Running For It by Allyson Lindt
Six
Iwoke up to a string of alerts on my phone, all with the shelter’s name, as well as messages from another of the shelter volunteers. There are cameras outside. A news van. What do I do?
What?
I clicked through to the first alert. Local news, running a story about the shelter. About it shutting down. About all of these kids becoming homeless for a second time.
Every story was a flavor of the same.
This wasn’t what I had in mind when I asked Ramsey for help.
I replied to the text. Remind them the kids can’t be on camera. The last thing we needed was to get in trouble for exploiting minors. Otherwise be polite. I’ll let you know as soon as I have answers.
I dialed Ramsey next. I was going to be cool, icy even, while I got to the bottom of why he thought this was the way to go.
“Taffy.” He was chipper when he answered.
“What the fuck did you do?”
“Good morning, Ramsey,” he said in a falsetto supposed to be me. “How did you sleep? Goddess, that one night we had together reminded me how much I love your cock.”
I growled. The teasing used to be fun, but not now. “I have you on speaker. The cameraman wants to know if you’re really that well hung.” My words came out with more of an edge than Ramsey’s had.
“Hmm. Be honest with him.”
Fucker wasn’t supposed to call my bluff. “You don’t want that,” I said.
“I’m not any more insecure about my dick size than you are likely to be talking to the press while you bitch me out.”
I clenched my teeth. “You knew it would piss me off, and yet you called them anyway. What happened to talking in the morning? Making a plan together?” I pulled on clothes. Thankfully, I’d showered last night, to get rid of the swamp-water smell that permeated me.
“We’re talking. I assume we’ll be planning soon. I didn’t ask you, because you would have said no.”
I put him on speaker and set the phone on my bathroom counter, so I could yank a brush through my hair. “If you knew I wasn’t going to like it, you shouldn’t have done it.”
He tsked. “You and I both know putting something in the public eye, exposing it, is what gets it attention. If you didn’t think that, you wouldn’t hold the fundraisers.”
“So you couldn’t have said this to me when we spoke last night, before you arranged it? I’m not unreasonable.” I didn’t have time for much makeup. A touch of lip gloss, a feather of mascara, and I was good.
“Time was critical, and I had to make a decision or miss the opportunity.”
“Which was it, Ramsey?” I made my way to the kitchen. We had coffee at Lyn’s place, and it was free, but I needed a kick to get me there. “You didn’t have time to ask me, or you figured it easier to ask forgiveness than permission?”
“A little of both. Hang on. Tell them I’ll be there in fifteen. Yeah, it’s her.” His last two statements were distant, as if he’d pulled the phone from his ear. “Sorry about that. Hunter says hi.”
Suspicion snaked through me, and I set the empty coffee pot on the counter. “Fifteen minutes to what? Where are you?”
“The shelter. Someone needs to be available to talk to the Local 13 Morning Crew about what’s going down. Get here in the next ten minutes, and they’ll speak with you instead.”
“Fucker.” I cut myself off, hanging up on him.
Irritation pulsed in my skull, as I abandoned the idea of coffee, grabbed my purse, and walked out the door. Ramsey had a point that people pulled together for an in-their-face cause, but he’d backed me into a corner. He knew I hated this kind of shit—preening for the camera, pretending to be someone I wasn’t—and he’d manipulated me into it regardless.
Fury and frustration poured through me, as I drove to the shelter. I told my phone to send Lyn an apologetic text, saying I was going to be late, I was super sorry, and I’d explain when I got in.
Hopefully, voice recognition sent the right note. With my luck the last few days, it told her I was running away to Aruba, and to fuck off.
True, that didn’t sound anything like what I’d said, but who knew?
When I got to the shelter, it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, though it still wasn’t great. A single news van sat out front, and none of the kids were around. The parking lot was full, though, so I had to park across the street. The neighbors must be hating this, and they didn’t need another reason to complain about us.
“Violet.” Hunter’s call drew my attention. He was on the other street-facing side of the main building, waving me over.
