Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other, page 14
Even I, who according to the world-renowned journalist in the Stone Temple Pilots shirt had a gift for putting my foot in my mouth, knew not to say aloud the thoughts running through my head right then. Thoughts about how it wasn’t really my fault that I’d never heard of the guy. Okay, sure, maybe he was a big deal in the international reporting game, but first and foremost, I was in the entertainment business. I interviewed politicians and dignitaries, and I reported on the events of the day, but I also once spent a week in Ibiza with Paris Hilton, testing different brands of sunscreen. What did he want from me?
Afghanistan. Syria. Sudan.
I’d covered the Olympics a couple times. I’d had lunch with the First Lady in Germany while the G7 Summit was happening. And I had been on location at Macy’s on Black Friday more times than I could count, so you couldn’t say I’d never been sent into a war zone.
I gasped. “Do you think he’s doing a story on me? Some investigative piece?” That had to be it. Didn’t it?
I heard Colton click his tongue against his teeth. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so.” I opened my mouth, prepared to insist that had to be it, but Colton cut me off. “I’m not sure you’re the sort of subject he would be interested in. What do you think, Orly? Any theories?”
Orly shifted position as much as he could in his confined space of the front seat and looked back toward Sebastian’s front door. The coast was still clear. “Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s that.”
Why in the world was Sebastian Sudworth in Adelaide Springs? I’d had plenty of questions before, of course, and that was just when he was a relatively young, relatively attractive guy who seemed to have laid down roots in a place that had never had the right climate to grow new trees. But if he was—or had been—all the things Colton said, why in the world would he be here?
“So what do you mean he disappeared? What happened?”
Orly looked at me, I think, imploringly. “Look, Sebastian’s a good guy. I don’t think we need to do anything to—”
“I agree, Orly,” Colton chimed in.
Seriously, what did they think of me? “I wasn’t suggesting we should use it against him. Give me a little credit, guys.” Except, whatever happened that caused him to walk away from such an illustrious career . . . Was there something there that I could use? Not to make his life worse, just to make mine better? No. Stop it. Don’t be the awful person they think you are. “I’m just trying to get caught up.”
Colton sighed. “No one knows, really. There were NDAs and contract buyouts to the point that there was really nothing left but rumors.”
“Like what sorts of rumors?”
Orly’s face was overtaken by a fatherly, disapproving frown. I shrugged and continued with a squeakier, more defensive voice than I had begun with. “Shouldn’t I know what I’m working with here, if I’m going to be stuck with the guy?”
“I’m not sure you should be stuck with the guy, now that I know who the guy is.”
“Oh, Colton.” I scoffed. “There’s no need to rock the boat.” I caught myself, right there in that moment, doing something I didn’t understand. Why was I arguing against what I had wanted to begin with? I was on the verge of getting my way. Of getting rid of him. Was it just because I didn’t like being told what to do? Or because Sebastian Sudworth had suddenly become a lot more interesting? “I don’t like him very much—truthfully he’s been a real pill from the moment we got here—but I’m sure we can make it work.”
Or was it that? Did someone suspecting I wasn’t up to a task make it imperative that I be given the chance to prove I was? To prove I could make it work, no matter what “it” was? “I mean, he dresses like a second-string pizza delivery guy, and it seems like he’s done everything he can to get in the way of the story Orly and I are wanting to tell, but—”
“Is that true, Orly?”
“No, sir. I really don’t think so.” Orly mouthed, “Sorry,” and shrugged, then diverted his eyes away from mine. “I think . . . Well, if I’m being honest, I don’t think Sebastian necessarily has a lot of respect for Brynn, or at least not for the type of news—”
Colton’s laughter drowned out the rest of Orly’s sentence—not that anyone would have struggled to interpret what he was saying. “No, I wouldn’t think so. Sudworth always was a bit of a journalism snob.”
“But I don’t get the impression he’s trying to sabotage anything,” Orly concluded.
