Hollywood Ending

by Tash Skilton

  I’m not sure which is worse.

  I get a ping on my laptop, a message next to a tiny picture of a smiling brunette girl.

  Jules478: Hi, how are you?

  Fucking great. And now I have to work. Now I have to work trying to get other people’s love lives in order. What a cosmic joke. Not only that, but I no longer even have an office to go to, or colleagues to make small talk with, or a coffee machine that will dispense caffeine to me at will. Just a totally unfathomable espresso maker that could double as a 747 cockpit and a corner of this borrowed couch that I swear is made from burlap, because my friend Dylan lives in a Pottery Barn catalog. (You may say that couch surfers can’t be couch choosers, but I—in the throes of my melancholy and with half my hair in a permanent state of static cling—say we can all be critics.)

  I close my eyes and try the breathing exercise that, of course, Jordan once taught me—inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight—before I respond.

  PerseMan: Hey there. I’m great. How are you doing?

  It’s okay. I can do this sort of idle chitchat in my sleep. I haven’t spent the past two years becoming the top ghostwriter at Tell It to My Heart for no reason. I’ve honed these skills enough that I can practically be on autopilot. Right?

  Jules478: Good.

  Right. Except I just broke the cardinal rule of online dating: Much like improv, never ask a question that can be responded to with a one-word answer.

  I try to rectify.

  PerseMan: Have you seen the summer concert schedule for Forest Hills Stadium, by the way? It’s pretty amazing this year.

  My guy . . . I scan my open files for his name . . . Farhad. That’s it. He’s a music buff, so I know this is important.

  Jules478: Yes! Belle and Sebastian and Greta Van Fleet? Amazing!

  PerseMan: I know, right?

  I type the response automatically and then scroll over to the schedule myself, trying to figure out which one of these goddamn stupid bands Farhad might be into. Oh, right. He had mentioned LCD Soundsystem in his questionnaire.

  PerseMan: Super excited for LCD myself.

  Jules478: Yeah? They’re cool too.

  Okay, so she’s less excited about that one. But, hey, they can each bring different musical tastes to the relationship. That’s the beauty of romance, right? Everyone brings their own interests into it, and then they mix and mingle, and sometime later, there is a little embryo that has genetically combined those passions into something that can be cradled in an artsy, black-and-white Instagram post.

  PerseMan: Do you like kids?

  Whoa. WHOA! What the hell are you doing, Miles? As the Tell It to My Heart Style Guide and Freelancer’s Handbook suggests on page twenty-two, there are certain things you never, ever bring up on a first chat: politics, religion, marriage, meeting the parents, and—of course—children. Not in any way, shape, or form. I know this because I literally wrote the handbook. As Leanne’s first employee, I got to sculpt a lot of what my job—and the company culture—is.

  There is a noticeable pause before Farhad’s match writes again.

  Jules478: Yeah. I like them.

  PerseMan: Do you have any idea what a six-week pregnant belly looks like?

  I have no idea what’s happening. My fingers are 100 percent working independently from my brain.

  Jules478: Uh . . .

  PerseMan: It’s not obviously pregnant, right? Like, usually, you wouldn’t be able to see a bump?

  At this point, what the hell does it matter? Jules might have more insight into this than me considering she, at least, has the requisite parts and has, I don’t know, probably attended a baby shower or something.

  Jules478: I don’t think so?

  PerseMan: That’s what I thought.

  The thing is, I know the baby isn’t mine. I probably always knew it, but the blank screen on my messages, gut-punched by that Read 8:37 AM confirms it. Jordan wouldn’t raise a baby alone, not if its father wanted to be an active part of his or her life. How many times had I held her while she told me another example of why her absentee dad was such a shithead and how it had directly impacted some aspect of her life or personality?

  Jules478: So . . . listen. I think I’ve got to go.

  Shit. I’ve been spiraling into a deep, dark thought hole instead of doing my job and convincing this girl that Farhad is a great match for her and worthy of at least a meetup.

  Time for some damage control.

  PerseMan: Ha! Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out.

  I’m now racking my brain for some sort of valid excuse to ask this girl about pregnancy symptoms.

  PerseMan: I’m writing a song. And this is research.

  Look, if there can be songs about lady humps, why not about baby bumps, am I right?

  Jules478: Oh . . . are you a musician?

  PerseMan: It’s a hobby.

  I scan Farhad’s questionnaire again.

  PerseMan: I work in finance by day.

  Good, good. Worked in the stable job bit smoothly. I might be back on track here.

  Jules478: What kind of band are you in?

  I scan the questionnaire one more time. Oh, fuck.

  PerseMan: A string quartet.

  There is another long pause.

  Jules478: Right . . . I’m sorry, but my lunch break is over and I really do have to go.

  It’s 8:52 in the morning.

