The Ex Talk

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  The alcohol takes over. “So . . . we had a good sex life, then?”

  One corner of his mouth kicks upward. “Maybe we weren’t having sex.”

  Something horrific happens then: I let out this completely nonhuman sound, a mix between a snort and a laugh and a gulp. I shrink back until my shoulder blades hit the wall.

  “What, you thought sleeping with me was a given?” he says. “Is my fictional self really that quick to put out?”

  “Oh my god, no no no,” I say. “I was just—if we were dating for three months, then we probably—I mean, maybe we didn’t, but—”

  He’s full-on smiling now, as though amused by my incoherent babbling. I bring the water glass to my face so I can hide behind it. My sweater is draped across my desk, and I’m too warm in a thin black T-shirt. He’s a six-three heat lamp.

  “Shay,” he says in a low voice. Teasing. He inches closer, reaching forward to take the water glass away from my face and holding it level with my shoulder. “Honestly, I’m flattered.”

  Then he taps the cold rim of the glass against my cheek gently, gently. A friendly little pat that sends my heart into overdrive. When he moves it away, I reach toward my face, holding a few fingers against the cold spot there.

  His gaze is so intense that I have to close my eyes for a moment. My instinct is to back away, to put more space between us, but when I try, I’m reminded that I’m against the wall. I don’t know where to look. Normally, I’m level with his pectorals, but he’s hunched, the curve of his shoulders soft in this semi-light. Close enough to reach out and touch—if I wanted to. I watch the rise and fall of his chest. That’s safe. Safer than eye contact, at least.

  I’ve never had that problem before.

  “I’m glad, because I’m really wishing the floor would open up and suck me into the Hellmouth right now.”

  “Buffy fan?”

  “Oh yeah. I grew up with it. You?”

  He at least has the decency to look sheepish. “Watched it on Netflix.”

  Of course he did. He’s twenty-four, young enough to never have seen it live and sliced up by commercials. “By ‘grew up with it,’ I meant, you know, I was still very young during the early seasons, and I didn’t understand most of what was going on . . .” I break off with a groan, though I’m relieved the conversation has turned away from sex. “God, don’t make me feel like a grandma.”

  A laugh from deep in his throat turns my legs to jelly. That rumble—I feel it in the last possible place I want to feel it.

  It is deeply concerning.

  That’s what catches me off guard, more than anything else tonight. I don’t want to think about doing anything with Dominic besides cohosting a show about our fake relationship. I don’t want to think about the way that rough laugh would sound pressed against my ear while other parts of him pressed against other parts of me.

  And I really don’t want to imagine him holding that cold glass to my bare skin again.

  I swallow hard, forcing away these delusions. Sober Shay would not be fantasizing about Dominic Yun when he’s right in front of her. My imagination is too creative, and my yearlong drought can’t be helping.

  Dominic passes the glass back to me and straightens to his full height. Oh. It’s only then that I realize how easy it would have been for him to trap my hands over my head and push me against the wall, tell me with his mouth on my neck how journalism will save the world.

  Of course, he doesn’t do any of this, opting instead to take a step back. Then two. At three steps, the temperature in the room dips. At four, I can breathe again.

  “For what it’s worth,” he says when he’s halfway to the door, “I think it would have been good, too.”

  9

  My mother turns, glancing at her reflection in the three-way mirror.

  “You look gorgeous,” I tell her from the cream leather couch. It’s been true of the past five dresses she’s tried on, confirming my theory: Leanna Goldstein is incapable of looking bad, even in twelve yards of chartreuse taffeta. Meanwhile, I have my dog made me sleep in the creepy guest room again circles under my eyes and darkened break room corners on the brain.

  “It’s not a mistake, not doing white, is it?” She sweeps her auburn hair off her neck, exposing the dress’s plunging back. “I want to go nontraditional, but I don’t want anything too mature.”

  She and my dad went nontraditional too, eloping in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. The photos are breathtaking, the two of them pinned against teal mountains and Douglas firs. “All my friends said they spent so much money on food and never got to eat any of it,” she’d say when I used to ask why my parents didn’t have a wedding. Then she’d laugh her musical laugh. “And I couldn’t imagine anything more tragic.”

  When she and I walked inside the bridal boutique, the saleswoman gushed over how exciting it is to shop for your daughter’s wedding. My mother had to correct her, and the saleswoman apologized profusely.

  It isn’t the fact that we’re here for my mother and not for me that makes it feel strange, though. It’s that it’s her second time, and now she wants to have the wedding.

  “More and more brides are opting for nontraditional gowns these days,” chirps the saleswoman, standing by with a pincushion and measuring tape. “I didn’t think that green would work with your hair, but you look stunning.”

  Still, my mother frowns. “Something about it isn’t feeling quite right. Do you have anything that’s a little less”—she holds up the many layers of fluffy skirts—“well, a little less dress?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll be right back with some shorter styles.” The saleswoman disappears, and I tip back the rest of my champagne.