Colton sighed. “All the same, I think it’s best we just bring you home, Brynn. We’ll figure out another way to—”
“What?!” I shouted into the phone and pulled it closer. “No way. If I leave now, nothing has changed. If I leave now . . .” I may not have had my wits about me enough to do a deep dive into Sebastian Sudworth research, but I had taken the time to do a search for #firebrynncornell, which, as of seven thirty that morning, had still been trending. “I’m not quitting. No. Forget it.”
“Hey, I wasn’t saying—”
“But I have to fix this. You have to give me a chance to fix this.” You just have to.
Orly leaned over to get close to the phone again. “I’m with Brynn on this, Colton. I don’t think there’s any reason to leave. Not yet. If you don’t mind my saying so, I think we just need to let her do the job she came to do.”
I placed my hand on Orly’s jacket-clad forearm and squeezed. He winked in response and mouthed, “I got you.” As I looked at Orly, my eyes beginning to mist, I caught some motion and pointed behind him. There was the two-time Pulitzer winner, locking up his house and carrying a bag of dog poop to his garbage can.
Orly cleared his throat, returned to his normal position, and rebuckled his seat belt while I pulled the phone back with me and lowered my voice.
“He’s heading our way, Colton. What should I do?” Why did I ask? Why didn’t I tell him what I would do? Maybe because I had no idea? All I knew was we couldn’t leave. We couldn’t give up. If I wanted to return to the Sunup couch, the only chance I had was to convince the world that the Brynn Cornell they’d witnessed insulting her hometown last Friday was not the real Brynn Cornell. And the only way to convince the world of that was to convince Adelaide Springs of that. And maybe the only way to convince Adelaide Springs of that . . .
Colton and I arrived at the same impossible directive at the same time.
“Brynn, what do you think are the chances you can turn Sebastian Sudworth into your biggest fan?”
Orly did a wide-eyed double take to the back seat and then tried to look normal again as Sebastian dropped the lid of the trash receptacle and began walking toward us.
Throughout our conversation with Colton, I’d been thinking back on all the interactions Sebastian and I’d had so far, trying to piece together all the reasons he hated me. Because I’d insulted the people and the town he apparently loved? Sure. That went without saying. Because he didn’t think I was authentic? Fine. I’d be authentic. What else? He’d said something about journalistic integrity. Or maybe I’d said that? Oh yeah. That was when I was insulting his little town newspaper. True, I hadn’t known about the Peabody-sized upgrade he’d apparently given the Adelaide Gazette. I knew I’d hit on something there. I may not have known anything about him, but my gut had done a pretty good job pointing me in the right direction, all things considered.
“You’re no journalist.” Wasn’t that what he’d said? So the journalism snob looked down on the woman who’d gone swimming with sea lions and Hugh Jackman. No surprise there. But now I knew what I was working with, and I could avoid stumbling into any more of those easy-to-attack situations. I could win him over. I would. Because, if nothing else, I’d already been completely authentic about one thing I’d told him.
Nothing in my life had come easy. Nothing. And if he thought I didn’t have it in me to go toe-to-toe with him, he knew even less about me than I knew about him.
“Consider it done.” I clicked the red button to end the call just in time to smile and greet my soon-to-be biggest fan.
Chapter 12
Sebastian
Monday, March 21
8:24 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time
It wasn’t going to work. That was all there was to it. He was going to drive Orly and Brynn to the Bean, divert his eyes while the citizens of Adelaide Springs unleashed their wrath on her, and then beg the most kindhearted person in sight to relieve him of his duties. Well, the most kindhearted person who wasn’t Laila. She was too kindhearted. He couldn’t do that to her.
Spending a little time with Murrow had had the effect it always did. The very effect Murrow had been trained to deliver, in fact. But the fact that Sebastian had been thinking of Murrow that way again—as a psychiatric service dog rather than just a pet—was unsettling. It had been a while. He’d come too far and made too much progress to ignore the signs and triggers when he saw them in front of him.
Brynn Cornell was nothing more to him than a five-foot-eight walking, talking trigger in impractical boots.