  Jules478: Maybe talk later?

  But then she logs off before I can respond.

  Honestly?

  I probably did both Farhad and this girl a favor.

  There is no such thing as love anyway. Not to get all hair metal power ballad about it, but love is an illusion. It’s just a smokescreen for future heartbreak. Why do it to yourself? Why? Either they’ll leave you, or you’ll leave them or—best-case scenario—you live together happily until one of you dies and leaves the other one completely destroyed and a shell of their former self.

  Why the fuck bother?

  A message pops up from Leanne.

  Leanne T: Miles? I think you need to come into the office for a meeting.

  Fuckity fuck fuck.

  Miles I : I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Is that okay?

  Leanne T: Yes.

  And then, before I can think better of it.

  Miles I : Hey, Leanne. Question for you. Do you know what a six-week pregnant belly looks like?

  * * *

  Leanne’s office is in a building that was clearly a warehouse until maybe three minutes ago, when some enterprising real estate mogul realized he could create about 450 closet-sized offices in there and charge people an exorbitant amount of rent for the privilege of working right next to the West Side Highway, which is at least a fifteen-minute, windswept walk from any subway line.

  I wait for her to buzz me up, and then take one of the many freight elevators up to the ninth floor, until I end up in front of Leanne’s cupboard.

  Up until two and a half months ago, Tell It to My Heart was located in a small, but airy office space in the Meatpacking District. Full-length glass windows looked out over the cobblestone streets where high-end shoppers in designer sunglasses and Jimmy Choos and/or hungover clubbers in designer sunglasses and taller Jimmy Choos hobbled to and fro. I used to look out and think it was very possible one of those clubbers was a client of ours, coming back from a successful date night that ended at seven a.m., rushing to get home and change and look presentable for work, but unable to hide that secret smile only a hot date with someone new was able to conjure up. It wasn’t a walk of shame, it was a walk of pride. Who wouldn’t feel proud and exhilarated to have come off of a night of passion and connection? And, maybe, just maybe, I’d had a hand in that. It used to make me feel proud and exhilarated, by association.

  Now I know better.

  Now I know one hot night will probably turn into agony somewhere down the road—whether it’s because of unreturned text messages, or fights over the other one’s overbearing par
ents, or splitting up and trying to figure out who gets the houseplants. I’m facilitating nothing but ruin and damnation.

  And as for the office? Well. We can chalk that one up to another brilliantly catastrophic idea from Leanne’s ex-husband, Clifford.

  To paraphrase Taylor Swift, once upon a time, many mistakes ago, Leanne and Clifford were two of those idiots who thought they were in a loving, long-lasting relationship. So not only did they exchange vows, and buy an apartment (a co-op no less, another nightmare), and adopt a cat together—they decided to take it to the next knuckleheaded step: co-owning a business.

  Yup, they started Tell It to My Heart together, although it was Leanne’s idea originally. As both a writer and a person enthralled by love, she’d been watching her single friends struggle through the tortures of online dating, of constructing the perfect profile, and of saying the right things over e-mails, IMs, and texts. And one day she realized: She was a copywriter. She could help them craft their message better.

  It snowballed from there, the idea to create a ghostwriting agency that would help people get their foot in the door on their paths to true love. “We’re not ghostwriting, we’re cupid-writing,” Clifford said.

  That was Clifford’s task: taking care of the marketing and operations.

  Meaning it was Clifford’s idea to name the company Tell It to My Heart (which was probably the last time Leanne and Clifford agreed on anything). And then his next logical step was to get the rights to that Taylor Dayne song to use in all the commercials.

  It sounded fine in theory, of course. Except Taylor Dayne and the songwriters did not want to be associated with some weird, unknown, online dating ghostwriting agency thing, and had asked for an exorbitant fee to secure the rights.

  Any normal person would have tried to either negotiate or realize the song wasn’t worth it.

  If Clifford is one thing, it’s abnormal.

  He agreed to their terms right away, without consulting Leanne or the lawyers or anybody.

  Leanne got the company in the divorce, but she was also stuck with the consequences of Clifford’s poor business decisions.

  So, yes, do have the pleasure of getting “Tell It to My Heart” stuck in your head if you come across any of our radio or occasional TV ads. While I and the other three full-time TITMH (pronounced tit-mee) employees have the pleasure of no longer having an office.

  And poor Leanne, CEO, is relegated to this musty, windowless closet that can barely fit her desk and two chairs let alone all of the cool, eclectic artwork and sculptures she used to have as her backdrop at our old digs.

  Still, despite her surroundings, she looks as impeccable as always. Leanne is Chinese-American, with long, straight black hair, the posture of a prima ballerina, and a wardrobe that almost entirely consists of structural pieces that look like they ought to come with blueprints. She somehow makes them work, whereas I’m pretty sure anyone else wearing them would look like they were dressed as the Empire State Building in a questionable Miss New York pageant.

