Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Cassie

Market Corner was a bustling place that was—well, maybe not hugely surprising, but it was on the corner of the market. Empress Market Square stood right at the top of Carston Point, bustling with small local shops and independent grocers, and Market Corner was a quaint old-style diner flooded with americana right on the corner where the square met the narrow, winding slope of Wish Road.

A light drizzle came down as I made my way across the square, rainboots splish-sploshing across the pavers, faint pattering against my umbrella as I breathed in the cool, damp air, and a low mist clung to the bases of all the structures. It tasted like foggy mornings at my Aunt Jana’s old house on the lake, and the warmth that hit me when I pulled open the door into Market Corner was more than welcome.

“Hey there,” the woman behind the counter in red-and-white pinstripes said, as I kicked the rain off my boots and shook out my umbrella. “You line up and I’ll be right with you.”

“Oh—I’m just here for a meeting, I’m not ordering,” I said, scanning the room. It was always full in here, but to be fair, it was full when ten people were inside—it was squeezed onto the side of a tall, old building right on the slope of Wish Road, and the country music, wood paneling, and smell of fried food made it feel smaller and tighter than it was. Craning my neck didn’t find me anything.

“You’re after Gary Founders, aren’t you?” the woman behind the counter said. “Go right on upstairs. He and that new hire of his are waiting up there.”

The stairs were tight, old wood that creaked underfoot and dimly lit, and it smelled like wood cleaner. Stepping out onto the second-floor seating area made things open out a little more, and I spotted Gary in a nasty purple blazer sitting under a small square window with Tatiana, who was scanning papers with a knot in her brow. My stomach was suddenly lined with lead, and I wasn’t sure how to move my legs, but when someone coming up the stairs behind me nearly bumped into me, it jostled me forward and I rode the momentum until I pulled out the chair across from them. Gary looked up with a smile.

“Well, look who’s here,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

I squeezed my hands under the table. I couldn’t keep my eyes on him. Those creases around his mouth were too familiar. I knew how they looked when he frowned, hard. The specific set of his eyes—it called up bad memories. I looked to Tatiana. “You said no pressure to meet you here the first time you asked. I didn’t think you’d just… start threatening me.”

She frowned, looking back to Gary. “What did you tell her?”

He put a finger to his lips. “Don’t say anything private, Cassie. You don’t know who’s listening right now.”

Was that true, or was that his way of getting me not to tell Tatiana about his blackmail attempt? Now I wondered if maybe he even would have outed me. It wouldn’t have reflected well on him, would it?

But I couldn’t risk it. That was the thing about mutually assured destruction—you still risked destruction.

“Now, as I told you yesterday,” Gary went on, as if the conversation hadn’t even been happening. The rain picked up outside, streaking against the window. “I’m excited to work with you. We’re going to start by phasing you slowly out of your partnership with Express—”

“I’m not leaving Express,” I said, still keeping my eyes on Tatiana. Thank god she was here. I didn’t want to argue with her, but I could. Gary was a different story. “Parker’s my friend. And my roommate. And she’s the best thing to happen to my social page.”

“It’s going to be hard to ease you out of it, because you’ve already gotten so much content together with Express,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he’d even heard a word of what I’d said. “But we’re just going to ease everyone into it. Firstly, you’re going to announce a hiatus—”

“Gary,” Tatiana said, putting a hand up. “She’s said no. Can we address this?”

“Relax, Tatiana,” he sighed, like it was the biggest imposition to be reminded conversations had multiple participants. And then, as if she hadn’t said a thing, he went on, “Your hiatus will just serve to make people forget the connection between you and Express, and then later on, when you announce your partnership with Express has ended, people won’t be so devastated. We’ll get you some independent content to build up interest again before we announce your official partnership with Morning Magic.”

“I told you, I’m not doing it,” I said.

“Cassie, please,” Tatiana said, putting a hand up. “I’m sorry. Gary gets ahead of himself. Let’s talk this through. Why are you staying with Express?”

I pursed my lips. “Parker’s my friend. And I like working with her. And I care about Express’s mission.”

