Bad Boy Boxset

by JD Hawkins

  Making my decision should be easier than this. The dream job, the dream city, the dream future. The critical respect I’ve always wanted, the meaningful, satisfying work I’ve craved for so long. A new life built around the things I’ve been passionate about since I was young—proper journalism, intellectual robustness, and a sense of purpose beyond the trivialities of TrendBlend. Away from all the bad boyfriends and boring baggage of my life so far.

  Except I’m liking my job at TrendBlend more now. I’m getting into the swing of the video stuff, and although I’m still not completely comfortable being an internet celebrity, it’s growing on me. Works seems a little more fun than it once did, more rewarding somehow, and I’m even getting into a groove—

  Shit. Who am I kidding? There’s one reason and one reason alone that I’m second-guessing, and he’s sitting right there when I arrive at my desk. He might be a jerk, but he’s still my best friend. Maybe even more than that.

  “Morning,” I say, trying to keep the lingering annoyance out of my voice as I pull out my chair and set down my bag.

  “Hey,” he says, sounding sheepish. “I’m sorry about last night. I lost my cool and was heinously rude.”

  “I don’t think you need to apologize to me—you need to apologize to your dad and Nancy,” I say, squeezing his shoulder to take the edge off my words.

  “You’re right,” he says. “I actually went for a long run after I got home last night and that gave me some time to think things over. I’ll give him a call today.”

  I’m fighting the urge to give him a big, squeezy hug when Agnes rushes toward our desk. “Hey guys,” she says, interrupting our chat. “Melissa wants to see both of you in her office. Right away.”

  Owen and I swap a quick look.

  “Sure,” I tell Agnes, who smiles before moving off.

  We get up, shrugging at each other.

  “What do you think it’s about?” I ask Owen.

  “Promotion? A million dollars, each?” he says, as we weave between desks on the way to Melissa’s office. “Or maybe just a request for another video series?”

  I roll my eyes and smile. “Yeah, right.”

  “Why not?” Owen says, as we near the door. “You seen the hits we’re getting?”

  Owen pushes open Melissa’s office door and I step through, immediately slowing when I see our lady boss leaning back up against the front of her desk, a tight smile across her face that I’m having trouble reading.

  “Shut the door please,” she says, voice cool as she moves back to sit behind her desk, her tone of voice only adding to my sudden sense of dread. Owen and I stand in front of her like schoolkids called to the principal’s office. “I want you to be honest with me,” she says, eyes flickering between the two of us. My stomach plummets. “How do you feel about television?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, not sure where she’s going with this.

  Melissa leans back in her chair and folds her arms. “The numbers for your vlog are insane, and people want more. It’s causing quite a sensation on the web, which I’m sure you’ve noticed by now. I think there’s room for the show to grow, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

  The look on Owen’s face is one of stunned surprise. “Who else thinks so?” he says.

  “I’ve had calls from three networks over the weekend asking about the vlog,” Melissa informs us in her calm, authoritative tone. “I haven’t set any meetings up yet, and obviously we need to discuss it first, but is this something you’re interested in pursuing? There’s a lot of money involved, whether we simply license the idea for the show or keep you two on as hosts, which is actually what they seem to prefer.”

  “Are you serious?!” Owen says, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. “Jesus! Of course we’re interested—”

  “We are?” I sputter. “But—”

  “This is fantastic!” Owen goes on, ignoring my hesitation. “We can do more dates. Tons of dates. I’ll date every woman in Los Angeles if I have to…”

  His enthusiasm sends a wave of nausea through me. I’m not going to sit around watching Owen date every woman in Los Angeles for fun and profit while I fake-date every slimy guy just to keep up. I don’t want him to date anyone else. And on top of that, I don’t want to be on TV. This isn’t where I want my career to go. This is, in fact, the furthest thing from where I want my career to go—and our relationship. Because Owen’s never going to settle down with me or anyone else as long as he’s the internet’s—no, primetime’s—favorite manwhore.

