Chapter 6: The Unexpected Assignment
The chime was soft, a gentle pulse of light in the pre-dawn gray of Dee’s bedroom. She fumbled for her phone on the nightstand, knocking the chipped mug perilously close to the edge. The screen’s glow illuminated her face.
Matt: Good morning. Missed you.
A slow, unconscious smile spread across her lips. She typed a reply, deleted it, then simply tapped the heart reaction. It felt both insufficient and overwhelmingly intimate. She was about to record a voice note, something about the strange peace of the city at this hour, when her phone erupted in her hand, the editor’s custom ringtone—a klaxon noise she’d chosen as a joke—shattering the quiet.
“Waldorf. Talk to me.” Her voice was sleep-rough.
Her editor, Carl, didn’t bother with hello. “The Bomer piece. It’s happening. Today.”
Dee sat bolt upright, the sheets pooling at her waist. “What? His publicist has been a stone wall for six weeks.”
“Stone wall crumbled. He’s in town for that charity gala, flight out tonight. Someone, somehow, got us a window. Noon. The Plaza penthouse suite. You’re prepped, right?”
She was, exhaustively. Matt Bomer. The actor. Chameleonic, famously private, the subject of her magazine’s long-form profile struggle. She’d researched him for months. “I’m prepped. But noon gives me nothing.”
“Then move. Shower. Shine. This is the get, Dee. Don’t be late.” Carl hung up.
The next two hours blurred. A scalding shower. Coffee burned onto the stove. She pulled a sharp, navy blazer over a simple black top, her ‘respectful but not trying too hard’ interview armor. Her mind was a checklist: recorder, backup recorder, notebook, pre-approved questions, follow-ups, the tricky one about his early career transition she wanted to phrase just right.
In the cab, downtown streets streaming past the window, she finally remembered. She grabbed her phone, opened the messaging app. His last text glowed up at her. Missed you. She hit record, speaking low and fast against the traffic noise.
She hit record, speaking low and fast against the traffic noise. “Hey. Crazy day just got crazier. Last-minute, high-stakes interview with the kindest person in Hollywood after Reeves, if you trust the internet. Let’s see if Mr. Bomer can revive my acceptance of Hollywood finest. Wish me luck. Maybe today I will finally write you that work wasn’t that bad.”
She sent the voice note, watching the soundwave graphic vanish into the digital ether. The cab swerved around a delivery truck, and she clutched her recorder bag tighter. Her phone buzzed almost instantly in her hand.
Matt’s reply was a single emoji: a four-leaf clover. Simple. Superstitious. Sweet. She stared at it, her thumb tracing the green pixels, and felt a ridiculous surge of confidence. She tucked the phone away, focusing on the approaching hotel awning.
Across town, in the silent, sterile grandeur of his penthouse suite, Matt Bomer dropped his phone. It landed soundlessly on the thick cream carpet. The voice note played from the speaker, Dee’s familiar cadence—wry, hurried, intelligent—filling the space between the abstract art and the grand piano.
Mr. Bomer.
The two words detonated in the center of his mind. A cold, precise understanding followed, washing over him in a paralyzing wave. Dee. Waldorf. The incisive journalist from The Chronicle. Her profile request had been one of dozens in his publicist’s folder, notable only for its pointed, researched questions. He’d agreed to it last night on a whim, a vague impulse to do something normal before leaving the city.
He had never connected the name to his Dee. The anonymous, cherished, pigeon-drawing Dee. He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, his reflection ghostly over the skyline. The lie was no longer an abstract weight in his chest. It was a live thing now, coiled in the room with him, counting down the minutes until the doorbell rang.
His publicist, Laura, buzzed from the adjoining room. “Matt? She’s on her way up. You ready?” Her voice was muffled through the door.
“Yeah,” he called back, the word scraping his throat. He looked at the phone on the carpet, the little clover emoji glowing up from the dark screen. It was a charm for her luck, for her success in interviewing him. The profound wrongness of it made his stomach turn.
He had a ten-minute window. Ten minutes before she walked in, before her sharp, intelligent brown eyes—eyes he knew only from a tiny, grainy professional headshot he’d once searched for and instantly regretted—landed on his face. The face she saw on movie posters. The face that belonged to the name “Mr. Bomer.”
He could cancel. He could feign illness, a scheduling catastrophe. It would be easy. It would preserve the phantom she knew, the man who missed her in the mornings. It would also be a professional betrayal, and she’d know. She’d mention it to him, to Matt, her anonymous confidant. The guy flaked. Typical.
The alternative was worse. He would have to sit there, under the clinical light of her professionalism and her recorder, and perform. He’d have to be Matt Bomer, The Actor, for the woman who knew the texture of his most private thoughts. He’d have to answer her incisive questions while watching her brain work behind her eyes, wondering if she’d see past the performance to the man who’d championed 90s music and drawn a pigeon in a top hat.
A soft, definitive chime echoed from the suite’s entryway. The interview was here. He was out of time. He bent slowly, retrieving his phone, his finger hovering over the screen. He could warn her. He could type three words: It’s me. Stop.
He didn’t. He slid the phone into his pocket just as Laura opened the inner door. “Dee Waldorf is here,” she said, her smile professional and warm.
Matt nodded, the movement automatic. He felt his public persona settle over his shoulders like a lead coat, perfectly tailored and unbearably heavy. He took a steadying breath, the air tasting of expensive coffee and imported flowers.
“Send her in,” he said, and his voice was already different. It was his interview voice. Charming. Measured. A complete and total lie.