The cameraman, reporter, and Ramsey weren’t too far from him.
“There she is.” The reporter was a large Hawaiian man who called himself Kool Kahuna for the cameras. He and Ramsey approached me, wearing twin grins, while the camera stayed behind. “Pleasure to meet you.” Kahuna shook my hand vigorously.
“Same. I’m a huge fan.” It was true. I’d learned to hide star struck when I was dating Ramsey. The after-parties he got us into at Sundance helped a lot with that. But Kahuna was a friendly, cheerful presence on TV, and rumor was he was just as kind in real life.
“We only have a few minutes until we’re live again, so if you want to join us, we need to make this quick,” Kahuna said. “You ever do live TV before?”
I shook my head. “But I’m not bad at beating stage fright.”
He nudged Ramsey. “You spend any time with this guy, and that’s a given. Am I right? So this is a little different, since it’s live. There are no retakes. No do-overs. But it doesn’t matter. We’ll have fun with any flubs, and I make them all the time. You stall for any reason, nudge my foot, and I’ll step in. Ramsey asked me not to mention that this was a GLBT shelter, so we’re only calling it a youth shelter. I’m going to ask you basic questions about what you do here. Keep names out of it. Any questions?”
“I don’t think so.” I was still processing the current information, and my missed coffee that was so far away. I was grateful they were keeping the full nature of the shelter out of things, not because I was embarrassed, but because the last thing these kids needed was some new hate group showing up on their lawn, protesting their existence.
“Great. Producer says we’re on in sixty. Love the look by the way. Down to earth is perfect. Lighting’s best on this side of the house. Let’s go.” He jerked his thumb back toward the camera.
Ramsey stepped up beside me as we walked and dipped his head near my ear. “You look amazing, by the way, and I’m glad you made it.”
I was still pissed at him, and he hadn’t earned the privilege of a response.
The next two hours passed in a blur. Kahuna made it easy to forget the camera was there, and I didn’t have to fake any of my answers. All of his questions were focused around getting me to talk about what a great place this shelter was—what a good opportunity it was for the youth.
We had about fifteen minutes between each shoot, and we used it to relocate to different parts of the shelter and make sure we were cleared for filming. At the end of each segment, Kahuna would give the same spiel about the shelter being threatened and looking at relocating, and provide a website address where people could donate if they wanted to help.
A little voice in the back of my mind pointed out Ramsey never once mentioned his campaign. He was there as support and another person to bounce conversation off. It was true Kahuna introduced us both by name each time, but he gave no other context.
When it was all over, I was exhausted, but in a good way. I thanked Kahuna and his staff profusely as they packed up, and then the shelter was quiet.
I still had to deal with Ramsey. Maybe I could just go to work and pretend he wasn’t here.
He stepped in front of me, charming-as-fuck smile in place. “Before you yell at me—”
“I’m too worn out to yell,” I said. “You already know what I’m going to say.”
“Okay, then before you walk out, there’s a Part Two to this plan.”
We were going to do this after all. “The plan you promised we’d make together? The one you dumped on me out of nowhere anyway? This could have gone so much worse.”
“But it didn’t.”
I clenched my jaw and stared at him. What was I supposed to say that I hadn’t delved into a dozen times with him before?
“I’m sorry.” Ramsey’s expression softened, and so did his tone. “The producer is a friend. He called me early this morning, said their scheduled show cancelled, and asked if I wanted to do an around-the-town kind of piece for my campaign. I immediately thought of you and the kind of positive exposure this would be for the shelter. I had to give him an answer right away.”
It was a reasonable explanation, except— “And then you manipulated me to get me down here.”
“I couldn’t have you shut this down. Wouldn’t you have?”
Probably. And it would have been a mistake. “This wasn’t the right way to get this done. You should have given me the chance to decide for myself. Did you see I went along with things when it came down to it? Even without you pulling my strings?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” I spat. “Don’t apologize if you don’t mean it.”