  He’s still pitching ideas to Melissa, completely oblivious to my discomfort. “Maybe for season two we can do a segment on second and third dates, even. Or people can suggest dates for us to go on, or I can do an episode where I just answer viewer questions…”

  My heart sinks so hard I can hear it thump to the floor, my skin crawling with cold sweat. Doom-laden emptiness fills me from the inside.

  “Sounds like we’re set then,” Melissa says, looking up from her screen. “When should we set the meetings? I think sooner rather than later is best, since we’d want to get in before pilot season and—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “I can’t do this. I won’t.”

  The sudden silence in the room is deafening.

  Melissa looks at me with a disappointed sympathy that is even more crushing knowing that I’m about to tell her something she’ll like even less.

  “Margo—” Owen starts, but I hold up my hand to stop him.

  “You can still do the show without me. I’m sure you’ll find someone else who’d be happy to provide the female point of view. In fact, Agnes might be a good choice.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Melissa muses.

  “I hardly think switching hosts in mid-stream is the right way to go forward with this,” Owen protests.

  “There’s something else,” I say. They both look at me. I swallow hard, then stand up straighter. “I quit. I’m putting in my two weeks notice today.”

  Owen’s jaw drops. “You’re quitting? Over the show?”

  I laugh, even though my heart is breaking. “No. That’s not why I’m leaving. I was going to tell you today anyway but…well, I guess it has to be like this.” I glance at Melissa, who—unlike Owen—doesn’t seem shocked at all. “I’ve been offered a job at the New York Month. I accepted it today and I’ll be moving to New York at the end of the month.”

  The only white lie is the part where I officially accepted, since I still haven’t called Cassandra back. But I suddenly know in this moment that taking this job is the right thing to do. Saying the words out loud just cements my decision.

  “Congratulations, Margo,” Melissa says after a moment. “I can’t say I’m surprised, honestly. I knew when I hired you that you’d be working at a place like that some day.”

  “Thanks,” I shrug, feeling both incredibly lost and incredibly exhilarated.

  I see that Owen’s about to speak, but Melissa continues, “Ok, listen. We’ll talk later about how much time you have left and what we’ll do with your workload. Owen: talk to Agnes or else start thinking about who else can do the show. If I decide to keep it going. We’ll table the network meetings until you’ve decided on a new co-host. That’s it for now.”

  Dismissed, Owen and I leave Melissa’s office and make our way back to our desk. When I reach my chair I feel Owen’s hand on my arm as he spins me toward him, his face twisted with anger and amazement.

  “What the hell was that?” he hisses in a low voice meant not to be heard, though his face is broadcasting that something’s wrong to the whole office.

  “What?” I ask, equally confrontational.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me about this job?”

  I open my mouth in astonishment at his tone. “Excuse me?”

  “You should have told me. Or at least mentioned it. Why the fuck would you keep that a secret?”

  “Why would it even matter?” I shake his hand off roughly and turn to look him dead
in the eye. “We’re ‘just friends,’ aren’t we? You’ve made that abundantly clear. And besides, shouldn’t you be gearing up to date ‘every woman in Los Angeles’ anyway? I’m sure if I stuck around it would only hold you back.”

  Owen grits his teeth and glares around him, causing the few people who have stopped to check out why we’re standing toe-to-toe at our desks to pretend they’re not watching.

  “I only said that to keep the dating show going,” he says low and hard. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you meant, Owen—the fact is, you can’t commit, and I never asked you to. But beyond what you and I are, or were, or might have been, this job could change my career, change my whole life. I’m not giving it up to stay here and stand by in the hope that you might change into a completely different person.”

  There it is, the ugly truth, the fear that’s been nagging at the back of my mind all along.

  I turn around and pull out my chair but Owen swings himself back in front of me.

  “Like you’re one to talk about commitments?” he says, voice louder now, a silence across the rest of the office indicating we’re the main show. “Were you just having as much fun as you could until you up and moved two thousand miles away? And exactly which part of hiding your plan to make a life-changing career move and relocate across the country qualifies as being a good friend?”

