by Tia Souders
Sound familiar? Have enough of this archaic thinking, ladies?
I’m here to tell you, don’t give into the pressure.
“He sounded hot.” Caroline popped her gum and wiggled her brows, pulling Marti from her thoughts.
Marti arched a brow, refusing to respond because any confirmation of Logan’s level of hotness would result in badgering. And she hated badgering.
“Hot men are the worst,” Mel said, appearing from around the corner. She leaned against the opening to Marti’s cubicle and offered her a fist bump, which Marti returned with gratitude.
“What she said.” Marti hooked a thumb at her.
“Ugh. Whatever. At least he was interesting,” Caroline muttered.
“I’ll give you that. He definitely scored higher on the Richter scale of men than the last dozen or so duds, but that’s not saying much.”
“I still don’t understand why you don’t just find a nice guy to settle down with.”
“And miss out on all the piquant material for my column?” Marti looked up at her friend, who would forever be a hopeless romantic, and winked. “Now, where’s the fun in that?”
“Well, if I could find a man in this city who actually wanted a relationship like Logan, I would scoop him up and never let him out of my sight.”
“We know,” Marti and Mel said in unison, laughing.
Caroline huffed and turned back to the view. “Forgot one.” She pointed to another ceiling tile and popped an almond in her mouth as the contractor shifted his focus to the new area. “There’s a bit of water-staining on that one, as well.” She motioned to another section with a micro-sized rust spot.
Penny from marketing poked her head around Marti’s cubicle. “Think we could bust a pipe in the ladies room while we’re at it?”
Caroline pursed her lips, as if considering this new idea. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Thank you, water leak,” Mel watched in awe.
“Not you too.” Marti groaned. “You’re shameful.”
“Hey, I might not want a man in my life, but I can still enjoy a nice view when I see one.”
“Huddle in two!” Blue’s voice boomed across the office out of nowhere.
Marti jerked, nearly toppling out of her chair. When she failed to catch her balance, she knocked the mug of pencils off her desk, making Caroline spill her coffee all over her blouse.
“Why? Why must she sneak up on us like that?” Marti asked.
“She takes pleasure in making us pee ourselves.” Caroline wiped furiously at the stain with a napkin.
“It’s her thing,” Mel mumbled, but her gaze never wavered as she continued man-ogling. She just kept on sipping from her mug, staring at the man-candy in front of her, looking half-starved.
“It doesn’t ever startle you,” Marti accused, scooping her pens off the floor.
Mel glanced over at her with a raised brow. “Marti, I have three kids. Triplets. All three of them came out of my vagina in a matter of minutes, and now they’re four years old. You should see what they did to my body. Nothing startles me anymore.”
Marti cringed. “TMI.”
“She has a point,” Caroline agreed.
“You want real fear?” Mel continued. “Real fear is when you live in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with three kids. Real fear is when you realize The Triple Threat has been way too quiet for way too long, but they’re nowhere to be found. So you have to go looking for them. You have to creep around your own house, ear cocked, listening for the slightest noise because you just know they’re in there somewhere, waiting, watching, possibly plotting your demise. And then, finally, you hear a noise in the quiet. It’s usually behind a closed door. You stop and listen but breathing and the pitter-patter of six tiny feet are the only sounds. You know they’re in there, but you have no idea what you’re going to find when you open the door. All you can do is make the sign of the cross, wince, and crack open the door just enough to peek inside and assess the damage. Sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes the sight makes you weep. So, yeah. This—” She motioned to where Blue, their boss, just left. “—not so frightening. Beyoncé could come in here riding on a camel next to Donald Trump, clutching a Bible during the apocalypse, and it wouldn’t startle me.”
Marti blinked. “You’re terrifying.”
“The kids.” Mel pointed at her. “The kids are terrifying.”
“I’m never getting married or—”
“We know,” Mel and Caroline said in unison.
As if to punctuate her words, Blue popped out of her office. “Huddle. Now!”
Crap. Marti grabbed her clipboard, notebook, and searched for a pencil. Being the last one to the huddle meant Blue would put you on the spot, and you didn’t want that kind of attention from Blue. She had this way of clicking her three-inch acrylic nails as she stared you down and your brain turned to mush.
Really, Marti was just short of jealous where Blue was concerned. She was beautiful, smart, and a genius. She built PopNewz from the ground up. She had single-handedly spearheaded the digital magazine revolution while maintaining their print magazine. The company was her life. It had become so much more than popular entertainment news, fashion, and editorials in recent years. They were the place for entertainment and breaking news and an icon in New York. But Blue was tough as nails and owed her success to hard work and determination.
Marti’s hands moved frantically over her desk, snatching a pencil and notepad before she straightened and followed alongside Caroline, Mel, and the others milling into the conference room. It was their first huddle since Blue returned from her month-long trip to Paris—or as they called it, their month of unsupervised bliss. But all good things came to an end.
The fluorescents buzzed as someone flicked them on, and everyone spilled into the room. A headache bloomed in the back of Marti’s skull as she shuffled inside.