  I’m trying my best to focus, but my mind is back at the station. Thursday morning, Dominic strode in like nothing had happened between us, with the exception of one of those half smiles he shot my way when he picked up his Koosh ball to toss up and down. And . . . nothing had happened between us, right? That moment in the break room may have felt charged to me, but maybe he looms over women all the time, his pheromones and broad shoulders messing with their brains. It wasn’t like he pushed me up against the wall because he needed to have his way with me and couldn’t waste any time. I backed myself into the wall, and then he simply stood in front of me. Completely different.

  We were drunk and exhausted and talking about sex. My mind ran wild with it, showing off the “overactive imagination” my elementary school teachers wrote about on my report cards. It doesn’t mean I’m attracted to him.

  The saleswoman returns with an armful of blush and mint and powder-blue dresses, and my mother thanks her.

  “First show in two weeks,” my mother says from the other side of the dressing room door. “How are you feeling?”

  “Oddly okay,” I say. “It hasn’t hit me yet that I’m actually going to be on the air.” I could say it a hundred times, and I probably won’t believe it until I’m in that studio I’ve grown so used to being on the other side of.

  “Your dad would have been telling absolutely everyone,” my mother says, and then I hear her musical laugh. “People would have found him so obnoxious.”

  “Didn’t they anyway?” I say, because it’s true.

  When someone dies, you don’t only remember their good parts. You remember the difficult parts, too, like how if you asked a question he didn’t know the answer to, my dad simply ignored it instead of responding. Or how he was in a perennial fight with our neighbors over the trees that drooped into our yard, and he passive-aggressively retaliated by mowing our lawn early every morning for months. The deceased don’t immediately become flawless human beings. And it wouldn’t be right to turn him into one. We loved him, faults and all.

  “Sometimes,” my mother says, emerging from the dressing room in a pink tulip-hemmed dress. “I’ve made my fair share of enemies in my career
, I’m sure. No, no, this one isn’t right.”

  I claw a hand through my low ponytail, covering my mouth with it before letting it flop back onto my shoulder. “I thought, I don’t know, with Phil, and this wedding . . . that maybe you were finally doing it right this time.”

  The door opens again, and my mother appears in a nude bra, a navy dress around her waist. She has freckles along her arms and across her stomach. When I was younger, her wrinkles might have frightened me, but now they make her look strong. “Shay. No. Not at all.” She hurries over to me, apparently not caring that she’s half-dressed. “I know this has to be weird for you.”

  “A little,” I say, because a lot might worry her. I want to be the cool, open-minded daughter, but I’m not sure how. I’ve gotten so used to our tiny family.

  But I also got used to Puget Sounds. My job is changing, and with the exception of whatever happened in the break room, I’ve been okay.

  “Your dad and I had exactly the kind of wedding we wanted,” my mother continues, letting my hair out of its ponytail and running her fingers through it the way she used to do when I was a kid. “Our parents didn’t get along, and they had different ideas of what the wedding should be. Mine insisted on a traditional Jewish wedding, while Dan’s nonpracticing parents didn’t want it to be religious.” My paternal grandparents live in Arizona, but my mother’s parents passed away when I was little. “And now that I’m older, now that it’s just the two of us involved, we can do exactly what we want.”

  “Maybe that’s the thing I’m getting hung up on,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel. “That it’s just the two of you, when I’ve always felt like it was just the two of us.”

  That lingers in the space between us for a while, and when my mother’s face crumples, I immediately regret what I’ve said.

  “Shit, that was really self-centered, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was just thinking about how I had no idea that proposal was coming, and Ameena asked if I’d known about it, and—”

  But my mother shakes her head, rubbing at the hollow of her throat the way she does when she’s anxious. “No. You’re right. We’ve been a unit for the past ten years, haven’t we? I should have talked to you first. I’m sorry about that.” She glances down, and then back up at me, and for a moment I see not just my mother, but a woman who’s made a mistake and wants desperately to be forgiven. “But you’re happy about it, right? You like Phil?”

  “Oh my god, Mom, yes. Yes. I love Phil.” I squeeze her hand. “I’m not mad. At all. I swear. I’m just . . . adjusting.”

  “I think we all will be, for a while,” she says. “I want you to be part of this in any way you want, okay?”

  “Okay, but if you try to get me to wear chartreuse, I am definitely standing up when the officiant asks if anyone objects.”

  She nods solemnly. “And I’d deserve that.” Then she turns to the mirror, as though remembering she’s only half-dressed. She gets to her feet and straightens herself out, and I see she’s wearing not a dress but a sleek navy jumpsuit. It’s sleeveless with a wrap front and long, clean lines. It’s both age appropriate and nontraditional, commanding but understated.

  Her face splits into a grin, and I realize for the first time we have the same exact smile.

  Maybe I haven’t seen it enough on either of us.

  “This is the one,” she says.

  * * *

  —

  On Sunday afternoon, Mary Beth Barkley stands in my living room, locked in a staring contest with Steve.

  “Thank you so much for doing this,” I say. “He’s been a bit of a nightmare. An adorable nightmare.”

  Mary Beth waves this off. “Aren’t you the cutest little thing?” she said when she got here, and gave him a hunk of cheese from the pack around her waist. “What he needs are some boundaries and some discipline. I see it all the time with first-time dog owners, especially with dogs that haven’t been socialized. He needs to know that you’re the alpha.”

