“The column is good,” he said. “Really good. That should have been my second clue.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I really wanted to scream, “Quit talking about the writing! What does this mean for us?”
“Do you like writing it?” he asked.
“I hate it. I hate the dates. I hate writing about the guys. I spend the whole date trying to think of how I can make myself look like an idiot so I don’t have to make fun of them. It’s exhausting.”
I could see in his face that he still felt conflicted.
“Just tell me how you’re feeling,” I said. “Don’t worry about logic and fairness. Just say it.”
He gave a short, pained laugh. “You’re asking me to do something you never do.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, stung.
“I mean, we spend all this time together. Do you know that I spend every spare minute I have with you? All of my single friends have been teasing me for weeks, wondering when they’re going to meet you and if the announcements are in the mail. They think I’ve dropped off the end of the earth.”
“You should Facebook more,” I joked. It fell flat. Again.
“My point is, I’ve made you my priority over everything for every single second I’m not at work. That should say something. And even if my actions didn’t speak loudly enough, I’ve said things here and there over the last week so my renegotiation next week wouldn’t come as a shock. And you’ve shut me down every time. I have to guess how you feel about me and hope I’m right.”
“Renegotiation?” I asked. “What does that mean?” I’d caught all his hints, but I usually ignored them or changed the subject. Two days before, he had invited me on a camping trip to Lake Powell in August with a big group of people, but I told him I couldn’t predict my workload and that I would have to wait and see. The truth was that it thrilled me that he was thinking two months ahead, but it scared me too. At Ginger’s graduation the previous week, she had introduced Tanner to her friends as my boyfriend, and neither of us had corrected her.
“Renegotiation means that I don’t need another month or even another week to know what I want out of this relationship. And just when I’m about to bring up exclusivity, I find out that dating other guys is part of your job.”
“It sounds awful when you put it that way,” I said. I tried not to focus on the “exclusivity” thing.
“I don’t mean it like that, but . . . it’s not great.” He sighed and jammed his fingers through his hair again. It was hopelessly mussed now. “Here’s another thing I can’t wrap my head around. Even before we started dating, was it fair to these guys for you to date them just for the column?”
It was the same question I’d been asked a dozen times by my family. My usual defense of picking guys who weren’t looking for anything serious sounded weak now. Serious just happens sometimes, like it had with Tanner.
Yeah, I was admitting it. At least to myself. But since I couldn’t quit the Indie Girl column, what did it say about me that I recognized my feelings for Tanner and knew I’d still be going on dates once a week with other guys for the foreseeable future anyway?
Not much, that’s what.
When I didn’t answer, Tanner sighed again. “You want to know how I feel? Completely frustrated. I figured you might go for being exclusive because it seemed like things were going so well between us. I hoped the dates were symbolic of your independence or something, and you wouldn’t care about giving them up if you felt the same way I do.” He kicked at a spot in the grass with the toe of his shoe. “Knowing it’s for your job makes it worse, not better, because it means there’s no end in sight.”
“You’re right,” I said, my voice low as a couple walked by, their beagle straining on his leash in front of them. “I don’t know how long it’s going to be before Ellie lets me off the hook. The fact that the column brings in so much advertising is the only reason I got her to hire me full time. If I don’t write the column, she has no reason to keep me on. And I hate making sandwiches.”
“Do you hate making them more than you like me?” he asked, still studying the ground.
I stared at him, disappointed. I expected Tanner to be less than happy about the situation. That was fair. But did he understand that he was indirectly asking me if I would give up my job for him? It would be a lot to ask any guy to put up with me dating other people while in a relationship with him. But Tanner was never supposed to be a relationship. I’d been clear about that, and it had happened anyway, against my better sense and judgment. And when it became inevitable that I would have to tell him about Indie Girl, I guess I hoped that some magic solution would fall from the sky, like my feature articles would blow up so huge that Ellie would let me quit “Single in the City,” and it would all be a moot point anyway.
“I don’t know how I feel about you,” I said. “This is all new. I’m still figuring this out.”
He didn’t say anything, instead focusing on the grass with the intensity he usually reserved for working out a story angle.
I slumped down on the bench and rested my head against the back of it, staring up at the cloudless sky. Dusk was still at least an hour away. “I know I want to move forward with my life and not backward. I know that I like this thing between us, but I don’t know what it is or what I want it to be. Do you?” I heard the frustration in my voice, but I didn’t try to mitigate it.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
I sat up and stared at him until he looked back at me. “You do.” I phrased it as a statement—testing out how it sounded—and not as a question. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer yet.
“I want us to keep building a relationship, Pepper. I want to be with you all the time, and I think about you all the time when I’m not with you. I want to be enough for you.”
“And you want me to quit going out on the Indie Girl dates. I do too. But I can’t, or I’ll lose my job.”
That was just a plain fact. Ellie had made it the major sticking point in hiring me full time.
