The email arrived at 8:12 a.m., right as the subway lurched out of the dark and into the gray light over the East River.
Olivia’s phone vibrated in her hand, a staccato buzz against the chipped black polish on her thumb. She’d been rereading yesterday’s expense report denial—*No, we will not reimburse a Lyft to Queens just because “the 7 train smells like a crime scene.”*—and contemplating whether coffee was worth overdrafting her account again.
Subject line: **FEATURE ASSIGNMENT: MORRISON**
Her stomach dropped so fast she actually reached for the metal pole with her free hand, fingers slipping on someone else’s old sweat.
*No. Not possible. There are a million Morrisons in this city.*
The F train swayed. A man in a neon construction jacket cursed in Spanish as he bumped her shoulder, then glanced at her face.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she lied, voice tight. “Subway nausea.”
He nodded in that New York way that said *same* and *don’t talk to me* all at once, then shoved his AirPods back in.
The phone buzzed again in her hand as another email came through. But she couldn’t look at anything else yet. Not until she opened the first one.
She tapped with her thumb, already feeling that old familiar burn crawl up the back of her neck.
> From: Laura Chen > Subject: FEATURE ASSIGNMENT: MORRISON > > Liv— > > You’ve been begging for something bigger than neighborhood profiles and “10 Best Margaritas Under $10.” Here it is. > > We just got the go-ahead for an exclusive long-form with *him*—Jake Morrison. Yes, *that* Jake Morrison. One-on-one profile at his HQ in Brooklyn, follow-up sit-downs as needed, plus access to some of his team. We’ll build a three-part digital feature around it, maybe pitch a print version if it lands. > > You have the range for this. You also have… history. I’m aware. > > I’m assigning it to you anyway. > > His PR sent over a preliminary conditions list and a proposed timeline. See attached. First interview slot: next Thursday at 2 p.m. > > Come into my office when you get in. And before you start with *“Laura, absolutely not”*—remember that this could be the piece that gets you out of lifestyle purgatory. > > —L
For a second she thought she might actually throw up right there between East Broadway and York Street. The fluorescent lights above her flickered, turning everyone’s skin that unhealthy subway yellow.
Jake.
His name felt like touching a bruise she’d forgotten was there.
Ten years. Ten years of carefully not Googling him. Ten years of skipping past financial headlines when his name started popping up in bold, avoiding friends’ texts of *“Isn’t this your Jake?”* with a flippant, *“Old news.”*
Except it wasn’t. Not really.
The train screeched into York Street and people surged toward the doors. Olivia let herself get carried, phone clenched tight in her palm. Her bag dug into her shoulder, worn strap biting skin through the fabric of her denim jacket.
On the damp concrete platform, service alerts echoed overhead, a disembodied voice announcing weekend track work nobody would remember until they found every station exit inexplicably closed.
She climbed the stairs two at a time, lungs pulling in that particular mix of exhaust, stale water, and street cart onions that meant downtown Brooklyn.
Morrison.
Tech billionaire. Founder of TerraNova, the urban infrastructure platform every city planner, mayor, and venture capitalist had been drooling over for the last five years. Boy-wonder dropout turned savior of municipal data systems.
*And once, a skinny guy with bad thrift-store sneakers and ink-stained fingers who’d fallen asleep with his head in her lap after pulling an all-nighter on a half-finished app no one believed in but him.*
The wind cut through her jacket when she reached street level. November in New York didn’t bother with fall; it went straight from sticky to sharp. She tucked her chin into her scarf and started toward the block where *Metro*’s offices crowded among three WeWorks and a yoga studio that smelled faintly of incense and Lysol.
Her phone buzzed again in her hand.
> From: Laura Chen > Subject: RE: FEATURE ASSIGNMENT: MORRISON > Attachment: Morrison_PR_conditions.pdf
Olivia stopped under the awning of a deli, fingers numb, and opened the attachment.
It was PR boilerplate: no questions about his family, no photos in private residences without approval, embargoes on financial numbers until after TerraNova’s upcoming product launch. Five pages of “no personal gossip” and “this is about the company.”
She scrolled, jaw tightening.
Section 4. Personal History.
