“Oh god…” Margo laughs again. “Is it obvious I’m struggling to say something nice about him? You go. Tell me what you thought of Kate when you first met her?”
“Kate was…” I say, leaning back my seat. “She was beautiful, dressed really well, really warm and positive. Day job, modeling underwear for a catalog we’re all familiar with, though I won’t say the name. Does charity work in her spare time. Not a bad package, all told.”
“Yeah. Sounds like the total package,” Margo says, and I study her face for a moment, wondering if I detect a note of envy in her tone, or if I’m hoping for it. I get nothing. Margo’s expression is warm, open, and without a trace of jealousy that I can see.
“I…guess,” I say, for once struggling for words.
Mia leans away from her camera and asks, “So about that laugh, Margo. How did you feel when you first heard it? Because I noticed in the footage that you kind of froze in place and started looking around with like, an alarmed expression. You want to comment on that?”
Someone hits the playback button on one of the other cameras, and suddenly the silence of the room is pierced by the shrill recorded laughter of Kate the underwear model.
“Oh god!” Margo says. “I thought that sound was an exotic bird at first. That’s why I kept looking around, I thought it was like a jungle parrot on the golf course or something!”
Kate’s laughter plays again, and Margo tries to hold back a giggle, but pretty soon we’re both laughing. It goes a long way toward breaking the tension in the room, and when we get back to the post-date chatting, our good rapport feels less forced, more natural.
“So where’d you two end up after the date?” Margo finally asks me, wrapping things up.
“We had a drink,” I say, watching Margo for a reaction, wondering if she’s as curious about what Kate and I did after we turned in our clubs as I am about her and Brian. She just nods and takes a big swallow of her coffee, casual as anything.
“I figured. Owen is a player.” Margo directs her comment at the camera with a stoic smile that I can’t read. “Just in case you all hadn’t figured that out by now.”
I laugh as if I find that funny, though I’m really just buying time to decide on my move here. I can’t tell the truth—that I let Kate down gently after the drink ‘cause the thought of Margo going home with another guy had me in a funk. But I don’t want to lie either. I guess I can pretend I was more into Kate, mention that we talked about seeing each other again (though for me it was more out of politeness than genuine interest), give the fans something juicy to dream about, and try to cut off whatever’s still going on between me and Margo.
“Kate was nice. So we’ll see,” I say. It’s a cop-out, for the audience, for me, for Kate, and for Margo, but I know not to jump when I’m on a tightrope.
“Mm-hmm,” she hums.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m just trying to figure out if you’re a real gentleman, or just really good at letting women down gently.”
I laugh and say, “Can I be both?”
Margo gives the camera a look.
“How about you? Did anything happen after the date with Brian?”
Margo smiles at the question and takes a deep breath, and suddenly I don’t care about the camera picking anything up—I just want to know.
“No, thank god,” she says. Relief floods through me. “But he definitely…tried to make it happen.”
“What did he do? Put a move on you?” I ask, sounding way more like a dad after prom night than a curious friend.
“Several moves. At once! Ugh,” Margo says, hiding her face in her hands. “I can’t really talk about it ‘cause I don’t even want to remember it. I think he just wanted more screen time or something.”
I look at the camera, noticing Tom’s smile peeking out from the side. “Just give us the highlights, Margo,” he says. “The footage we have is hilarious. We need your comments.”
“Gather ‘round, children,” I say. “It’s story time.”
Margo drops her hands from her face, sighs, then looks aside as she pushes on.
“So it happened after the date, when we got back to the parking lot—and just to clarify, the date was awful. Besides the pro golf thing, he was impossible to have fun with. I was firing questions at him like I was investigating him! I know the details of his job, where he’s lived, what he likes, what he doesn’t like—I could write the guy’s biography, I swear.” Margo pauses to ride the laughter from me and the crew. “But I don’t think he even remembered my name, to be honest with you. Especially ‘cause he started calling me ‘babe’ toward the end of the date. Like he thought all his holes in one were some kind of foreplay for me!”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t like being called babe? I call girls ‘babe’ sometimes. Is that sexist?”
“No, I don’t mind it,” Margo says, musing on it a little. “I get that it’s a term of endearment. So it’s fine, but only as long as I’m sure you also know my real name.”
“I don’t think he did,” Tom cuts in with a laugh. “But he sure knew the name of the camera I was using.”
“So anyway,” she continues, after taking a draw of coffee, “the date finishes, the crew is starting to pack up the equipment, and we’re out in the parking lot—just me and Brian. And he—” Margo leans close to me and wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to her side, “puts his arm around me like this, real close and tight. Then he goes,” Margo lowers her voice in mockery of masculine tones, “‘Don’t worry babe, I’ll call the Uber. You ready to close the deal? Fair warning though, my cleaning staff hasn’t been by yet this week.’”
“‘Close the deal’?” I repeat. “He actually said that?” Margo nods, a miserable expression on her face. “Well. My heart’s fluttering,” I say, leaning my head on her shoulder. A joke, but the way she so easily gets close to me, the feeling of that soft skin on mine again, the way she smells faintly of jasmine—all of that is real, and the last thing I feel like doing right now is laughing.
She takes her arm off me, once again glancing between me and the camera, as if it’s just another friend at the table now, a natural.
“I tell him I’m going back with the crew, and he just looks at me like I’m a kid and says, ‘Don’t be shy. I actually think you’re really hot.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, what the fuck? You were awful on this date and you think I’m going home with you now? Are you delusional?’ And he says…what did he say…it was so gross I forgot it…oh yeah! Something like, ‘I know you probably read playing hard to get is what guys like, but trust me, I don’t like it.’”
“Charmer,” I say.
“I know, right?” Margo says. “I had the exact same reaction, I was just staring at him like,” Margo looks, open-mouthed and incredulous at the camera, “I couldn’t even think of anything to say, but I guess I should have said something, because all of a sudden he…you know when something really bad is gonna happen, and you’re hoping so much it’s not happening that you almost see it in slow-motion?”