“No. And I spent four years being so totally wrapped up in everything he did, all the goals he had for himself, all of his plans, that I didn’t realize I’d spent almost our entire relationship out of touch with me.” I stood up and brushed my seat off then scooped up my bag and headed out the way I had come, depending once more on the movement to keep my mind clear. “I don’t miss that relationship,” I said. “I’m glad it ended. But I’m scared about getting lost in another relationship.”
When that met another long silence, I gritted my teeth. I hated doing this over the phone. I wanted to be able to read his face, to watch his reactions. Instead, my overactive imagination read the worst into each of his pauses.
“I don’t really know what to say,” he confessed. “You’re blowing my mind here. A four-year relationship? I’m worried baggage might be an understatement. How deep do those scars run, you know?” He was quiet again. “It almost doesn’t matter. We could figure that out. But then, there’s your job. I don’t see an answer. I don’t think I really have any moves here. This is kind of up to you, and that worries me because you have an easy choice to just keep your job. I wish I were okay with the Indie Girl thing. I’m not. And maybe that means I’ll have to accept that I’m the whole reason this falls apart.”
“But I—”
“I have to go,” he said. His voice was tight and hard. “There’s a call coming in from the city desk, and I need to take it.”
“Okay,” I whispered, not sure he even heard me before he hung up.
What now?
I dialed Chantelle’s number. “I need to hear your plan. It’s gotta be a million percent better than the plan I don’t have now.”
* * *
“I can’t do that.” I stared at Chantelle, appalled. I had driven from Mill Creek Canyon to Straws, a local café with a big breakfast crowd that quieted around lunch. A few customers dotted the tables inside the restaurant, and we had one of the four outside tables to ourselves.
“You don’t have to,” she said. “I told you that you wouldn’t like it. But it will work. You know it will.” A half smile played around her lips at my stunned reaction.
“There is no way I’m contacting Landon for an interview,” I said.
“He’s a huge get,” she said, using the term journalists reserved for the hot interviews they all tried to land. “Everyone has access to him at the press conferences, but with his popularity in Utah right now, whoever scores an exclusive with him is going to draw a major bump in readers. Ellie will be able to sell a ton of advertising while the story generates hits, and you’re going to be her golden child if you pull it off.”
“There are a hundred problems with this plan,” I said. “I don’t know if I can get the interview, and even if I could, what if I put myself through all that and Ellie still doesn’t let me drop the column?”
“That’s why you don’t agree to the interview unless she agrees to the trade. You’ll do the exclusive with Landon, but she has to let you out of ‘Single in the City.’”
“I doubt I can score the interview,” I said. “It’s a moot point.”
“You guys haven’t talked at all since you broke up?”
I shook my head. I’d been hurt and angry and not interested in letting Landon lure me back in as his unpaid assistant/merch girl/cheerleader. “I shut him out,” I said. “I didn’t want him getting in my head again.”
“He wouldn’t agree to an interview even out of curiosity? Would he really not talk to you?”
I hesitated.
She noticed and pounced on it. “He would! You know how to get past his gatekeepers, and you know he’ll talk to you.”
“I can get to him,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t mean he’d want to do the interview. Some people don’t like being used.”
She regarded me, her eyes shrewd and far older than her twenty-nine years. “He owes you,” she said. “After what you’ve told me about how he treated you, he owes you big time. Maybe a subtle reminder of that will be enough to get him to agree to it.”
I could read between the lines. “You’re saying I should threaten him,” I stated flatly. “I’d never air our dirty laundry. It would be an empty threat, and he’d know it.”
“Look, obviously you don’t have to do this. But for Ellie, scooping all the other papers and weeklies around here for an exclusive with Utah’s biggest celebrity would be totally worth putting the column on hiatus until she can replace you. It’s your choice.”
I slumped in my chair and stared at a few granules of sugar left behind by whoever had occupied the table before us. I pressed my finger against them to lift them from the tabletop and then brushed them onto the floor. Chantelle watched me move them a few at a time, but by the third pass, she grew impatient.
“You know this is your way out,” she said. “So I guess now it’s a question of whether you’re willing to deal with your ex to fix your job situation.”
“No. I’m not.”
Shrewd Chantelle reappeared. “Then are you willing to do it for Tanner? Because that’s what it’s going to take.”
* * *
After our lunch powwow, Chantelle returned to the office, and I called Ellie to tell her I was going to track down some information before coming back. Then I girded my loins, but only figuratively because literally doing that in public would have brought a whole new kind of headache involving complaints to the police and lots of pointing and staring.
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of the Bee. I passed Tanner’s car, relieved that he was there and not out chasing a story of his own. I slid The Zuke into a space and pulled the key out of the ignition, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel while I girded some more. You know, figuratively. My gut told me that Chantelle’s plan would work. I knew I could probably get the interview and that once I did, Ellie would make the deal: I’d get her a Landon Scott exclusive if she let me out of the column.