“A few minutes ago I might have asked if it was worth it to you. But it’s obviously not. I hate the way that feels,” he said. “And I can see by your face that you’re upset I even brought it up, which is why I didn’t want to do it.” He shoved a hand through his hair again and then left it there, dropping his elbow to his knee and resuming his study of the grass framed by his feet.
“I have a question, then.” My voice was soft because I knew I was about to ask a hard thing. “What if you accept my job for what it is, and us for what we are right now, and leave it at that for a while? I’m not asking you to be okay with it but maybe to let it ride. Why can’t we just do that?”
He straightened and when he locked eyes with me, I could feel him searching inside me for something. An answer, a clue? I don’t know. And then instead of speaking, he leaned over and kissed me. Like the first time he’d done it that night by his car three weeks before, I felt the electricity of it hum along every nerve ending, and I shivered despite the warmth of the early evening air. Tanner broke away and sat back.
“That’s why I can’t let it ride,” he said, as if it were answer enough.
And it was.
But I had no idea what to do.
Dear Chantelle,
I don’t know why you decided I was worth mentoring, but I’m soooooo glad you did. This has been a very uneven friendship, but I hope I can start pulling my weight soon. I would never have gotten this far if it weren’t for your advice and insights, and I can’t thank you enough for all of your help. In a school yard pick, I’d take you first every time.
Let me know what I can do to repay you, up to and including babysitting your kids, smuggling you some of my mom’s famous fudge, or covering a story for you now and then when you’d rather spend time with your little ones.
Seriously. Thanks.
Pepper
Chapter 17
I trudged into the office Friday morning exhausted. I’d driven home past midnight
from the Circling the Drain concert and then spent the next three hours replaying the scene on the bench with Tanner over and over again, trying to reconcile the war between logic and emotion that had overtaken all my higher order brain functions.
By six in the morning, I’d given up on my restless sleep and had crept down to the kitchen to tap out an uninspired review of the punk-lite show from the night before. They were every bit as bad as their name suggested, but I could only partly blame my apathy on the lame show; I owed a chunk of it to the distraction of watching my love life circle the drain too.
I was on the road by eight, and when I pushed open the door to the magazine office, Chantelle’s face showed surprise.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
I understood her confusion. Normally, I didn’t have to come in until midmorning after covering a show. I rounded the desk where Janie sat and headed to my spot next to Chantelle. I dropped my laptop bag on the desk with a muffled thump and collapsed into my chair.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thanks,” I replied. “It takes a lot of effort to look this bad in the morning.”
“I bet. How hard did you have to fight the urge to pick up a hair brush?”
That earned her a tired smile. “I was more focused on trying to achieve the largest under-eye bags I could,” I said. “Do you think I could write an article on it and convince our readers they’re ‘the bag’ of the season?”
“What really happened?” she asked, no longer teasing. I glanced around, not wanting to share the story with the whole office. Janie and the other salesgirl looked absorbed in their phone calls, Denny hadn’t shown up yet, Marin wasn’t at her desk, and there was no sign of the boss.
I asked just to be sure. “Where’s Ellie?”
One of Chantelle’s professionally shaped eyebrows quirked. “At a breakfast meeting with some finance guy. This is about Tanner?”
I’d learned fast not to mention him in front of Ellie. Their bad blood went both ways, it turned out. It was rooted in nothing more than professional competitiveness and the disdain each of them had for the way the other did their job, but it was far less stressful for me if I kept them out of each other’s orbits. Tanner only came by when Ellie was out, and I didn’t mention him in front of her if I could avoid it. I jerked my head in the direction of the break room, a question on my face.
Chantelle nodded and got up to follow me. While I stowed my leftover chicken alfredo in the decrepit fridge, she sat at the table and waited. I grabbed the seat opposite her and slumped into it. “Tanner found out I’m Indie Girl.”
Up went her eyebrow again. “Yikes. It obviously didn’t go over great.”
I sighed. “Do relationships get easier after you’re married?”
She laughed. “I’m not going to answer that on the grounds that I don’t want to be the reason you stay single the rest of your life.”
“I think that’s the likely possibility right now. I can’t imagine ever being ready for marriage.”
“Weren’t you almost ready last year?”
I stared at her in surprise. I hadn’t discussed my dysfunctional dating history with anyone at the magazine. I almost never talked to anyone about it at all.
“Landon Scott, right?” she asked.
“How did you know that?”
“My niece,” she said. “When she outgrew Justin Bieber, she moved on to a new obsession. Landon Scott fit the bill. It’s amazing what an obsessed thirteen-year-old can do with a Google search. She recognized your name on the Marisol story and remembered you as Landon’s almost-wife. She asked me about you a couple of weeks ago.”
“Whoa.” It freaked me out a little that I would turn up in a Google search. I’d Googled myself a few times and had never found a connection between me and Landon, so Chantelle’s niece had dug deep. It also weirded me out to hear myself described as an “almost-wife.” I really had been this close.
“It’s true, then?” Chantelle asked.