  She begins by calling his name, rewarding him when he responds to it. Then we practice some basic commands and leash training.

  “He’s walking you,” Mary Beth says when we go outside and Steve tugs me toward his favorite pee tree. “How much does he weigh?”

  “Um. Seven pounds.”

  “You are the alpha,” she repeats, and I decide not to tell her I’ve been sleeping in the guest room. “Make sure he knows that. He’s not the one in charge. This walk is your choice, not his. You’re leading him, not the other way around.”

  So I’m the producer of his life, essentially, and I more than know how to do that.

  He pulls toward the end of his leash, but I stand firm. After a few moments of straining, he trots back to me, loosening the leash, and when I make a move to go in the other direction, he actually follows.

  “Good boy!” I practically shriek it, which scares him, but a treat makes everything okay.

  After about an hour, we head back inside, exhausted but victorious.

  Mary Beth reaches down to scratch behind his ears. “You’re gonna be a good boy,” she says. “You just needed a little help.”

  I thank Mary Beth, but she refuses payment.

  “Your show sent so much business my way,” she says, which makes a bittersweet warmth bloom in my chest. We were doing something important. I always knew it, despite those moments Dominic made me doubt myself. “I’ll look forward to catching your new show, even if it does have considerable less emphasis on dogs.”

  The training session makes me useless the rest of the day, which is probably good because the impending Ex Talk nerves have fully sunk their claws in me. Steve naps—in his bed, not mine—while I catch up on the handful of dating podcasts I now subscribe to, idly texting with Ameena.

  A text from an unknown number arrives at a quarter to eight. I’m in the bathroom painting my nails gray, and it’s so startling I nearly drop my phone in the bathroom sink.

  It’s Dominic. Got your number from the staff directory.

  I had this idea. What if we did a show about people who met someone through a rideshare? Someone I know from grad school is dating a guy who was her Lyft driver.

  Dominic Yun. Texting me about a show idea. For our show.

  YES! I love that. Admit it. You’re excited about this.

  I screw the cap back on the nail polish bottle, wondering where he’s texting me from and how he spends his weekends. Maybe he goes to the farmers’ market or out to meals with friends. Maybe he hikes or bikes or reads classic novels by himself in a coffee shop. I don’t know where in Seattle he lives, if it’s in a studio apartment or a house with a bunch of friends or at home with his parents.

  Of course, he might not even be at home. He’s not currently in a relationship, but that doesn’t mean he’s not casually dating. Sure, Sundays aren’t prime hookup nights, but that doesn’t stop me from imagining his trademark lean against the bedroom door of a stranger’s apartment. Pinning someone else against a wall for real this time, bracing his hands on either side of her. It makes my stomach twist in a strange, foreign way.

  Yeah. Guess I am. You worked some kind of magic on me.

  Our words flowed so smoothly that night at the station, but now I’m not sure how to keep the conversation going. It hits me that I want to know him, where he lives and what he’s doing on a Sunday night and what kinds of books he likes to read. Probably nonfiction with drab covers and tiny print. Exposés.

  Why we don’t have any mutual Facebook friends.

  I’ve always been interested in stories, and yet I can’t exactly journalism my way into Dominic’s life. Especially when I can’t decide what to text back.

  Still, I’m disappointed when my phone doesn’t light up for the rest of the night.

  10

  The next couple weeks are a promo whirlwind. We send press releases, take new photos for th
e website, and make a guest appearance on Pacific Public Radio’s morning show. Our first three shows are booked solid with content and guests, and even that meant late nights and early mornings. It’s hard to believe that a few weeks ago, I was producing a live show every day.

  “You’re popping your P’s. Again.”

  We’ve been in Booth C for twenty minutes trying to record a fifteen-second promo, during which it’s become increasingly clear to me that these booths were not meant for two people. Sure, there are two chairs, two microphones. But Dominic’s height shrinks the booth by half. Today he’s in khakis, which could so easily look horrifying on the wrong person. (He is not the wrong person.) They’re paired with brown oxfords and a gray cardigan with elbow patches. One of his more casual looks, and it’s only because we’re working so closely together that I notice these details.

  Dominic switches off the RECORD button. “Would it kill you to help me instead of making fun of me?”

  “Oh, I assumed you had a class about this in grad school.” I bite the inside of my cheek. “Sorry. That’s not helping, either, is it?”

  He lets out a long-suffering sigh. “You could start by telling me what the hell a popped P is.”

  That, I can do. It takes me back to the early weeks of my internship, the one-on-one coaching I got from Paloma. Back then, I thought it was ridiculous—I’d never be on the radio anyway. Still, I learned to avoid P-pops and the less common B-pops and hissing S’s, just in case.

  “It’s called a plosive,” I say, trying not to wonder if his sea salt cologne will linger in the booth after we leave. “You’re sending a blast of air from your mouth right into the mic when you make that p sound.” I hold my hand in front of my mouth, indicating that he should do the same. “Pacific Public Radio. Can you feel the difference against your hand when you say a p word versus an r word? There’s more air with the p’s, right?”