> “Mr. Morrison will not comment on: > (a) family relationships, including but not limited to parents, siblings, cousins; > (b) former romantic partners, including but not limited to any relationship predating TerraNova’s founding; > (c) any private matters not directly related to his philanthropic work or corporate leadership.”
Olivia stared so long her screen darkened. Her thumb moved to wake it, more out of reflex than anything.
*You have… history. I’m aware.*
Jesus, Laura.
A bus whooshed past, spraying her boots with shallow gutter water, shocking cold seeping into the leather. It snapped her out of it.
She had twenty minutes to make it to the morning meeting. It wasn’t like she could avoid Laura’s office forever.
She shoved the phone into her pocket and headed for the revolving doors.
***
“Martinez. You look like you swallowed a lemon.”
Laura didn’t bother looking up as Olivia slipped into the conference room. Monday’s editorial meeting was in full swing, the long glass table scattered with laptops and half-drunk coffees. A projector threw web traffic numbers onto the far wall.
“I just rode the F train,” Olivia said, sliding into a seat near the end. “So, you’re not wrong.”
A couple of the junior writers snorted. On the far side, Raj pointed at the wall, where their latest “How to Tell if Your Landlord Is Illegally AirBnB-ing Your Apartment” explainer was spiking bizarrely high in Queens.
“For real, Queens is mad about this one,” he said.
“Good,” Laura said briskly, her dark hair scraped into a bun that somehow never developed a single stray hair. “They should be. Okay, traffic’s fine for now. We’ll dig into the numbers later.”
She clicked to the next slide. *Q4 Features: Tentpole Pieces.*
Jake’s face stared down at them from the wall.
Olivia’s lungs forgot how to work for a second.
The photo wasn’t new—she’d seen it on the side of bus stops all last year when TerraNova had run that ad campaign about “Building Cities that Work.” He was on a rooftop somewhere, skyline blurred behind him. No tie, just a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, top two buttons undone like he’d been captured mid-laugh at a rooftop party he didn’t actually have time for.
His hair was shorter than she remembered. Less shaggy, more deliberate. There was stubble along his jaw now, and his cheekbones seemed sharper, like he’d lost the last of the boyish roundness. But the eyes… yeah. Same dark brown. Same focused intensity, even in a staged PR shot.
She knew those eyes like she knew the backs of her own ink-smudged hands.
“Metro has an exclusive,” Laura said, clicking her remote like she was dropping a bomb and not casually detonating Olivia’s entire nervous system. “No other local outlets get one-on-ones with Morrison before TerraNova’s December launch event. National dailies will get a group roundtable with him in three weeks, but we go first, and we go deep.”
Raj let out a low whistle. “Damn. That’s… big.”
“Our overlords up on the twelfth floor agree,” Laura said dryly. “Somebody upstairs sacrificed a goat to the right VC firm, I don’t know. Point is: this is ours to lose.”
Olivia pressed her nails into the underside of the glass table, grounding herself with pain. *Breathe. You can do this. It’s just a job.*
“This is going to be our tentpole,” Laura continued. “A three-part series: a big personal profile, a second piece on TerraNova’s impact in New York and other cities, and a third on the politics of private companies owning public infrastructure data. Plus sidebars, interactives, video clips. We milk this for everything it’s worth.”
“And clickbait,” someone murmured.
“High-quality, well-researched, occasionally shameless engagement-driving work,” Laura corrected. “This is the future of the city, and the guy steering it. This is not *The Cut* asking him his morning skincare routine.”
Soft chuckles rippled around the room.
Laura finally looked at Olivia, eyes sharp. “As you saw in your email, I’ve assigned the feature to Liv.”
Every head turned.
Olivia sat straighter. “I—yeah. I saw.”
“You’re our best profile writer when you’re not wasting your talent describing tacos,” Laura said. “You pull emotion out of people who don’t think they have any. You’re thorough. You don’t let flacks push you around.”
There was that little pause. That *also* in the air.
“And you and Morrison…” Raj started, then cut himself off, eyes flicking to Laura. “I mean, aren’t you—”
“From the same neighborhood,” Olivia said smoothly, slicing the words clean before anyone else could. Her cheeks burned hot. “We overlapped. South Side, back home. Everyone overlaps.”