“Our mission is already more in line with your brand,” Gary said, looking down at his papers, just an offhand comment like it was so natural he’d know my own brand better than I did. “We’ll be announcing your hiatus as soon as possible for you, and we’ll let it go for about two weeks before we announce your official break with Express—”

“There is no official break with Express,” I said, my voice getting shrill. I tried to rein it in, but I couldn’t control it.

Tatiana spoke up. “Can you tell me why you came to this meeting, if you weren’t intending on signing up with us?”

My stomach turned flips and flips. Gary really hadn’t said a word about how he got me here. Did Tatiana even know that he knew about me? Parker had said it had most likely just been a slipup on her part.

But I didn’t get a word in before Gary said, “Cassie just needs a little help to make the right decision. She’s come here because she knows deep down that Parker is leading her on and lying to her, and she’s hoping for something better.”

I don’t need help making the right decision. The very idea sent fire through my veins—especially the thought that I needed to be threatened and coerced into making the right decision. But I couldn’t say that. Couldn’t really say a word.

Parker had been right. Why did I come here? Why hadn’t I let her come? I couldn’t say anything to Gary. I couldn’t argue with him, let alone negotiate like this. I’d just been so—so angry and rejected and I’d hated myself so much, I wanted to feel like I could do something. Maybe just to prove her wrong—that I was good enough.

And I wasn’t.

“Based on Cassie’s posting schedule,” Gary said, “we should be able to announce her hiatus on Tuesday. She won’t make any posts until then, and she won’t make any after until Friday, when she’ll go back to regular…”

It droned on like that, me sitting there feeling like I was shackled up, that I couldn’t make myself say a word. Tatiana interjected sometimes to try giving me a word in somewhere, but Gary steamrolled over her every time, and contracts stacked up in front of me, waiting for me to sign. The only little act of defiance I could manage was sitting there ramrod straight without signing any of it, as if it would all go away if I just waited it away.

Gary’s voice was always loud, but right now, the mental chorus in my mind was louder—you screwed up, this is your fault, you’re ruining Parker’s business now too, you got yourself into this and you blew it. It built up louder and louder until it was ringing pots and pans in my head, until finally—

“Oh my god—is that her? Cassie Peterson?”

A girl’s voice from behind me broke the spell. I turned back to a group of girls, all different ages, maybe eleven at the youngest to twenty at the oldest, coming up towards me. Gary scowled at them, but I felt like it was a release, like a rope tied around me had been cut. I turned back to the group, standing up as they approached.

“Hi,” I said. “The one and only! Are you fans? I love meeting fans.”

“Of course,” a girl at the front said, maybe fourteen years old, probably Pacific Islander, with beautiful brown eyes, looking at me like I was being weird. “We’re here for the autographing session.”

I blinked. “Oh,” I said, after a second of thought confirming there was definitely no autographing session today. “Of course! Oh my god. I completely forgot. I was in a business meeting with our competitors right now, but we were just wrapping up—maybe let’s head downstairs where people can find us more easily?”

“Cassie,” Gary said, and I heard the chair squeak from him standing up. “Don’t make this difficult—”

“I know,” I said, keeping my back to him. “It’s too difficult to find the session up here. But first, how about we all do a big selfie with everyone who’s comfortable having their picture up on my page?”

The girls went wild for it, but it was for my own sake, because after I took the picture, I opened my Insta to post it. Sure enough, there on my page was a post I hadn’t put.

Hey guys! Come swing by Market Corner on Empress Market Square to catch me for an autograph sesh! We’re OFFICIALLY starting at 4:30pm, but if you come by fifteen minutes early, I might sneak in selfies with fans… yk, js. See you there!

I almost teared up a little reading it. I felt like I was seeing Parker directly, and I just wanted to roll my eyes and tell her I don’t say sesh, scruff-ball.

Talk about just like her. Giving me an out from the meeting from hell, while following my angry request to not show up herself—she was way, way too good for me.

I posted the picture. Parker would want to know it had worked, anyway.