For the fifth time this morning, my phone vibrates loudly on my desk. I look away from the article I’m working on, check my phone and see—for the fifth time—that it’s my dad. I take a deep breath, consider answering it, and decide to hit ignore—for the fifth time.
At this point I should just turn my phone off, but Margo’s not back, and I’m getting a little worried. She left her desk about fifteen minutes after I arrived, and she’s been gone for nearly an hour now. She left in a rush, didn’t tell me where she was going, and didn’t even take her coffee with her. Either she’s been kidnapped, or something’s seriously up. She’s not the type to play hooky from work.
I look back at the screen and try to refocus on my article in progress. It’s nothing big, just a fluff review for the latest superhero blockbuster. A few low-hanging jokes and pithy metaphors wrapped around a review just edgy enough to spark interest, but just tame enough to appease the fans. I was supposed to review the new Triangles album—but I got tired of looking over at Margo and seeing her stare at the screen like she wanted to throw it out the window. So I offered to swap projects with her. Now she’s doing the review of what will probably end up being the best rock album of the year, and I’m stuck with…this.
“Damn,” I mutter instinctively as my phone vibrates again. I check it, see that it’s my dad again, and put it on ignore again.
He’s persistent, my old man. I guess that’s one good thing you could say about him.
You know, in a way my dad is the reason I’m sitting here, behind a desk, working hard and grateful for it. He’s the guy who gave me the strength to turn my back on my old hedonistic lifestyle, on the temptations and temporary thrills of beautiful women, glamourous parties, and bullshitting your way into both of them. He showed me how stupid it was to live like there was no tomorrow, how destructive selfishness is, how pleasure-seeking leads you nowhere but where you started. He showed me by doing it all himself, and by continuing to do it even now that he’s twice my age. I saw where my life was going and it wasn’t looking pretty.
I try to push him out of my mind by staring at the jumble of letters on the screen—thinking about my dad usually just gets me down, though writing uninspiring fluff pieces for the site is hardly Mardi Gras.
I look across at Margo’s empty seat, pointed at me, two feet from her desk since she pushed it back in such a hurry.
I finally picked out her next vlog date last night, sent it to Agnes to arrange it all and got the ok this morning. As much as it would have made for a great video, I couldn’t go through with picking a curveball—though I found plenty on the app. I was tempted to go for the one who had some pretty archaic views on women’s rights, if only to see Margo tear him a new one over the appetizers. Send him crying into the bathrooms for an existential crisis. Or even the guy who wanted a girl to dominate him, just to see Margo squirm as she tried to let him down gently.
In the end, though, something stopped me. I could lie to myself and say that I just didn’t want to be mean. I could pretend that I didn’t go through with it because I didn’t want to put Margo through that—even for the superficial benefit of the cameras. The truth is that I liked the idea of picking an undateable guy for her too much. I wanted to pick a guy so awful she’d come right back to me after the date, bitching about him and telling me all the ways she found him repulsive. A little closer to realizing how rare it is to find nice guys, guys who care, guys who can fuck like piledrivers and cuddle like your favorite stuffed animal afterwards, guys like me. Maybe I’m still just like my father, however much I’ve turned my life around.
The hardest choices are usually the right ones though, and I was beginning to think sending Margo on a doomed date would only make it more obvious to the cameras that the chemistry between us is more than staged. And besides, she deserves a chance at something real, something more serious than anything I could offer her right now. So I swallowed my pride and picked somebody I actually thought she’d like. Some guy who works in independent cinema; a little edgy, intelligent, and ambitious. The kind of guy she seems to go for. But like I said, it wasn’t easy, and the idea of another guy kissing her, putting his hands on her, made something dark and resentful rise up in me. It still does…
“Something in my chair?”
I snap out of my reverie to see Margo walking to her desk, her expression seeming a little confused at finding me staring at her chair like 2001 was being projected onto it.
“Shit, no. I’m just zoning out. Just remembering that movie I’m supposed to be reviewing is sending me to sleep.”
Margo settles in her chair and pulls herself under her desk.
“You want to swap back? I don’t mind—”
“No, it’s cool. Good to stretch my wings a bit from time to time.”
“Seriously Owen, I really don’t mind—I shouldn’t have made you take my—”
“I’ve already done half of it,” I assure her, giving her a big smile. “It’s really ok.”
“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.” She brushes her hair behind her ear and lowers her head a little bashfully. The warmth between us disappears in a cloud of bile, however, when a shock of blonde hair and cleft chin pokes itself above Margo’s computer.
“How do you two do it?” Brad says, each word marinated in so much smugness it makes me feel sick. “Every time I look at you, you’re talking to each other, not at your desk, or just fooling around in front of a camera and calling it work.”
“You can actually get away with a lot when you have a personality, Brad,” says Margo. “You should try getting one yourself sometime.”
Brad grins darkly, unfazed.
“Maybe I’m just not sleeping with the right people,” he says, anticipating a reaction.
I answer before Margo can give him one.
“Not unless your right hand becomes the CEO anytime soon.”
Brad sneers at me like I’m just a distraction before directing himself at Margo again.
“What happened to you, Margie? You told me you wanted to write for the New York Times one day. Said you wanted to swan off to the Big Apple and act like you were Patti Smith. Now you’re fooling around at mini-golf and performing for the cameras like a third-rate celebrity. Did you finally find your level?”
“Well, I found my rock-bottom when we dated,” Margo says, instantly. She flashes him a perky smile. “Maybe you just lowered my expectations.”
Brad’s veneer of smug victory usually ebbs away at this point. You’d think the guy would have learned that Margo can give better than she receives by now. Except the usual flinches, the usual loss of the glint in his eye, the usual stumbling over words signaling that Brad knows he’s beaten aren’t there now. He’s got something else.
“So confident!” Brad smiles. “But the thing is, Margie, I know you’ve got a secret. And I’m really bad at keeping them…”