Page 93 of On a Deadline

“If you play your cards right.”

They smiled, small and real, and Jamie let the warmth of it sit. With Tilly, the air had been tight for weeks. This felt like slack returning to a rope.

“You okay?” Tilly asked.

“I’m trying to be.”

They nodded once, a quiet pact, then pushed up. “Truck in ten.”

“On my way.”

Jamie printed her script and grabbed a mic flag. The afternoon unspooled in manageable pieces: a producer in her ear, a cheerful organizer corralling volunteers, a child painting a fence and half her arm. Tilly caught clean shots and handed her wipes between moves. Harper fed her a tease line that wasn’t cloying. The live hit timed out exactly, with no breathless scramble. When she tossed back to desk, the floor producer gave a thumbs-up and somebody in weather clapped.

It wasn’t flashy. It was competent. It felt like a good meal after a month of sugar.

Back at the station, she dropped the mic and filed her tag for digital. The hallway buzzed with the six o’clock energy, people weaving, phones pressed to ears, graphics being sweet-talked into rendering on time. She tucked her hair behind her ear, scratched the side of her neck where the IFB had sat, and checked her phone.

No new messages.

She thought about the last ones anyway.I’ll be there early.She didn’t rehearse tomorrow night. She didn’t let herself script answers to questions that might not come. She just pictured the bench, and the water, and Erin walking toward her with her hands in her pockets like she was bracing for wind.

“Hey.” Harper leaned on the cube wall. “Henry said your live looked good.”

“He told me to make it sing.”

“It hummed,” Harper said, mouth tipped up. “For day news, that’s basically opera.”

Jamie laughed, quick and surprised. “I’ll take humming.”

“You turning in or you staying for ten?”

“I’m off at eight.”

Harper studied her. “Go home, then.”

“I will.”

“And Jamie?” Harper’s voice softened. “Good job today.”

“Thanks.”

She powered down, slid her notebook into her bag, and stood for a second with her palms on the desk, feeling the solid weight of the wood under her hands. Earlier in the year, days like this had felt like failure, like she wasn’t swinging hard enough. Now they felt like something else. Choice. Balance. A door that didn’t have to be kicked to open.

On the way out she passed Henry’s office. He didn’t call her in. She didn’t avoid his eye. They weren’t at odds. They were just two people doing different math.

In the parking lot the heat had bled off the asphalt. She breathed in the smell of rain that hadn’t decided whether it was coming. The car unlocked with a small chirp. She slid behind the wheel and let the quiet sit around her.

The old version of her would have checked her email again, then her messages, then the socials to see who ran what and how many views it got. She would have called it diligence. She knew now it was hunger.

She put the phone facedown on the passenger seat and drove without the noise.

At a red light she caught her reflection in the rearview: hair a little wild from wind, makeup softening at the edges, a calm she didn’t trust yet but liked anyway. She thought about Erin’s voice at the park, tired and careful. About the word that had caught in both of them and refused to leave.

Yet.

Jamie didn’t text. She didn’t plan. She went home, fed herself, washed her hands until the newsprint smell let go, and set out her jacket for tomorrow. When she lay down, sleep didn’t slam into her like a door. It arrived. She let it.

Forty Seven