And now, for some strange reason, that trigger was smiling at him and waving. That was new.
“Sorry I took so long,” Sebastian offered as he climbed back into the vehicle. And he even sort of meant it.
“That’s no problem at all.” Brynn beamed at him in the rearview mirror. A different smile than before. Still strange. Still fake, he assumed. But not quite as obviously, obnoxiously so. “Is everything okay with . . . Oh, I’m sorry . . . What did you say your dog’s name is again?”
“Murrow. And everything’s fine. Thanks.”
“Murrow! That’s a great name. After Edward R. Murrow, I presume?” She settled into the center seat of the bench and buckled the lap belt. A little more softly she added, “‘And that’s the way it is.’”
Seriously. The woman would have found a way to ruin journalism even if her sole responsibility was reporting on the Goofus and Gallant comic in Highlights magazine.
Sebastian cleared his throat and then backed out of his driveway and onto the county road toward Main Street. “‘And that’s the way it is’ was Walter Cronkite. Murrow’s sign-off was, ‘Good night, and good luck.’”
Orly had said it in unison with him, both of them adopting their best low, gravelly Murrow voice, which caused them to look at each other in surprise and chuckle.
Brynn sighed in the back seat, and Sebastian glanced in the mirror again. What was it going to be this time? Annoyance that they were wasting time when they should have been talking about her? Disgust that they had left her out of their little inside joke? Or that other reaction? The one he actually sort of liked, even if that meant he was a horrible person—because when she seemed sad, she seemed real.
“That’s right.” Her voice was quiet, but she wasn’t pouty. Surprising. “I should have known that. I loved the George Clooney movie. And before you say something about how of course I only know Edward R. Murrow because George Clooney made a movie about him . . . Well, I can’t really deny it. I was in college when that came out.” She stared out the window as she had so much already that morning, but this introspection took on a totally different temperament. It seemed every bit as real, but if there was any sadness there, Sebastian couldn’t spot it. “I was an art history major—not because I was particularly into art . . . or history. But it just seemed like a classy, respectable thing to get a degree in.”
She tilted her eyes upward at the mirror and offered Sebastian what he interpreted as a humble and self-aware smile. Again, surprising. “Then some friends and I went to see that movie. And yes, I was only interested because I had a crush on George Clooney, and if I’d had any idea it was such a ‘brainy movie,’ as my friend called it, I probably never would have gone. But that ‘brainy movie’ unlocked something in me. It made me care, I guess. Not about Murrow, necessarily. No offense to your dog.” She caught his eyes again and winked. “And not about McCarthyism, specifically. Although . . . yeah. But mostly just about the power of television. The power of words, I guess, and what the right words could do when combined with a little bit of courage.”
The space in the Bronco had completely transformed under her power. Sebastian was acutely aware of it at once, and boy oh boy, was it fascinating. It was sort of like elephant snot, or whatever that stuff kids liked to make explode in YouTube videos was called. You took simple ingredients—hydrogen peroxide and yeast or something. Ingredients you thought you knew and understood and that really didn’t have any surprises left in them. And then you added salt or canola oil. Something. (Who could keep up with all the viral science experiments these days?) And those dull household ingredients that you thought you understood did this crazy thing and invaded the space all around them. And sure, it made a mess. But you’d deal with the mess later. For the moment, all you could do was enjoy being surrounded by this totally new thing that didn’t resemble peroxide, yeast, or candle wax at all.
No . . . it wasn’t candle wax.
Sebastian turned onto Main Street and slowed down to a snail’s crawl. The illustrious quarter mile that was downtown Adelaide Springs was the most bustling few blocks for many miles around. Regardless of the weather, you could count on seeing citizens milling around on foot and dogs being walked. Depending on the temperature outside and Maxine Brogan’s relationship with reality on any given day, there was even a chance of seeing a bearded dragon named Prince Charlemagne on a leash. This day was no exception. It was too cold for Prince Charlemagne, but everything else about Main Street was living up to its reputation. And Sebastian fully expected the sight of people and places and the anticipation of the interactions to come to send the Brynn Cornell of the last couple minutes back into her fortress.