  “It wasn’t a plan. I just decided.” I cross my arms, angry and defensive even though I know he has a point. “Besides, it’s not like I actually believed I might mean more to you than any of the other women you date.” I’m lying. I know what we had was more than that. Or maybe I just wanted it to be.

  I feel a friendly arm wrap around my shoulders and pull me away, see Tom do the same to Owen.

  “Hey guys,” Agnes says soothingly beside me. “Let’s cool it, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Tom says, “maybe this isn’t the place to be having this conversation, huh?”

  I let Agnes guide me out of the offices, not because I’m suddenly embarrassed, or self-conscious about all the people around us, but because there’s nothing more to say.

  19

  Owen

  Karma’s got a hell of a kick to it.

  The last time I saw Margo, the office had thrown a going-away party and set out some drinks and cake for her. In between all the congratulations and eager questions she got from our coworkers, she and I only managed to exchange a few words. Polite, formal, empty words—as if Margo was trying to make me understand what ‘meaningless’ really means.

  Then she was gone. And since then it’s been numbness all the way.

  I sit at my desk, write my pieces, and go home. I barely notice the frosty responses I get from some of my female colleagues who obviously heard my blow-out fight with Margo that day we argued at our desk and took Margo’s side. I don’t even have the energy to respond to Brad’s snide comments—it’s that bad.

  I tell Melissa to table the TV network meetings indefinitely and keep up the dating vlog with Davina as my partner, but it gets harder and harder to feign any kind of charm or interest in my dates, and Davina’s idea of good on-camera chemistry is having the other person laugh at her risqué humor. Sure I go through the motions, make believe I’m still the Owen everybody knows, but the truth is that work actually feels like work now, and I’m starting to use the word ‘life’ with more negative connotations than positive.

  My phone blows up with texts every day. Messaging Manny that ‘I’m not feeling it tonight’ can only keep him away for so long, and every time I see another girl’s name pop up on my screen, I just toss my phone away without reading it.

  Even my own apartment just feels like an extension of memories with her. I can’t stand in the kitchen without remembering that moment she was bent over it, can’t sit in my chair without remembering how she turned up that night in that dress, can’t sleep in my bed without remembering how she looked while she was sleeping.

  The longer it goes on, the more the memories sour. The more I cringe when I remember what I said to her. The more I hate myself for telling Melissa those things in front of her. The more my dating vlog feels like a pathetic reason to have done those things. Nothing makes you more empathetic to other people than losing them.

  I’m at home drinking whiskey in my chair one night, zoning out in front of some Netflix marathon, when I’m startled by the sound of thunder. The muffled sound of someone shouting ‘Dude!’ over and over again. I wince as the thumping continues.

  “Dude!”

  “Alright, alright!” I shout, as sensations attack me at once. My whiskey-dry throat, the cramp of sitting motionless for so long in a sofa-chair, the fatigue of the work week catching up to me. I put my glass down, get up, and walk to the door.

  “Dude!”

  “Alright!” I call again, just before I open the door to Manny.

  He pushes through like a bull at an open gate, marching into my apartment before turning around and spreading his arms.

  “Where the fuck you been, dude? I came to check for your dead body, man.”

  I close the door and rub my eyes. “I’ve been working,” I mumble, as I move past him back into the living room, directly seeking the whiskey bottle.

  “Damn!” Manny says, as I try to extract the last drops from the bottle hopelessly. “You look like shit.”

  “Thank you,” I moan, dropping myself back into the chair.

  Manny looks at me as if he’s watching the most tragic ending he’s ever seen, then shakes his head slowly. “I knew it,” he says. “I told you this would happen.”

  “Keep going. You’re saying all the right things, Manny.”

  He frowns. “What do you want me to say? That you were right? Look at you, do you feel like you were right?”

  I screw my face up at him. “You don’t even know what happened.”