Everyone sat around the conference table, leaving the plush club chair vacant—Blue’s undesignated-designated chair. No one dared touch it. Except that time when the new intern sat there. Everyone tried to warn her, including Marti, but she wouldn’t listen. The PopNewz staff had sat with bated breath for five minutes, waiting for Blue to come in and pounce. They weren’t disappointed. Needless to say that intern didn’t last more than five minutes and left in a haze of tears.
The women settled into their seats around Marti, clutching cups of coffee, magazine clippings, notes, and various items they thought they might need for the meeting. Several people sat reports in the empty space their ruthless leader would soon occupy. Everyone waited with bated breath, unsure what Blue would have to say following her absence. After all, it had been a while since they had a staff meeting. It almost felt too long, like they had all somehow forgotten what these collaborative brainstorming sessions were like, and the only time since Blue’s return Marti had spoken to her was Friday morning via text when she briefly and coldly informed her she needed to get a boyfriend and “spice things up.”
When Blue entered, the surrounding discussions fizzled and died. As she made her way to the helm of the table, Marti felt something different in the air, a charge in the atmosphere she couldn’t quite put her finger on. But there was a definite glow, a twinkle in Blue’s eye that hadn’t been there before. She almost looked . . . happy or relaxed or . . . something.
Maybe Marti needed to book herself a four-week vacay to Paris. As if Blue wasn’t already impeccable, France had been good to her.
Blue’s hips swayed as she came to a stop in front of her chair, clearing her throat and lowering herself down. She crossed her legs and steepled her hands out in front of her while everyone in the room gave her their undivided attention.
“So, I have an announcement. And it’s huge.” She grinned, very unlike her when it came down to business. Then, with a flourish of her arm, she waved her hand around like it was on fire, her eyes wild, producing a collective gasp.
Marti flinched and covered her head like she was in a fallo
ut shelter, expecting fire to come shooting from Blue’s flailing hand. But when she peered around the room, instead of moving away from Blue, everyone seemed to be gravitating toward her. They huddled around her, straining to see through the mass. Caroline stood and cooed at her side. A horde of other women stared in awe.
Marti shifted in her seat, catching a glimpse of two women touching Blue’s arm in reverence, their eyes glittering like sparklers.
Marti frowned. Did she miss something?
Wait a minute . . .
She strained to see over the bobbing heads, trying to get a better look. She knew those expressions. She’d seen them before a thousand times. Usually in the break room when it was someone’s birthday and they brought in cake or donuts. Did Blue have a croissant on her arm? A chocolate crueler?
Marti lifted her chin as the growing crowd of women continued to hover. And then she saw it. A ring the size of a gumball.
Rolling her eyes, Marti flopped back into her seat, exhaling a steady stream of air from her lungs like a deflating balloon. Blue didn’t have a bagel bracelet or chocolate covered anything. She was engaged. Big freaking deal.
Why did women act all googly eyed when someone they knew put an anvil around their finger? If you asked Marti, it should produce the opposite reaction. Nothing like a life of self-imposed imprisonment.
She glanced over at Mel, who wore a bored expression. Any minute, she’d start snoring. See! Now, there’s a woman who knew how to react.
Marti gave Mel an imaginary fist-bump in single-female solidarity, then crossed her arms over her chest as if to ward off the bad juju of coupledom, and waited for the congratulations to subside. The women clucked like hens, asking a million questions about the ring and how he popped the question while Marti wondered if she could abscond to the bathroom. Maybe she could find some paint to watch dry. Or a pot of water she could stare at while she waited for it to boil.
When the room finally calmed down and everyone scurried back to their seats, Blue smiled and perched her ringed hand over her crossed knee for all to see. As if aliens on Mars couldn’t see it from outer space. It practically blinded Marti. At this rate, she’d need a pair of sunglasses to shield her corneas from the glare.
Blue smiled. “I met someone.”
No kidding.
Marti resisted the urge to roll her eyes again. The only thing stopping her was Blue’s knife-sharp gaze.
“It was a bit of a whirlwind romance, and we got engaged,” she crooned, fluttering her eyelashes like she was starring in a cheesy chick flick.
Whirlwind? Ya think? Good grief. Blue went to Paris, met a man, and agreed to marry him after only four weeks. What was she thinking? Marti made better decisions back in college when she drank body shots off that weird foreign exchange student, Lorenzo.
“We’re planning a small, private beach wedding in early June, to which none of you will be invited because it’s going to be very, very expensive. And very, very exclusive.”
Very. Marti snorted, realizing her mistake only a moment later when Blue’s hot gaze cut to her.
Marti’s cheeks burned under the scrutiny, so she did what any self-respecting gal would do and dropped her eyes to the pesky cuticle on her right pointer finger that she just couldn’t seem to rip off.
Blue cleared her throat and continued, “Ben is a successful broker. As you can imagine, I’ll be quite busy with wedding planning, and then we’re traveling to Greece for a long honeymoon . . .”
Behind her, Mel made a cross with her fingers and hissed as Blue droned on about wedding receptions. Marti bit her lip, stifling a chuckle. Gosh, this news was disappointing. Suddenly, she wished more than anything Blue had chocolate marshmallow fingers or something equally appetizing. Anything to sweeten the torture of listening to her drone on about wedding plans, babies, or whatever else she was yakking about.
