Capturing You

Chapter 5: A New Assignment

"Well, after what happened yesterday, I just had a feeling you needed a pick-me-up," he said, exhaling sharply through a small 'O' he'd made with his lips before his face disappeared behind his monitor.

My expression dipped a bit. "What do you mean?" Had Burrow told everyone about what my dad did? Suddenly, the matcha latte tasted bitter.

Spencer jutted his head out to knit his brows at me, looking confused. "I just mean you had to hang out with Burrow all day and you must have been bored," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "But now that I think about it, you should have brought me an iced coffee — the rest of us had to switch off between, like, two or three groups of players."

I was relieved that Burrow had seemed to keep my embarrassment a secret after all, at least from people who were in my circle. I supposed if he had told anyone in the locker room, I wouldn't care so much — it's not like the players could point me out in a room of the entire office — but I wouldn't have been as thrilled if me being single and my dad trying to set me up with NFL players was known by someone like Trish.

"I'm not that lucky," I said, sighing and beginning to sift through the photos. "I've gotta follow Burrow around for some little psycho guinea pig project that Elena assigned me."

"You're going to do what?"

Here's the reason why I didn't want Trish hearing the rumor about me being single and looking for an NFL boyfriend: She was obsessively in love with Burrow and had not looked at me the same after I took that shot of him arriving at the AFC Championship game. When we first met, she and I actually clicked — she and Spencer were good acquaintances, both studying journalism at our same school. Anyone who was friends with Spencer was good and right in my book. Trish studied social media marketing and going viral was supposed to be her thing; I hated that she thought I was stealing her thunder, because I definitely only wanted her to shine.

So the viral photo was the first strike in her eyes. Hearing about my new assignment following Burrow around? That would be the second strike. I cleared my throat and gave her a friendly smile. "Well, Elena wasn't satisfied with the pics I took of Burrow yesterday, so tomorrow she wants me to follow him around and see what he does when he's not at headquarters."

She glared at me and didn't bother hiding it. "Really? Don't you think that sounds more like something for Instagram stories?" Her responsibility.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"It sounds like it would be. Maybe we'll be working together tomorrow, then, and she just hasn't told you."

She seemed to take this as patronizing and scoffed, heading to her own desk and practically slamming her things down before taking a seat.
Spencer and I exchanged looks.

"Don't feel too bad," Spencer whispered to me. "You know she just really, really likes Joe."

I came to wonder if she knew anything about his personality or was one of those girls who just liked his looks, though I realized it didn't matter if I was just hurting her. She had every right to be territorial, for the more I thought about it, the more it made sense for this assignment to be on-the-scene coverage instead of uploading pictures of Burrow's day after the fact. There was nothing I could do, though; I had the feeling that if I opposed Elena one more time, she would actually fire me, and I needed at least a few more months here to pay off the majority of my student loans. Given that all three of us went to the same pricey school, Trish must have realized she wanted to keep her job, too. Feeling defeated, I laser-focused on my work to make time go by, making the mental note to apologize to Trish when the situation had diffused.