  “Oh I know what happened,” Manny says, as he stretches himself out on my couch, sneakers and all. “You went and fell in love is what happened.”

  “I didn’t fall in love.”

  Manny laughs hard. “You still telling yourself that? Dude, the longer you keep that up the worse it’s gonna get.”

  I stand up and move toward my liquor cabinet. “You know, if you were a real friend you would’ve brought food,” I say, as I start pulling out bottles looking for one that isn’t empty.

  “Oh sure,” Manny says sarcastically. “Comfort eating yourself fat is really gonna win her back.”

  I stop sniffing at a strange brown liquid I don’t recognize to say, “Who says I want her back?”

  “You serious, bro?” Manny says, looking at me in confusion. “You’re sitting around your apartment avoiding my calls and drinking alone while you watch Starsky & Hutch reruns and you still haven’t realized that much, even?”

  I take a sip of the brown liquid, wince hard at how disgusting it is, then take a bigger swig anyway before carrying it back to my chair.

  “What is there to realize?” I say adamantly. “I’ve got a hundred women blowing up my phone every day. I’m in a city of the most beautiful girls in the world. I got a good body, a great job, money in the bank, and gas in the tank. The fuck do I need her for?”

  The bravado lasts about as long as it takes for Manny to sigh loudly and ask, “What happened?”

  I stare the bottle in my lap, take another sip of the disgusting, abrasive liquid, then level with my best friend. “She got a job in New York. And she took it.”

  Manny nods. “Uh huh. And what would she say happened? ‘Cause I sense there’s some pieces missing.”

  I shoot him a look to show I don’t get what he means.

  “Two sides to every story, bro,” he says, stretching himself out a little more on the couch. “That’s what you say happened. What would she say?”

  I shrug. “She’d say… I dunno…she’d probably say something like…I didn’t take her seriously. Didn’t take us seriously. And that staying here would be holdi
ng herself back.”

  Manny laughs again. “That sounds about right from where I’m standing.”

  I shake my head and swig again, the brown liquid already doing weird things to my sense of balance. “I don’t care, alright? It’s done. We’re done. I’ve got a dozen other girls ready to take her place. I’m sure she’s better off in New York anyway.”

  Manny looks at me with pity, then bounces off the couch and heads out of the room.

  “Whatever, I’m outta here. Glad you’re not dead, dude. You decide you wanna talk, you know how to reach me.”

  “Wait. Where are you going?” I ask quickly.

  Manny looks back, and I can see the deep disappointment in his eyes. “I don’t know who you are, but this ain’t the Owen I know.”

  “What are you talking about? Yes I am. I’m here, bro. I’m ready to get out there and get some tail, set some places on fire! Let’s go.” I try to stand but I’m too dizzy to get more than a few steps before sitting back down.

  Manny shakes his head. “You think I’m gonna go anywhere with you in this state? I’ve got better chances with a celibate priest as a wingman. Besides, dude, you’re lying to me.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Yeah you are. You’re sitting there, looking like a country song, every symptom of lovesickness, telling me you don’t want her back. Like I said—the Owen I know wouldn’t lie to me like that. And if you can lie to me, then fuck knows what you’re telling yourself. So I’m outta here. Let me know when you get your shit together.”

  My alcohol-slowed mind can barely think of a response before I hear the door slam, and then Manny’s gone, leaving me with nothing but the realization that—despite everything I thought I knew—he’s absolutely right.

  20

  Margo

  The offices of the New York Month run in stark contrast to those at TrendBlend. There’s no constant buzz of laughter and light-hearted conversation here. No milling around in groups or leaning over people’s desks to hash things out. The desk spaces aren’t shared, or cramped. Here, everybody has their space, and their space may as well be their own world. The hum is hard and fast. Terse, important phone conversations to a beat of clacking computer keys, breaking through the almost oppressively quiet office. Spend too much time away from your desk and people notice, though you can get up and leave without anybody saying anything to you. People get their own coffee here.