“I can understand that. It’s not your job. Except wait!” She perks up. “It literally is your job!”

“Oh no. Not even close.” I shake my head. Setting up press conferences, curating emails and Instagram posts, drafting speeches and statements, and planning this event was enough. I know I’m not emotionally stable enough myself to take on a twentysomething rich boy, with what seems like some serious daddy issues. I’m still a disaster, but therapy at least taught me how to set basic boundaries. “I know you mean well, but I’ve been through a lot this year. I really can’t add someone else’s baggage to the mounds of my own issues.”

“That’s fair.” She bites her bottom lip and taps an embroidered tennis shoe–covered foot against the beige tile. And I think my little conundrum might’ve finally broken Brynn. I don’t know if I should be proud or apologetic.

“We can be cordial. I can stand near him and not say something rude.” Maybe. “But from now on, I’m just going to show up and try to hoard my paychecks before I get fired in January.”

“That’s it!” Brynn brightens and pushes off the door. Not the reaction I thought she’d have after I informed her of my impending unemployment status. “Have you told him that you have a stake in this too? That you could lose your job?”

I feel all of the wrinkles in my forehead when my eyebrows try to high-five each other. “Of course I haven’t.”

Is she insane? I know I haven’t been the most professional dealing with Quinton, but that’s a little too low even for me.

“Why not?”

I don’t know if she is messing with me or not, but I answer anyways.

“Because my job isn’t to trick him into submission.” I mean, it honestly might be. Something tells me there aren’t many lows Mr. Mahler won’t fall to. “It’s to give him another option to feel heard. I support the protest he’s making. If he wants to stop kneeling, it will have nothing to do with me. I won’t hang my burden on him. I won’t try to manipulate him with my problems.”

Not that he’d even care if I got fired. He basically taunted me with his ability to make that happen at his house.

She walks toward me and takes my hands in hers.

“It’s not manipulating him, Elliot.” Her voice is softer and so are her eyes. It’s a look I know well. One people gave me for weeks after my dad died. Until their lives moved on and I was still stuck in the cyclone of mourning. “I don’t know what you’re going through and neither does he. But maybe, if you opened up to him, he’d be understanding and you could both get along better.”