But the devil was in the details. When I broke off our engagement, Landon had texted, called, and e-mailed furiously for about two weeks. When I didn’t respond, his efforts tapered off dramatically. He probably got so busy with his Hollywood whirlwind that he didn’t have more than two weeks to invest in trying to save a relationship he’d been in for four years. That stung. Two weeks of effort. That was it. While I truly didn’t want to talk to him, it would have been nice to know that I took longer than two weeks to forget. Maybe the girls flinging themselves at him every time he took the stage during The It Factor finals made it easier for him to move on.
In hindsight, the proportion made perfect sense. I struggled for a year to get over him. He was good to go in half a month. That sounded like an accurate reflection of our individual commitments to our relationship in the first place.
I so, so did not want to sit down with Landon for any reason.
I ran through the other options that had chased through my head since leaving Tanner the night before. I didn’t have enough credibility yet to have a real shot at another magazine. I’d start even lower than my current feeble grip on the bottom rung of Real Salt Lake, and I’d have to pick up a second job again to keep up with my debt. I had a sinking feeling that the stress from the extra hours would lead to resentment of Tanner and cause problems for us. I could try picking up a different full-time job and write freelance articles on the side to build my résumé before I attempted to get on with another newspaper. This was the best option—if it weren’t for the minor detail of the whole country being in a massive recession. Random full-time jobs in any industry weren’t falling out of trees. If I quit Real Salt Lake, I had nowhere to land. I’d torched my safety net when I’d signed my resignation letter to Mr. Handy.
Then there was the whole issue of fear. I knew intellectually that Tanner didn’t expect me to quit for him, but even if I chose to do it without any coercion from him, I was afraid I might resent him for that too. Intellect can’t always override emotion. For me, it almost never can. Thinking through th
e options had left me with a handful of other really bad solutions.
And that led me back to Landon.
I hated the idea of contacting him. A job wasn’t worth it. I’d date a thousand toad-faced guys with mother issues and gradually earn my way out of my column on the merits of my writing before I’d ever sit down to discuss even the weather with Landon.
But if in a bizarre twist of irony, he represented my only chance to find a solution to my impasse with Tanner, then . . .
I needed to believe facing Landon would be worth it. I took a deep breath, got out of the car, and headed into the Bee.
When I pushed open the lobby doors, despite my fervent prayer, Giggle Girl still sat there, her hair as shiny and perfect as it had been on my last visit four months before. She offered me a plastic smile when I approached the desk, but no recognition showed in her face. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t limping this time.
“I’m here to see Tanner Graham,” I said.
Her smile grew brittle at its edges. “Is he expecting you?”
“Could you just let him know Pepper is here?”
The name jogged her memory, and her smile faded completely. “He’s not conducting any interviews today.”
I wasn’t in the mood for this. She was the first and smallest in a long line of hurdles I was here to clear, and I wasn’t investing my energy in her turf war.
“Call him,” I said, not bothering to phrase it as a question.
She shot me a peeved glance before picking up her phone and angling her back toward me. She lowered her voice, but since only her desk separated us, I could still hear her, which was probably her intention.
“Tanner? Hi! Yeah, there’s someone here requesting to see you . . . Yeah . . . remember that Pepper girl? The one who walked funny? She’s back. Do you want me to tell her—oh. Are you sure?”
I offered her a winning smile when she turned around. I think it made her madder. “You can go up. His desk is—”
“I know where it is,” I said, which was not true, but I’d figure it out rather than admit ignorance. When I opened the door at the top of the stairs, Tanner was leaning against the desk that sat in front of it, waiting for me. He straightened when he saw me and, with an elbow under my arm, guided me toward the same office we’d interviewed in. It wasn’t the hug and “I’m glad you’re here” I’d hoped for, but at least he had told Giggle Girl to send me up. It was something.
He ushered me into the nondescript room and repositioned the only two chairs so they were by each other instead of being separated by the desk. We sat.
“What’s up?” he asked. He didn’t sound upset. Just tired.
I stared at him for a full minute. Four months ago I had sat in this office, berating myself for not planning what I would say in my interview. Here I was again, berating myself for the exact same thing. I hadn’t thought out a smooth way to say, “I was wondering if you love me and stuff.” Coming to his workplace was idiotic too. Who does that?
Lovesick seventeen-year-olds—that’s who.
Not grownups. At least, not emotionally stable, fully functioning ones.
I sighed. “When I got in my car and drove here and then parked and walked into your office building and then made the receptionist call you and then told myself that I was being brave, I was operating under the effects of sleep-deprivation. I’m an idiot.” I braced myself on the chair arms to push myself up. “I’m sorry. I’ll go. Can you call me later?” I was halfway out of my seat when he reached out and placed his hand on mine to keep me there.
“It’s fine. Sit down. I wasn’t getting anything done anyway.” He took his hand back and shoved it through his hair. I could tell it was not the first time he had mussed his hair that day. Despite his crisp blue dress shirt and gray pants, he looked . . . rumpled.
I eased back in the chair, and unsure of what to do with my hands, I settled them in my lap, where they lay looking limp and useless. Or perhaps I was projecting . . . ?
