Page 37 of Finding Mr. July

Day of printer deadline

O n Friday morning, my wake-up alarm is not as shrill as it usually is, I don’t struggle getting into my fifteen-minute yoga poses, Jude’s leftover coffee tastes fresher, and the red lights I hit on the way in to work change quicker than normal.

There’s a brightness to the air in the lobby of the building that makes me think of summer despite October being almost halfway done already, and when the security guard mutters his curt “Morn’,” I surprise us both by responding with a bouncy, “It is a good morning, isn’t it? ”

The feeling is only magnified by the sight of my fellow interns with their heads bent over keyboards and phones. They’ll still be scrambling these next two weeks as their events aren’t scheduled until right before the fundraiser challenge ends, but me? I’m done with the heavy lifting.

“Drinks after work?” I ask Rachel as I shrug out of my jacket.

“You bet your sweet program liaison ass.” She raises a hand to high-five me, but I leave her hanging, too aware of eyes watching. Also, I haven’t won yet. Though I do admit that knowing the quality of the images we’ve produced, I feel one giant step closer.

“Shh,” I say. “You’re going to jinx it.”

“No such thing.” She grins.

I meet up with Jonathan in his office at lunch. We keep it professional since Jacques is at his desk, but when I pull up a chair, Jonathan gives my leg a soft squeeze before he opens his editing program. One final look-through, and then we’ll zip everything and send it off.

“Do you have the list of who goes with what month so we can double-check?” Jonathan asks.

“Naturally.” I open my phone and navigate to the document. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Okay. January is Dennis and Tank. First shoot, first month. Makes cosmic sense, I think. February is Jude and Morris because they’re hugging. Valentine’s Day and all that. March is Bear the Newfoundland in the woods, April the fishing Samoyed.”

“Aah-chstalker,” Jonathan pretends a sneeze, nudging me in the side with his elbow.

“Haha. May,” I continue, “is old George and his Aussie, June the golden retriever in the beachy golden sunset, July our bonus Dalmatian in the woods, and August Xander and Milton in full action, running.”

“That’s one of my favorites,” Jonathan says. “I never did much motion photography in the past, so it was a fun challenge.”

“Then I put Nick and Bo down for September, and Aroon and Cricket for October. I’m glad we got at least a few pictures where he’s not licking Aroon. Thanks for sticking with it.”

“So that leaves Theo and the beagle puppies for November, since Marcus and Naveem’s Santa shoot is December.” Jonathan clicks open the final image of the twelve. “That’s it. They’re all in order. Are you happy with it still? If not, now’s the time to move them around.”

I give it a moment’s consideration, but I’ve sweated over this enough already. Everyone is where they should be. “Nope, I’m good. Everything looks great.”

“I’m heading out for a sandwich,” Jacques announces. “Anyone want anything?”

We tell him we don’t, and then we’re alone. I get up and look out the windows facing the hallway. There’s no one around. “Come here,” I tell Jonathan, beckoning him to me in the corner behind the door. If someone walked past, they would only see us if they leaned close to the glass.

He’s quick to obey, and soon he has me against the wall next to the printer, one of my legs hitched up to his waist. After all we’ve accomplished together so far, I need to kiss him like a marathon runner needs water at the finish line.

I’m not trying to make anything more than a kiss happen, though, no matter how tantalizing the thought.

He pulls away first, breathing heavily. His eyes are wild, which is a tremendous improvement to the half-vacant look he used to present while walking these halls. “Damn it, Holly, you can’t get me hard at work.”

I give him a cheeky smile and do a little roll with my hips against him. “I beg to differ. It’s not difficult at all.”

He grabs my ass to make me stop. “Someone could walk in.”

I pout, though I know he’s right. An office tryst would definitely ruin my appearance as a consummate professional. “Fine, I’ll stand down. Let you compose yourself.”

“How kind of you,” he says drily, but his eyes glitter.

I return to his desk and open the manila envelope with our signed release forms. “Okay, well, since a quickie is out of the question, let’s get these scanned and be done with it.

” I hand the stack to Jonathan, who stays conspicuously out of reach from me as if he’s worried I might wrestle him to the floor.

He heads to the printer and flips through the stack before placing it in the feeding tray. Then he pauses and picks it up again. Flips through it one more time. “Um, Holly?”

I’m busy imagining various scenarios for how such a wrestling match might pan out, but his tone snaps me out of it. “Yeah?”

“There are only eleven forms here.”

“What?” I get off the chair and join him.

Count the pages. “That can’t be right. I know we got forms signed at every photo shoot.

” I dig through my bag, though it’s unlikely one could have slipped out of the envelope on my way here.

Each time we’ve gotten a new signed form, I’ve added it to the envelope, and it’s the kind that closes with tiny metal wings. “Maybe I left one at my desk?”

“You want to go check?”

Icy tendrils are slowly spreading through my rib cage. There’d be no reason for it to be at my desk. “Yeah, give me a minute.”

I run down the hallway, past the elevators, and to my workspace that’s as pristine as it was when I left it some forty minutes ago. No stray papers in sight.

“What’s going on?” Rachel asks as I pull out drawers and get down on the floor to see if the form might have joined the dust bunny party.