That wasn’t… exactly a lie.
Laura’s lips pressed together for a second. “Local roots are a plus. So is the fact that you’re not going to be starstruck.”
Olivia heard what she didn’t say: *You’re also probably not going to sleep with him just to get a quote, which is more than I can say about half the stringers who already asked.*
“How much access are we talking?” asked Mia, one of the newer hires. Her winged eyeliner was lethal. “Are we getting like… the billionaire bachelor angle? ‘New York’s Hottest Tech CEO’?”
“Any of you put ‘hot’ in a headline, I’ll set your desks on fire,” Laura said. “We’re not doing fluff. We’re also not doing a hit piece. We’re asking real questions.”
About housing. About data privacy. About public money in private hands.
And, if it were any other billionaire, about who he was before his first series A and what made him tick. About the years when no one gave a damn about him.
About the girl he’d been stupid enough to love at twenty.
The girl who’d walked away from him.
Olivia dragged her focus back.
“What are the boundaries from PR?” she asked. Her voice came out steady, which felt like a small miracle.
“No family, no finance specifics pre-embargo, no current romantic entanglements.” Laura’s smile was thin. “We can still ask about all three. We just won’t get answers.”
“What’s our angle, then?” Raj asked. “Visionary? Tyrant? Genius weirdo in hoodies?”
Olivia stared up at Jake’s photo.
“Kid from nowhere who owns the city,” she said before she could stop herself. “How he thinks he can fix what broke him. Whether he’s actually fixing anything or just putting nicer wallpaper over the same cracked walls.”
The room went quiet.
Laura’s gaze lingered on her, unreadable for a beat.
“Good start,” she said softly. Then, louder, to the room: “Okay, pitches for sidebars. I want three ideas from each of you by tomorrow, related to cities, tech, or infrastructure, that can spin off Morrison-world—but *not* be about him. Liv, stay after the meeting.”
Olivia exhaled slowly.
Feet shifted under the table. Keys clacked. Ideas flew.
She didn’t hear any of them.
She just stared at the blown-up version of Jake’s face on the wall and tried not to remember the last words she’d said to him, ten years ago.
*I can’t do this with you anymore.*
***
“That border seems… personal,” Olivia said, handing the printed PR conditions back across Laura’s cluttered desk.
Laura leaned back in her chair, crunching on some kind of trail mix that looked offensively healthy.
“Section four? Welcome to billionaires. They think they can curate their lives like Instagram feeds.”
“He doesn’t want any questions about his past relationships,” Olivia said. “Including any that came before TerraNova.”
“Mhm.” Laura popped another almond into her mouth.
“He sent this before you assigned me.”
“Yes.”
“So he doesn’t know it’s me.”
“Also yes.”
That burned for a reason she couldn’t quite name. Stupid, considering she’d spent a decade hoping he’d forgotten she existed.
“You’re sure you want me on this?” she pressed. “You have other senior writers who—”
“Who don’t know his hometown, who never took a city bus, and who still think ‘the outer boroughs’ is a euphemism for Queens and a place you go for art parties,” Laura cut in. “You can talk to the people who knew him before he was *Jake Morrison, Tech Messiah.* That matters.”
Olivia swallowed. “He’s not going to like that.”
“Probably not.” Laura shrugged. “But you’re not his ghostwriter. You’re a reporter. Your job is not to make him comfortable. And before you ask—yes, if this is too personal, we can talk about reassigning. But I’m not going to sugarcoat it. This is the biggest feature we’ve had all year. It will get eyes. It will get you noticed. You’ve been asking for that.”
Olivia stared down at her hands. Ink stains on the side of her right index finger, from the cheap ballpoint pens she preferred over the company-branded gel ones. Dry skin on her knuckles from the cold already.
“Let me be clear,” Laura added, softer. “I’m not throwing you into some emotional trauma for page views. If you tell me you *cannot* do this, I will pull you. But if it’s just going to be… uncomfortable?” She tilted her head. “Welcome to journalism.”
