn't been able to look him in the eye for the whole visit.

···

Laia called her half an hour after Luke had left her place and as soon as she'd seen the Voyeur article. Sol was reminded of a libel case her friend had been involved in a couple of years before and asked Laia for the contact of the lawyer who'd helped her with that.

"She's used to dealing with these types of situations," Laia assured her. "Those Voyeur people don't know what's coming for them!"

She also told Sol that she would personally handle the David issue in a painful way and Sol thanked her for it, even if she wasn't sure what Laia was planning. She just hoped it would be nothing illegal. Trusting her friends and letting them help her in difficult moments had been one of her recent learnings.

Sol explained what had happened with the Richard Fynn interview, and after twenty more minutes of chatting, they hung up. There had been something that Sol decided to conceal from Laia though—how she was convinced that whatever had been between her and Luke was now irredeemably over.

···

She was trying to take care of herself with a bit of pampering by rewatching an episode of the feel-good romantic procedural The Mallorca Files and eating a warmed Franco Manca vegetarian pizza. She thanked her organized self for always keeping frozen pizza and Amorino yogurt gelato at home for emergency cases such as this, and she was beginning to evolve from miserably destroyed to profoundly glum.

Then she got Miquel's text message. He'd seen what Conceit Fair had done, taking Sol's article down, and he wanted her to know that he'd removed Fionna from his good-wishes list. Conceit Fair 's editor would no longer be getting happy-birthday and merry-Christmas messages from Miquel. And forget about getting the scoop on any other secret sales from Catalan natural-leather purse designers or artisanal shoemakers.

Sol couldn't help but laugh out loud. She didn't know anymore what she could or couldn't afford. She'd been belittled online and offline, her name had been dragged through the mud, and perhaps the police would come knocking and ask about a stolen script. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to work as a journalist again. But she still knew who her friends were.