I don’t feel like explaining the situation until I’ve found the form. Then it’ll be a funny anecdote and not this leaning tower of dread that might tip if I name it. “I… um… think I lost an earring,” I say. “Nope, not here.”

“Have you checked Jonathan’s pockets?” Rachel grins at her clever joke, which I’m sure I’d appreciate more were my brain not scrambling for where to look next. Unfortunately, I know I haven’t taken any of the forms out of the envelope once they were put there.

“Gotta go,” I tell her. “I’ll talk to you later.” I rush off before she can respond.

“Anything?” Jonathan asks when I return, optimism tingeing his words.

I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Whose form are we missing?”

“Let’s see.” Jonathan sits down and starts going through the list, placing the corresponding form to the side when he finds it.

“Dennis, Jude, Garrett, Samuel, George, Oliver…” When he gets to our Mr. July—Pete with the Dalmatian—he stops and thumbs through the papers again.

“He’s the one,” he announces. “There’s no form for him. ”

We both fall silent as if simultaneously being transported back to the woods that day when Pete and Nala walked in on our shoot with Garrett and Bear and volunteered to join the calendar on a whim.

“You did ask him to sign a form, didn’t you?” I ask.

“Of course,” Jonathan says right away. But then his brow creases. “At least I think so.”

My stomach drops. “You think?”

Jonathan’s gaze flashes to mine. “You handled most of the signatures.”

I cross my arms. “You were the one interacting with him the most that day.”

“But you got Garrett’s signature, so you had the envelope. And I was doing the shoot.”

“With Pete!”

We stare at each other as the situation sinks in. We only have until four o’clock to submit to the printer, and they won’t print anything for commercial use without proof that we have the rights to the images. Arguing won’t change that.

“Okay, well… I’ll call Garrett,” I say. “They seemed chummy, right? Maybe they’ve kept in touch.”

“Worth a try.” Jonathan’s voice is clipped, and he’s no longer looking at me. Instead, he’s shoving the forms back into the envelope.

“What are you doing? Those still need to be scanned.”

He eyes me warily. “Sure you trust me to do it?”

I huff. “What’s that supposed to mean? Of course I do, and you know it.”

That seems to knock the fight out of him, and his shoulders slump. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight.”

Despite my irritation, I force myself to match his softer tone. “Yeah, me neither. Please, will you scan them? I’ll go call Garrett in the meantime. Hopefully, this is a blip.”

“Okay.”

But Garrett is a dead end.

“No, sorry,” he says. “We had a good chat that day, but he was heading back to Ireland, so what good would keeping in touch have been, you know?”

I thank him and return to Jonathan, my chest threatening to cave in. He doesn’t even have to ask me how it went.

“So we have no way of reaching him,” he says, stating the obvious. “Then I say we use the photo anyway. Chances are he will never see the calendar, and we don’t have time to find another model. It’s him, or we don’t have a product.”

Every boring tidbit about contract law my brain has stored away finds that moment to rise to the surface.

I’m sure he’s right—Pete won’t know. But I will know.

I’ll know we’d have to lie to the printer, and I’ll know I’d be opening myself up to a lawsuit should Pete be more tapped into the environmental nonprofit calendar scene than I think.

It would be a risk, and that is not me. I simply can’t do it.

I look at the clock on the wall and sink into Jacques’s chair.

It’s almost two. Jonathan is right—there’s no time to find another model—and yet my mind keeps working the problem as if there’s a solution.

There has to be. I stare, unseeingly at first, at Jonathan’s framed photos on the wall—the captivating black-and-white ones I didn’t know were his the first time I was here.

Gradually, they come into focus. He’s stuck a recent snap of Sir Leonard to the frame of one of them. Already a dear family member.

That’s when it hits me.

“Jonathan!” I call.

He looks up from his computer, where it appears he’s currently searching social media for our elusive model. “What?”

“You could do it. You’re hot as hell, and you have a dog now. You can be in the calendar.”

A silent beat turns into two and three as Jonathan blinks at me. But when he finally opens his mouth, his response is not what I want to hear. “No,” he says. “No way.”

My jaw slackens. “No? Why not?”

“You may have talked me into getting back to photography again for this project, but I draw the line at stepping in front of the camera.”

“Because? And you’d better not be bringing back the whole pinup narrative.” I cross my arms.

The muscle in his jaw ticks, and he looks away. “Sorry. But no. There were enough photos of me circulating after the airplane incident. You’ll have to find someone else.”

I throw my hands out wide as a scoff deflates my lungs. “How? We are literally out of time. It would save the project.”

Finally, he looks at me again. “Call the printer. Maybe they’ll give you an extension over the weekend. Buy you some time.”

It doesn’t pass me by that he’s no longer saying “we,” but since I can’t think of a better solution, I grab my phone and dial.

All the while, the only thought spinning in my head is that for the second time in my life I’ve gotten close to a colleague who I thought would have my back, and for the second time, I’ve been wrong. Fool me twice and all that.

But maybe I’m not being fair. Modeling isn’t for everyone, and I have deliberately staked no claim on what Jonathan does or doesn’t do. I’m the only one with everything riding on this project.

But you hoped he’d come through for you , a voice nags in my head.

I did. And I should have known better than to rely on something as flimsy as hope.