Uncomfortable. Like trying to pretend her chest didn’t tighten every time a TerraNova scooter almost knocked her off a Brooklyn sidewalk. Like watching him cross some conference stage on TV in a suit that fit like it had been sewn *onto* him and thinking, *I knew you in ripped jeans and a hoodie with someone else’s fraternity logo on it.*
“I can do it,” Olivia said. The words felt like a dare to herself. “I’ll do it.”
Laura nodded once, decisive. “Good. Prep hard. You get one hour with him next Thursday, and they’ll be clocking every second. I want a research memo on my desk by Monday. Talk to his teachers, his old bosses, anyone who knew him pre-money.”
“I know where to start,” Olivia said before she could stop herself.
“South Side?”
“Yeah.”
Laura studied her. “You going to be okay going back?”
*You never really left,* a small voice in her head said. Her mom’s voice. The cracked front steps, the bodega where Mrs. Rios still insisted on calling her *mija* when she popped in twice a year at most.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s a train ride.”
“Take Friday,” Laura said. “Go home for the weekend. Put it on your expense report. I’ll actually approve this one.”
Olivia almost laughed. “Wow. Must be serious.”
“Try not to start any fights with childhood friends turned billionaires before the formal interview,” Laura added dryly. “At least give me something I can print.”
*Childhood friends.* That was generous.
“I’ll bring you back real tacos,” Olivia said, pushing to her feet. “Not whatever abomination that place next door sells.”
“Now that is the first actually compelling thing you’ve said this morning,” Laura muttered, already turning back to her screen.
Out in the hallway, Olivia leaned her forehead briefly against the cool white wall.
She pictured Jake’s face on that projector screen again.
The way he’d looked the night she’d left him—not in some glass tower in Brooklyn, but on a cracked sidewalk under a flickering lamppost, rain soaking his T-shirt, his stupid thrift store sneakers already falling apart.
*Don’t do this.*
*I have to.*
*Liv—*
She pushed off the wall, grabbed her bag, and went to her desk.
If she was going back, she needed to remember South Side from more than just the worst night of her life.
She needed facts, not nostalgia.
She opened a fresh longform doc, centered the cursor at the top, and typed:
**Morrison, Jacob Luis – Background Research**
Her fingers hovered over the keys.
Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she opened a new tab and typed his name into the search bar.
The results exploded across the screen.
*Tech billionaire Jake Morrison pledges $200 million for urban housing data initiative.*
*TerraNova: The Startup That’s Quietly Reprogramming Your City.*
*From Dropout to Disruptor: Morrison’s Meteoric Rise.*
She clicked the third, because of course she did.
Halfway down the piece, buried beneath photos of clean white offices and colorful data dashboards, there was a pull quote.
> “I never felt like the world was built for people like me,” Morrison says. “So I decided to build something else.”
Olivia snorted softly.
*You always did, didn’t you?*
***
The world outside the office windows had gone navy when she finally shut her laptop, eyes burning from hours of staring at Jake’s digital life. Her notebook was a mess of scribbles: app timelines, early failed projects, seed funding. Names she dimly recognized—guys who’d circled their cafeteria table in high school, the ones who’d gone to tech school or moved to Chicago.
Her stomach growled. She’d skipped lunch, then forgotten to eat the emergency protein bar at the bottom of her bag. Now all she had to look forward to was whatever she could throw together from the nearly expired contents of her fridge.
She shoved notebooks, laptop, and pens back into her tote and pulled on her jacket. The office had thinned out, the buzz of conversation replaced by the muted hum of cleaning staff’s vacuums on another floor.
In the lobby, as she waited for the elevator, her phone buzzed.
*Ma*.
She hesitated, watching the elevator numbers blink down from nine.
*Answer it.*
“Hey,” she said, tucking the phone between her cheek and shoulder as she stepped into the empty elevator. “You still up?”
“It’s not even seven,” her mother said in rapid-fire Spanish. “What kind of hours are you working, mija?”
“The kind that someday will get me famous enough to buy you a house,” Olivia said automatically, pressing the button for the ground floor. The doors slid shut.
Her mother snorted. “You already promised that in high school. I’m not holding my breath.”
Olivia smiled despite the knot in her chest. “I’m going to come visit this weekend,” she said. “If that’s okay.”