Don’t get her wrong. Marti didn’t completely despise her boss. She actually found her quite clever. She admired her intuition and business acumen. At twenty-two, Blue started the online pop-news source that would turn into the multi-million-dollar empire PopNewz was today. And she managed it with an all-female staff. It was incredible.
Their magazine wasn’t just a lifestyle blog or even a popular news blog. It was everything wrapped in up in one neat little bow. Year after year, Blue successfully managed to keep her finger on the pulse point of the pop-news world, while winning the devotion and the heart of New Yorkers everywhere. The website now boasted information in ten different categories, anywhere from what celebrities were up to, who they were dating, to the latest in literature, top lipstick trends, the president, and Ghandi. Blue Suede—yeah, that was her real name—was a true entrepreneur. A business woman. A brand builder.
“. . . so we might be making some minor changes around here. Everyone needs to be on their A-game. Some of you I’ve already spoken to about this,” she said, eyeing Marti.
Uh-oh, the boyfriend thing.
“But know that despite my engagement, my work is still a top priority and now is not the time for slacking.” Her gaze trailed across the room of expectant faces, making her meaning known. “Now,” she said, “I would like to meet with the editorial teams individually and discuss what everyone has going on, but first I would like a word with Marti.”
Her gaze zeroed in on Marti, and she sank back into her seat.
Shoot, she was really serious about this boyfriend thing. Marti had hoped she was only joking or that it was merely a suggestion.
Guess again.
An hour later, everyone filed out of the conference room, but Marti held back, waiting in her chair like a man on death row—palms clammy, pulse racing, throat tight. If there was ever a time she had reservations about her position as a personal column writer, it was now.
Blue shut the door behind the last person to leave the room, then turned to her with a toothless smile.
Marti didn’t like that smile. It was the kind of smile you couldn’t trust. It was a serial killer smile. People who smiled with no teeth were hiding something.
“Marti,” Blue said, clasping her hands in front of herself. “We need to continue the discussion we started over the phone on Friday.”
Conversation? It was a sparsely worded text that said ‘I think you need to get a boyfriend.’
Marti nodded. “You mean about the whole crazy boyfriend idea?”
“Precisely.” Blue clicked her way across the hard floor, each snap of the heel a nail in Marti’s coffin. “The truth is, your ratings have dropped and your numbers have reached an all-time low. I’ve given it some time to see if they’d recover, if maybe it was just a fluke, but they haven’t. Each month, they’ve only gotten worse.”
Marti’s eyes widened.
Wow.
She was speechless.
“After careful consideration,” Blue said, smoothing her blond hair with a manicured hand, “that leads me to believe one thing. People are bored with you and your single act.”
Well, why don’t you tell me what you really think?
Marti’s chest constricted. People couldn’t be bored with her. No way.
For years, she had poured her heart and soul into her column. She had given it her all, built a huge fanbase for herself. She was a resident celebrity. Important. Wanted.
If people were bored, where did that leave her? Who was she if she wasn’t Marti McBride, The Queen of Single?
Her heart thrummed a staccato beat. What if Blue was right? Marti was like a middle-aged NFL-star. Her talent had become stale, all her plays too familiar. Soon, everyone would move on to the next best thing. The worst part was Marti hadn’t even realized it. She had been oblivious.
She swallowed, shaking off the sting of Blue’s words. “I don’t know what to say. “I’m shocked.” She said, wracking her brain for something more intelligent to say. “Sorry.”
Blue scowled. “Never say sorry,” she chastised. “It admits culpability. If you learn at least one thing from me, l
et that be it.”
“Okay.” Marti didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Now, if you’re done groveling, let’s get back to the matter at hand, shall we? I’m afraid you’ve become redundant. The other day I asked if you’d consider a relationship to liven things up, spark some renewed interest in what you have to say. Then you hit it out of the park with your article about the loser and that Logan character. Your comments were really high. It seems people were intrigued by the dynamic between you two. I think people liked the love-hate thing you had going.”
“It wasn’t really a love-hate—”
“How old are you, Marti? Thirty?”
“Twenty-five, actually.”
“You’re a woman nearing her mid-thirties,” Blue said, fluffing her blond mane. “You’ve written a wildly successful column. You’ve made a name for yourself. Your stories and personal anecdotes on dating give people something to laugh about, to talk about with their friends, and relate to. They look at your glamorous single life, and part of them wants to be you. You’re the It-girl. The woman to aspire to. You write one of our most popular, top-grossing columns. To readers, you’re a character. It doesn’t matter if it’s real life or staged. Right now you’re a character with no growth. And I think that is the problem.”
“That I have no growth?” Marti asked, trying to keep up.
“Exactly.” Blue pointed at her. “Throw this at them and you get them reinvested. You show them your character arc.”
Character arc? Marti’s brows reached her hairline.
What on earth is she talking about? This wasn’t a novel. It was her column, a column based on her life—real life.
Marti shook her head. “I don’t understand. What am I throwing at them?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention?” Blue threw her arms out. “This Logan character. A relationship,” she said like Marti was stupid.