  “Care to explain what happened today, Miles?” she asks in her calm, deep voice, the kind you know has the potential to unleash a tsunami of devastating barbs if necessary.

  I clear my throat. “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s start with not knowing our client was in a string quartet. And move on to the whole pregnant belly debacle.”

  “You know about all that?” I ask weakly.

  “Miles. After the fiasco of the last three clients, I told you I’d be logged on to your computer to see your chats. And then you accepted my remote access request this morning.”

  “Oh, right,” I say. Shit. I definitely had. And I definitely planned on being on my game today, but that was before Jordan announced to the world (and, oh yeah, me) that she was with child.

  Leanne sighs. “Look. I know you’re going through a hard time right now.” I haven’t told her too much about what’s been going on, just that Jordan and I broke up. And that I moved out of our apartment into Dylan’s living room. And that Dylan’s boyfriend, Charles, has been passive-aggressively leaving me notes about how disruptive I am to their lives. And that he made me return the single-ply toilet paper I bought as a thank-you gift because, as he claimed, nobody’s ass deserves the degradation of single-ply, not even mine.

  Okay, so maybe I have told Leanne a lot. The problem is that in the eighteen months we were together, I ended up co-opting most of Jordan’s friends, and now I’m stuck trying to scrape together some semblance of a social circle.

  “Here’s the thing,” Leanne says, “I can’t afford this meltdown, Miles. I literally can’t afford it. Clearly, we are in some serious trouble here.” She waves her arms vaguely at the horror show of peeling paint and Formica office furniture she’s somehow ended up captaining. “And losing four clients in the span of a month? That’s just not acceptable.”

  I nod, suddenly realizing it’s very possible that—on top of everything else—I am about to get fired. I’m like the pilot episode of a sitcom about a man whose life goes to shit before he changes careers and decides to become a cattle rancher in that quirky town his grandmother lives in. Except all of my grandparents are dead and, in the real world, losing your job doesn’t actually lead to a hilarious but poignant epiphany about what you’re supposed to be doing. Just a sudden need to add LinkedIn to the daily ritual of social media that makes you feel like crap about yourself.

  Leanne must see the panic in my face, because she tries to soften the blow. “It’s no secret that you’ve always been my best employee, Miles. You were great at what you did. Nobody has as many success stories as you. How many weddings have you been invited to? Three?”

  “Four,” I mumble. Always as an old friend of the groom because, of course, none of them could bear to tell their future wives that their relationship was built on what is—let’s be honest here—something of a lie.

  “That’s incredible,” Leanne says gently, before her voice takes on the firm but fair tone that made her a superstar creative director back in her agency days, when I was working as a copywriter under her. “But I can’t rely on what you did; I have to rely on what you do. I have to know I’m sending someone out there who’s going to listen to our clients’ wants and needs and work his hardest to get them to meet up with their perfect match.”

  “Right,” I say, not adding that what Leanne needs is someone who actually believes in such a thing as a perfect match. Once upon a time, that was me. But not anymore.

  “So this is what’s going to happen,” she says, and I’m expecting her to produce—if I’m lucky—a severance package from within her desk to hand to me. Instead, she takes out her iPad. “You have one more chance to make good here. One more client who’s going to need the old Miles to reappear and give him the real Tell It to My Heart Experience.” Obviously, she doesn’t say the trademarked bit, but I can practically hear it in her voice. Another one of Clifford’s brilliantly expensive ideas. “So, pick one. Go ahead. There are three to choose from.”

  I reluctantly take the tablet from her, and flip through the familiar file format of our clients: a smiling photo and the answers from the initial questionnaire. This one ideally wants to be married within two years. That one is new to the city and wants someone to “eat his way through New York with.” (His words, not mine. And obviously we are going to have to do something about them if I take him on.)

  And then there’s Jude Campbell. There’s nothing very special about Jude’s profile. He’s good-looking enough. His answers are normal enough. Or, I should say, there’s almost nothing very special about Jude’s profile.

  Jude apparently moved here from Scotland a couple of years ago. Which means Jude has an accent. And if I am going to stake my whole career on one guy’s love match?

  I’m picking the dude with the Scottish accent.

  Photo courtesy of Robyn Von Swank

  Tash Skilton is the pen name of Sarvenaz Tash (author of The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love an
d Virtually Yours) and Sarah Skilton (author of Fame Adjacent and Club Deception), who met on Twitter and parlayed their online friendship into an IRL one. They’ve written ten books (and counting) between them, varying in genres from middle grade fantasy to young adult rom com to adult murder mystery.

  Their first joint novel, Ghosting: A Love Story, was published in seven countries and is available in six different languages.