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It did the job, and he tilted his head. “I left a few business cards at the Moore’s.”

“I, uhh, grabbed one,” I admitted softly.

“Good,” he said back, just as softly. He released my wrist, though the sensitive skin felt warm from his touch. “Enjoy your meeting,Maddie.”

I gave a jerking nod before rushing to catch up with my editor.

“The key,” Joel launched in like I’d asked for the insight, “is to keep things short. You get your face in front of them so they recognize you, but you don’t stick around long enough to annoy them.”

Any chance you’ll follow that mindset with me?

I wasn’t stupid enough to ask it out loud. I would be relegated to covering nothing but campus construction and traffic route changes.

Joel didn’t seem to notice—or maybe he didn’t care—that I didn’t respond. He kept talking. “If you carry yourself like you have a place at their table, they’ll eventually set one for you. How do you know Easton Wells?”

He came to silly girls’ movie night, and I’ve thought about how hot he is a million times since.

And I’ve thought about his hand on my back a million and ten times.

His hand around my wrist will be my new obsession.

“Through a friend’s dad,” I said. “How do you?—”

“Good. That’ll come in handy.”

“Handy for…?” My question trailed off as we entered the newsroom, and he hightailed it to his desk. The smartboard behind it was already loaded to the planning chart only he could make sense of.

He turned to face the waiting students, and a shark’s smile spread across his face. His voice held the same gleeful mischief when he greeted, “Fresh blood.”

Thank God I packedtwoprotein bars.

There were no rules or regulations regarding who could contribute to the paper with an article, photo, or story idea. Unlike a lot of school papers, Coastal paid students per article. Not much, but enough to keep me in brunches and attract a lot of crap submissions from people out to make a quick buck. Joel said it was to keep things competitive and fresh.

But we all knew the truth.

Newspapers were a dying medium in colleges—probably the world, but I didn’t want to think about that.

I was in too deep. Eyeing the finish line, and with no backup plan to land safely on. I had no time for that existential crisis about my chosen career.

I would adapt, just like The Coastal Chronicle had. The entire process of producing the biweekly paper had drastically changed, even over the few years that I’d been there.

Nothing was printed. It was a waste of paper that ended up in garbage cans, strewn across the courtyard, or left where they had been stacked until someone took pity and tossed the whole load in the recycling. News stories were assembled online in a unique way that gave the feel of a paper, but with the ability to click and zoom on what interested the reader.

All ten or so of them.

It wasn’t just our team who struggled with engagement. The broadcast journalism majors lacked viewership like we lacked readership. I wasn’t even sure the student body was aware there was a nightly news broadcast. When we reported on the same stories, we linked their coverage in ours. It helped bolster the numbers all the way to a couple dozen.

Otherwise, students preferred to get their news in bite-sized chunks from videos that showed up while they scrolled cringe sketches and ads for dropshipped shit no one needed.

Joel pointed at an unfamiliar guy who leaned against the communal table near Abby, one of the layout designers. “You here for the paper, or did you just follow Abby in?”

“Both?” the guy said with a shrug and a flirty smile her way.

She wasn’t impressed.

“He has a good story idea.” She nudged him and lowered her voice. “This is the part of the pitch meeting where you pitch.”

“Oh, right.” The guy pushed his hair back. “The new trend in sports…”