She narrowed her gaze at me with the same navy-blue eyes that I had. “You’re serious about this? You’re serious about her?”
“Yeah. For the first time in my life, I had the feeling. It sat somewhere in my chest and I couldn’t let it go.”
Her lips twitched. “Well, I see.”
“Good.” I stared at her. “You’re not going to fight me?”
She shook her head. “No, because I see that set of your jaw, that angle of your head. You’re so much like your father. He chose me too. You have the exact look he had on his face. I know there’s no budging you. So, I guess we’re keeping Tanith.”
“Yeah, only if she’ll have me, because I fucked up.”
She sighed and sat back down. “Well then, why don’t you prove you’re my son and do something amazing to fix it?”
“Oh, I plan to.”
Chapter 22
Tanith
The meeting was nearly over when Elizabeth closed her agenda folder and leveled her dark blue gaze at the rest of us in the room. I was sitting in the corner, taking notes on a laptop, and the senior editors were crowded around the table with Elizabeth, glossy photographs between them. They’d been discreetly answering emails and browsing restaurant menus for lunch while running through feature ideas for the August Gotham Girl issue, but now that Elizabeth was watching them, they all straightened up and became models of attention.
Elizabeth nodded at her executive assistant who brought up a scanned-in page from a vintage Gotham Girl issue. A scan I recognized because I’d just sent it to Elizabeth last week after informing her I’d chosen my publishing future over the right to call her asshole son my boyfriend. (Well, I’d said it more politely than that.)
She hadn’t responded to the proposal I’d sent along with the scan yet, but now here was the scan projected onto the meeting room wall, and then there was my proposal, neatly printed and bound into slim packets that were being handed out by her assistant.
My cheeks started warming like I was sitting in front of a fire, and I could feel the answering flush creeping up my neck.
“So, Tanith sent me a very interesting idea last week,” Elizabeth said, getting to her feet. “When I founded Gotham Girl in the nineties, one of our signature features was a section dedicated to essays written by our readers. We’d have one essay per issue, submitted with a matching photographic essay or original artwork made by the author. It was a way for young people to speak directly to other young people about the things that mattered most in their lives. We pulled the feature in the early aughts because I thought that blogging would erode the need for it. But as you can see in the proposal here, Tanith has made a compelling argument for why that’s no longer the case. Why a platform as expansive and respected as Gotham Girl’s should be available to young people—especially those who need their voices amplified most.”
Elizabeth gestured to her assistant without looking over at him, and he changed slides to a brand-new mockup of the “Speak” feature with lorem ipsum text and stock photos where the essayist’s pictures would go. “I’ve talked it over with our art director to make sure there’s a way to aesthetically and energetically match it to the contemporary iteration of Gotham Girl, and I think it will be a good fit. We’ve made it our mission in the last few years to move this magazine from more than fashion and pop culture to global issues and culture-culture—both criticism and commentary. Including the voices of young people writing on these themes will strengthen that vision immensely.” She turned and looked at me, her gaze cool but approving. “I’m grateful to Tanith for her insight on this, and for finding an angle to make the ‘Speak’ feature relevant again. It’s the kind of ideation and creative strategy that will earn you an editor’s seat one day, Miss Bradford.”
My whole face was absolutely on fire now, but in the best possible way.
I managed to squeak out a “thank you” and survive the rest of the meeting, which mostly centered around how to launch this revived feature and publicize the call for submissions. Since this was an online launch to start, we had some room to play with.
Elizabeth wanted to use the magazine’s annual Valentine’s Day party paired with a quickie online contest to generate buzz, with livestreamed snippets of teen contest winners reading poems and essays aloud.
Marketing really liked that idea, and all of us left the conference room with to-do lists as long as our arms.
As I stood to leave, Elizabeth called my name. “Miss Bradford—Tanith.”
I turned to look at her. Sometimes, like now, when she exuded that haughty, icy air, she reminded me so much of her son that it physically hurt me.
I dropped my eyes to the table between us. “Yes, ma’am?”
“I meant what I said, you know,” she told me. “In the meeting. This was a good idea, and it’s the kind of thinking that’s about making the publication stronger instead of simply gaining a byline. That’s rare in ambitious young people like yourself. Hell, it’s a problem I have with my own bloody senior editors sometimes. I’m impressed.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, feeling terrified and victorious and also slightly miserable because my heart was acutely aware of the price I’d paid to earn Elizabeth’s praise. Even though it
