“I do too. And I doubt you’d have had to ‘wait and see’ if they’d accept you.”

Jules just looked at her, stunned. It had never occurred to her to ask Vivian for any such thing. She managed to smile. “Well, I didn’t want to bother you either. You’ve got a lot going on.”

Vivian did not smile back. “Yes. Yes, it would have been a huge bother for me to contact Salon and tell them to give your work special consideration.”

“No,” Jules said quickly, “I didn’t want special consideration, Vivian. I just wanted her to look at my stuff. Just to give it a chance.” Because, yikes. Simon showing Casey Dukakis Jules’s work was one thing. Vivian telling Salon to promote it was something else entirely, and Jules didn’t want that. She wanted to do something on her own merits, not with Vivian’s help. That was the whole point.

“You didn’t want to bother me,” Vivian said.

“No.”

Vivian looked her dead in the eye. “It never even crossed your mind, did it?”

Jules furrowed her brow.

“It never even occurred to you to come to me.”

She opened her mouth to lie and deny it, then she wondered if she should. Then she realized she had no idea what on earth she should say, period. She was in the middle of a conversation from Bizarro World.

Vivian evidently took her silence as confirmation. “Why didn’t it occur to you?” she bit out. She looked more upset by the second. “Why did you go to Simon?”

Jules opened her mouth, closed it, then said, “I have no idea what’s going on here.”

“Neither do I. I can’t imagine what you were thinking. Or not thinking. Why in the world—” Vivian cut herself off and shook her head.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Jules said hesitantly.

“Tell me why you didn’t ask me,” Vivian barked.

Jules stepped back, startled.

“Tell me why you didn’t ask me for something you wanted that I could give you. That’s what I want you to say.”

Jules, who’d been on an emotional roller coaster all day, said numbly, “Because I don’t ask you for things.”

Vivian sucked in her breath between her teeth.

“Nobody does. Nobody who works for you would ask for a favor like this. Don’t you know that?”

“Are you serious?” Vivian smoothed down her hair in seeming agitation. “You’re not them. I know you do a lot for me. Did you think I hadn’t noticed? Do you think I’m totally ungrateful?”

Think of something, Jules ordered herself. Say something. But right now, right when she needed them the most, words failed her.

And that moment was all it took for Vivian to go a little bit red and say, “Oh. I see.”

“No,” Jules said, too quickly.