A beat of silence.
“What happened?” her mother asked.
“Nothing happened. I can’t visit my own mother without a crisis?”
“Last time you came, the landlord was trying to raise the rent and you wanted to ‘interview’ him,” she said, the word dripping with skepticism. “Before that, your cousin got arrested. Before that—”
“I just want to come home for a couple days,” Olivia cut in, soft. “I need… to remember some things.”
Another pause. She could almost see her mother, dish towel in one hand, hip cocked against the warped kitchen counter.
“You got an assignment about here?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Olivia admitted. “A profile. Someone who grew up near us.”
Her mother clicked her tongue. “That boy. The Morrisons’ son.”
Olivia leaned her head against the cool elevator wall. “You heard about him?”
“Hear about him? They put his face on the news every week, like he’s the president. Your tío says all the city wants to do now is put cameras everywhere because of him. Your grandmother prays for him every Sunday, you know.”
That startled a laugh out of her. “Abuela prays for everyone who makes the news.”
“Exactly. She thinks because he came from here, we own a little piece of him.” Her mother’s voice softened. “You haven’t said his name in ten years.”
“I’m not saying it now,” Olivia muttered. “And it’s work, Ma. I’m writing about what he’s doing with the city, that’s all.”
“Mhm.” Skepticism again. “So come. I’ll make your favorite. If you think that writing about him means you don’t have to eat, you’re wrong.”
Olivia exhaled slowly, some of the tension loosening.
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay. I’ll be there Friday.”
“Good. And Olivia?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let him make you cry again.”
The elevator doors slid open before she could answer.
***
Later, in her tiny apartment with the crooked floorboards and radiator that rattled like a haunted maraca, Olivia stood in front of her bathroom mirror, toothbrush hanging limply from her hand.
Her reflection looked about how she felt: dark brown hair twisted into a messy knot that had lost the “messy” on purpose and landed squarely on *undone*, circles under her eyes, olive skin washed a little pale under the harsh bathroom light.
She spat, rinsed, and braced her hands on the sink.
“You’re not twenty anymore,” she told herself quietly. “You’re not some girl with a broke boyfriend and a MetroCard and no plan. You’re a professional. You broke up with him. You get to look him in the eye and ask whatever the hell you want.”
Her pulse jumped at the thought of those eyes across from her again.
Of him looking at her and maybe—maybe—remembering exactly how she’d walked away.
She turned off the bathroom light and crawled into bed, dragging her laptop with her despite the way her lower back protested.
Under the soft pool of her bedside lamp, she clicked open a local news page from back home.
*South Side Community Center Receives Surprise Grant from TerraNova Foundation.*
She squinted at the photo. There, half out of frame, was the battered brick building where her brother had played rec league basketball, where she’d tutored neighborhood kids for college essays that they mostly never turned in.
A new banner hung over the doorway. *Thanks to TerraNova, Building Tomorrow Today.*
“You always had to fix things in the hardest way possible, didn’t you?” she murmured.
Her phone buzzed.
*Raj*: u alive? laura said u got morrison. sell-out.
Her lips twitched.
*Olivia*: says the man whose last five pieces had the word “hack” in the headline. Also, if I’m a sell-out, I expect at least one free scooter subscription from this.
*Raj*: if you don’t make him say something horny about data pipelines, you’re dead to me.
*Olivia*: I hate you.
*Raj*: love you too. u okay tho? fr?
She stared at the blinking cursor for a second.
*Olivia*: ask me after I survive going home.
She put the phone face down on the bed.
Sleep didn’t come easily.
When it finally did, it brought dreams of lamplight, rain, and a boy with ink-stained fingers saying, *Trust me, Liv. It’s going to work. You’ll see.*
And of herself, younger and angrier, saying, *I can’t do this anymore,* and turning away.
***
By Friday afternoon, the South Side station smelled exactly the same as it had the last time she’d been there: like hot metal, stale breath, and the faint ghost of the churro stand that had been shut down five years ago and still somehow perfumed the air.
Olivia stepped off the train and the past hit her like heat off a summer sidewalk.
