Luckily, the King sees my face and I think he understands, because he lays a hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t you worry, lassie,” he says in his off-English accent that I find so irresistible in him. “Derrick will come around, I know it.”
“I hope…” I was going to say more but my heart is literally afraid of hope. I stop myself. My mother comes over to hug me and the King squeezes my shoulder and gives me a friendly smile.
“Listen to me, Alicia,” he says, his eyes twinkling. “No matter what you may or may not have done, you alone brought my son back from a darkness which I helped create by hiding the truth from him. For that at least, I thank you, and pledge to do everything I can to help you.”
Wow. These Blaine men have a way with words. But it makes me feel a bit better. I manage a smile and I give the King a hug, and then I hug and kiss my mother.
They wave as I leave and get into a cab and in ten minutes I’m standing outside my door in the Lower East Side.
I walk in and look around. Derrick had Sam fix everything and put everything back in order so I could Airbnb out the place, but even so, it has an air of sadness as I sit on the couch. I remember how just four months ago I walked through the living room to find Jake and Chrissy in bed together, naked. I barely think of Jake anymore. I’m too busy being Daphne as well as Alicia.
I sit on the couch and sigh. Tears come out all over again. For Derrick, I can’t stop crying. I had the perfect life. But it was built on a lie.
“Those aren’t tears for that asshole Jake, are they?” a voice penetrates me out of my darkness and I look up.
Oh my God! It’s Jenna!
She’s standing at the door and has a duffel bag on her shoulder. Apparently I forgot to close the door, but that’s a good thing!
“Jenna!” I shriek and bound off the couch. Jenna drops her duffel bag and runs towards me. I give her a hug and then pull away to look at her.
“Are you moving back in?” I ask, excited.
Jenna gives me a sheepish shrug. “Alicia, I’m so, so, sorry,” she tells me the first thing out of her mouth. “I wanted to come back and apologize to you, and pay you back the rent I should have paid, but I’ve been too scared at what you’re going to say or do…”
I don’t let Jenna finish. “You can move back in whenever you want!” I say. I’m not thinking about Jake at all. I’m thinking instead about the fun that Jenna and I used to have. How we used to go for jogs along the water, or out to brunch after a night out. I miss those days. They seem so much simpler.
“No, I need to tell you, I seriously fucked up, Alicia,” Jenna tells me, sitting me down. I remain silent. “I believed Jake when he told me you were purposely withholding sex from him and using him to get him to do things for you. That you were using sex as a weapon over him.”
I gasp. “I never even…” I’m about to continue when Jenna shushes me.
“I get that now. It took me a long time but when I heard how he attacked you, I was glad that he’d stopped calling me after you guys broke up. I’ve been wanting to apologize ever since for what I did,” she says.
I’m about to tell Jenna that I forgive her when she continues, as if she’s reciting something that she prepared. “But I knew I couldn’t just come back and say sorry,” she says. “I had to make a gesture to show you that I meant it.”
Now I’m silent.
She takes a deep breath.
“It took a lot of work, and literally getting my Dad to talk to everyone he knows from his business contacts, but I think I got it,” she says, and pulls out an envelope from her duffel bag.
“I submitted some of your recent work and got it shown to the right people. There’s an interview ready for you as a Senior Politics Reporter at The New York Sun, if you want it.”
Oh, my. I don't know what to say. I can’t even begin to fathom how Jenna was able to get the necessary contacts to get me this opportunity to work with the most prestigious newspaper in the country. Literally, the paper of record for the United States of America. I’m literally speechless.
“It was hard,” she says, as if hearing my thoughts. “It literally took four months of digging while I lived at home, but it was worth it,” she says.
I don’t know what to say, so I barely manage a “Thank you, Jenna.”
She nods. “I needed you to know how sorry I was,” she says to me, looking me in the eyes. “And I knew you were miserable writing gossip, so I put everything I had to make a grand gesture to show you.”
I reach over to hug her. I have so much to tell her.