“Yeah, it’s true.” There wasn’t any point in denying it. I only kept it quiet because for a long time it hurt to think about it, and now . . . well, it didn’t matter anymore. Another epiphany. Any more might cause a stroke.
“Sorry,” Chantelle said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your story. I couldn’t resist the urge to confirm my scoop.” When she saw my face, she burst out laughing again. “Don’t worry. I’m definitely not going to share it with anyone. I just like being in the know. I can keep a secret.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve already dropped one bombshell on Tanner. I don’t really want to hit him with another one just now. The last thing I need is some garbage about me and Landon all over the local gossip blogs.”
“So you and Tanner are still talking? That’s good, right?”
“I don’t know if we’re talking or not. I’m not even sure where we left things last night after he dropped me off.” We’d walked back to his apartment in silence, nothing resolved. On the short walk out to my car, I tried a couple icebreakers, but Tanner clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk, so that had ended in silence too. He’d stayed long enough to watch me get in The Zuke, so I guess it was a positive sign that he hadn’t left me to any lurking muggers or serial killers, but other than that—radio silence. No cell phone or e-mail. Nothing.
“I’m guessing he doesn’t love the idea of you dating other guys.”
“Yeah. I mean, he knew I was doing that all along, but he didn’t know why. He thought I was just playing the field and that I might be up for making things exclusive.”
“Are you?” she asked.
“How can I be?” I dropped my head onto the table. My neck couldn’t support a brain so full of conflicting thoughts and feelings anymore. “That’s like asking me if I’m ready to give up my job because that’s what dating him exclusively would mean.”
Chantelle didn’t argue. She knew the column was a big deal to Ellie. “I’d offer to take over ‘Single in the City’ for you, but my husband would get kind of mad. He doesn’t like it if I leave him alone with the kids too long.”
I laughed. “Thanks anyway.”
“If your job weren’t an issue, would you want to make it exclusive with Tanner?” she asked.
I stilled. The answer scared me. “Yes.”
“You like him. A lot,” Chantelle said.
I felt a tear well in one eye, so I sat up and dashed it away, sniffling. “Sorry. Lack of sleep makes me extra emotional.”
Chantelle nodded. “Yeah, me too. But ‘like’ isn’t enough for tears.”
“I’m dealing with a little more than ‘like’ here,” I confessed. It scared me to realize how quickly my feelings for Tanner had grown. They’d been sneaking up on me since way back at the first dinner at his parents’ house, but all the time spent with him over the last three weeks had pushed my feelings to a whole new level.
“Would you really let a job cost you a chance at love?” she asked. “Would you let Ellie cost you a chance at love?”
“No. Not if I was sure it was what I wanted,” I said.
“You’re not sure?”
“I don’t know,” I wailed, exhaustion making it hard to think straight.
“Calm down!” Chantelle said.
“It never calms people down when you yell at them to calm down!”
“Okay, okay. Just . . . relax for a minute. Breathe or something,” she urged me. After I took two deep breaths, she let out one of her own. “Wow. I guess it makes sense for you to be so wound up, but remind me to duck after every question.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m a mess.”
“Anyone would be,” she said. “Would you rather not talk about this?”
I considered that for a minute. “No, it’s okay. We’re on a roll. Might as well keep it going.”
After a long, measured glance, she nodded. “Good. But you need a soda if we’re going to continue.” She hopped up, grabbed a Dr. Pepper from the fridge, and tossed it to me
before sitting down. “Stop me if you’re about to lose it again, but let me recap. You like Tanner. Maybe even more than like him. If you weren’t writing ‘Single in the City,’ you’d be exclusively dating already. But your job depends on the column, and you’re not ready to give up your job for Tanner.”
I nodded, miserable. “I sound horrible and selfish when you put it that way.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “Has Tanner been running around professing his love for you?”
“No,” I said.
“Then he can’t ask you to lay everything on the line right now. Is that what he wants? For you to quit?”
“He wants us to see where this relationship is going. He understands that I can’t quit the column. He doesn’t like it, but he didn’t ask me to make a choice,” I said. “We kind of . . . stopped talking. There wasn’t anything left to say.” Tears threatened again, and I took a quick swig of soda to distract myself.
“If you had a way to get out of the column and still keep your job, would you take it?”
A quick yes jumped to my lips, but I caught myself and really considered the question. Without the column, I had no buffer left between Tanner and me. Did I still want one?
“Pepper?” Chantelle’s concerned expression made me smile.
“Don’t worry. I’m not the mayor of Crazy Town yet,” I said. “Patheticville, maybe. But not Crazy Town.”
“You’re not pathetic,” she said.
“Would you still think that if I told you that I need to talk to my daddy right now?” I asked.
“No. It’s great that you have a good relationship. I can go do some writer-type stuff at my desk if you want to call him.”
I nodded. “You won’t be offended that I’m trading you for him?”
She smiled and walked out of the break room. I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket and dialed his number.
Not My Type Page 24