But apparently her household components weren’t done interacting with the magnesium citrate. (He was going to have to look up that third ingredient later or it was really going to nag at him.)
“I know that probably sounds really stupid.” She sat up straighter, and she was definitely taking in the view outside the window. But her voice remained calm. The subdued smile stayed in place. “Choosing a career path because of a movie, I mean.”
“For me it was All the President’s Men,” Sebastian said without thinking. He had never intended to broach the subject of his past career. Orly knew, of course, and Brynn probably did, somewhere deep down, at least. Even with all the humility and self-deprecation he felt most of the time, he knew that outside of small-town America and outside of his own brain, he had been a pretty famous guy. But still. The last thing he wanted to do—with anyone—was invite in prying eyes and inquiring minds.
He waved at Clint Boyd and waited for him to back his Lincoln out of the angled parking space so he could pull into it, and he tried to think of a way to surreptitiously change the subject. But Orly—intentionally or not—took that bullet for him.
“Rear Window.” Brynn and Sebastian both turned to look at him in confusion, and he shrugged. “It’s about a photographer.”
“It’s about a voyeur!” Laughter burst from Brynn, and Sebastian couldn’t help but chuckle with her.
“And a murderer,” Sebastian added. “Let’s not forget it’s about a murderer.”
“You’re both wrong!” Orly smiled, good-natured as always. “Well . . . maybe you’re not wrong. But it wasn’t really about a voyeur or a murderer to me. It was about a voyeur who used his camera to catch a murderer. And that sparked something in me. There is tremendous power to be found in the lens of a camera. It all just comes down to whether you use the power for good or evil.”
Sebastian put the Bronco into Park and then glanced again at the rearview mirror and was surprised to see Brynn smiling at him. He couldn’t quite decipher it, but he suspected that if he pulled his gaze away from hers and looked into the mirror at his own eyes, he’d find the same . . . what? What was it, exactly? Reverence, maybe? Awe and wonder at the medium they loved, and maybe even a little bit of unspoken, unexpected gratitude to be caught up in an uncommon moment in which everyone shared that reverence?
Maybe.
Or maybe her smile was the result of images of George Clooney still flitting through her head.
“Hey, Brynn?” Orly was leaning forward in his seat, turning his head to the left and then the right and then back again as he watched the citizens of Adelaide Springs mill about.
Brynn exhaled and diverted her eyes to Orly as she unbuckled her seat belt. “Yeah?”
“I appreciate that heads-up you gave me on the plane. You know, the one about how I’d probably be the only Catholic in town. City folk. All of that.” He expanded his view by turning around to face Brynn and, by extension, the sidewalk on the other side of Main Street. “But I think you neglected to mention this is a town made up entirely of white folks.”
A sheepish expression overtook her face, while Sebastian laughed and elbowed Orly. “Not entirely. Mostly,” he conceded. “But not entirely.”
Brynn leaned in and rested her elbows on each of the front seat backs. “It’s just that the town was founded by a bunch of white settlers in the 1800s, and no one else exactly flocked here in the years since the silver mining dried up.” She turned to Sebastian. “I mean, I guess. Any big influx I don’t know about in the last twenty years?”
Sebastian turned to her and was surprised to discover her face so close to him. He was even more surprised when she didn’t budge upon the discovery of their proximity to each other.
“Nope. I’m pretty sure I am the sum and substance of the twenty-first-century Adelaide Springs population boom.”
It was her scent that surprised him most. If he’d been asked to make a wager, he would have put his money on her smelling like some high-priced perfume with an enticingly distant and unreachable celebrity in its ads. The kind where Rachel Weisz or David Beckham or someone is the mysterious “It” girl or guy at a party and then disappears before sunrise. But she just smelled like lilacs. Freesia, maybe. Something soft and comfortable that dared to whisper the word spring over and over while the cold wind of winter blew all around it.