Tanner’s eyebrow lifted, which meant, “I’m waiting.” It was one of his reporter mannerisms, where he did it unconsciously when his Spidey senses told him he wasn’t hearing all of a story. He would quirk that eyebrow and wait patiently until he got the rest of it. It was a powerful eyebrow.
“The army should skip waterboarding and just turn your eyebrow loose on prisoners,” I said.
“What?” he asked, looking startled.
“Nothing.” I clasped my hands and studied them then decided that looked even stupider than before, so I put them back on my lap, naked and forlorn. I cleared my throat. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said last night, and I wanted to say that I heard you. I really heard you. But, um. I have some . . . questions.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Shoot.”
“You said that you wanted us to reevaluate our relationship and make it exclusive. Why?”
He considered the question for a minute. “I know I don’t want to be with anyone else. Exclusive makes sense.”
The correct answer would have been, “Because I’m madly in love with you and can’t live without you. Let my love give you wings as you face down Ellie!”
However, I had not given him a copy of his script and couldn’t be too upset that he didn’t know his lines. “I don’t want to be with anyone else” was a start. I’d cling to it like a lifeline while I threw myself a little farther off the cliff.
“Okay, exclusive makes sense,” I said. “Why don’t you want to be with anyone else?” The correct answer was, again, “I’m madly in love with you and can’t live without you.”
Tanner’s answer sounded like, “We connect.” Because that’s what he said.
We connect. Another true but unsatisfying answer.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be with anyone else either, and I know that moving this relationship to the next level is totally up to me, but it’s a little complicated at the moment.”
His face relaxed slightly. “It’s good to hear you say that.”
“That it’s complicated?”
He snorted. “When is complicated ever good? No, I mean it’s good to hear you say that you don’t want to be with anyone else.”
I frowned at him, taken aback. “I told you that last night.”
He shook his head. “No. You said you didn’t want to go on the Indie Girl dates. You never said you didn’t want to be with anyone else.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t.”
We stared at each other in silence for a moment. Wasn’t this where the heavens should part and a ray of light shine down to illuminate our new-found love? I saw no parting heavens, only the flicker of a fluorescent tube that needed changing. My stomach churned. I wanted him to proclaim his love so I could take the dive and set up the interview with Landon, knowing that despite the inevitable, horrible awkwardness of it, I would have Tanner waiting for me on the other side. But he wasn’t declaring his love for me.
This was a very ill-conceived plan.
Sensing my frustration, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and caught my eye. “You’re upset. Why?”
“This isn’t how I thought this would go,” I admitted. “I’m having a hard time aligning my expectation with reality.”
Confusion played over his face. “What were you expecting?”
I fidgeted. “I don’t know. A better sense of how you feel?”
His confusion gelled into an expression of disbelief. “Wait. You think I’m being vague about how I feel?”
“Well, yeah.” I lifted my hands back to the chair arms and gripped them, preferring to give them something to do.
“Pepper, you ignored me for months. The only times you weren’t ignoring me, you were either glaring at me or making fun of me. Then I talked you into going out with me, but you’ve gone on a date with someone else every single week we’ve been dating.”
“But that was for work!”
“And I didn’t know that until yesterday! I thought it was just another wa
y for you to say, ‘Friends with benefits is great.’” His emphasis was frustrated. “I have been trying to read you for months, and now you’re dragging me away from my desk to ask me how I feel about you because you think I’ve been vague.”
I shrank a little in my chair.
He sighed. “I think I’m way too exhausted to have this talk right now, and I can see a bunch of people out there trying to pretend like they’re not lip reading this whole conversation.”
I turned to catch about four heads in the newsroom whip around to their own desks. I scowled and turned back to Tanner.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t being very considerate in coming here. And I’m sorry I’ve been so hard to read. I haven’t meant to be.”
Up went the eyebrow. “You haven’t?”
I sighed again. “All right. I guess I have. I need to get back to the magazine. Can we talk later?” He hesitated, and my heart sank. Or not even that. It deflated and left a heart-shaped hollow in its place.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, yes, I want to talk. But at the moment, I have no idea what there is to say. I need sleep. And perspective. And to think, maybe. I don’t know.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Mainly, I need sleep. My brain is fried.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know that’s pretty much my fault.” I stood up, and he followed. Just as the night before, I didn’t really know what to say next. “So . . .”
“So.” He captured my gaze and held it. “I don’t know how long it will take me to think.”
“I understand. I’ll wait.” Kind of. But with any luck, the plan hatching in my mind would cut down that wait time significantly. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next. Hugging Tanner in front of the entire newsroom was probably a bad idea, so I offered a little wave before slipping through the door to leave. I ignored all the curious glances on my way to the stairs, but I felt relief when I reached the first landing and the itchy feeling of having a dozen pairs of eyes trained on me faded. When I hit the exit into the lobby, Giggle Girl’s head shot up, and she stared at me, her expression disapproving. I gave her my most cheerful smile and headed out. What was that saying? “Smile. It makes people wonder what you’re up to.” Let her wonder. I was definitely up to something.
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