The murals on the station walls had changed—new taggers, new battles over territory—but the chipped tile, the leaks, the cluster of teenagers with too-loud headphones near the stairs… all the same.
She hit the turnstile with her hip and climbed into daylight.
The sky over South Side was lower than in Brooklyn. Or maybe it just *felt* that way, the elevated tracks slicing horizon lines into pieces. Storefronts she used to pass every day had new names—*Frutería La Palma* was now *JuiceXpress*—but the smell of frying onions and car exhaust and damp concrete was unchanged.
Her mother’s building loomed ahead, five stories of crumbling brick, the front door’s intercom held together with what looked like electrical tape and prayer.
She pressed the button for 3B.
“¿Quién es?” Her mother’s voice buzzed through the little metal grill.
“Your favorite daughter,” Olivia said.
“I only have one,” her mother shot back, but the door buzzed, lock clacking.
On the third floor landing, the apartment door stood open, warm light spilling into the dim hallway. Her mother stood there, petite and solid, hair threaded with more silver than last time, apron already dusted with flour.
“You’re too skinny,” she said by way of greeting, pulling Olivia into a hug that smelled like cumin and citrus.
“I gained three pounds,” Olivia protested into her shoulder.
“On your laptop bag, maybe.” Her mother held her at arm’s length, studying her face. Whatever she saw there seemed to satisfy her, because she patted Olivia’s cheek and stepped aside. “Come in. The rice is almost done.”
The apartment was exactly as she remembered: the faded couch with the afghan her abuela had crocheted before her fingers got too stiff; the TV perched on a thrifted entertainment center; the crucifix over the doorway with its slightly crooked Jesus.
On the sideboard, next to the framed photo of her brother in his construction helmet, was a new addition: a glossy magazine with Jake’s face on the cover.
Olivia’s steps stuttered.
“Ma,” she started.
Her mother followed her gaze, snorted, and picked up the magazine, flipping it face down. “Your cousin left that here. She thinks if she stares at him long enough, he’ll invite her to some party.”
“Please tell her that’s not how it works,” Olivia muttered.
Her mother arched a brow. “Isn’t it exactly how it works for girls who look like her?”
The jab was affectionate, not cruel, but it still landed. Her cousin Maribel had discovered waist trainers and Instagram filters at nineteen and never looked back.
“Anyway,” her mother said briskly, bustling back to the kitchen. “You’re not here to talk about him. You’re here to eat and to tell me why your landlord thought it was okay to raise your rent in Brooklyn but not mine. I need to weaponize your degree.”
Olivia smiled, the knot in her chest loosening a bit. “It’s a journalism degree, Ma. I can write a very strongly worded op-ed.”
“I’ll take it.”
They moved around each other in the tiny kitchen like they always had, muscle memory intact—Olivia reaching for the plates in the top cabinet before her mother even asked, her mother swatting her hand away from the pot when she went for a taste.
Only once, as they sat at the worn formica table with steaming plates, did her mother bring it back up.
“So,” she said, wiping her hands on a napkin. “You’re going to talk to him.”
“Not *him*,” Olivia said. “His company. What they’re doing to the city.”
“And you think he won’t make you cry again?” her mother asked gently.
Olivia’s fork hovered halfway to her mouth.
She thought of that PR document. Of all the things he refused to talk about.
“He doesn’t get that power anymore,” she said. “I’ve spent ten years chasing stories about men with more money than sense. He’s just one more.”
Her mother watched her for a long, searching moment.
“Good,” she said finally. “Then make sure when you write about him, you remember the people down here looking up at his fancy buildings.”
“I will,” Olivia promised.
“And if, when you look at his face, you feel that old thing in your chest…” Her mother’s eyes softened. “You remember that you walked away for a reason.”
The rice stuck briefly in Olivia’s throat.
She swallowed hard.
“I remember,” she said.
She remembered everything.
Too well.
And somewhere across the river, in a swath of waterfront that used to be warehouses and was now glass and steel, Jake Morrison was probably sitting in some sleek office, looking out over the city he’d helped rewire.
She wondered if he ever thought about the girl who’d told him that his dreams weren’t enough.
She wondered if, when he did, it made him angry.
Good, she thought, surprising herself.
Anger was easier than regret.