by Staci Hart
All of this did absolutely nothing to make me feel better about pushing him so hard.
He was angry, and he had every right to be. I was out of line, and I’d hurt him, going too far because he’d pushed me by almost kissing me. He made me uncomfortable, not because I didn’t want him, but because I did. And that fact scared me enough that I’d keep pushing the notion away in the hopes that it would disappear.
But that was no excuse. He stopped when I asked him to, even though I didn’t necessarily want him to. He’d done exactly what I’d asked of him, and then I turned around and pulled the trigger on him.
No one held the ability to press my buttons like Joel Anderson did. He could see through my façade like he had X-ray vision.
Once we wrapped, everyone dispersed, moving downstairs to get ready to film for the day. But Joel wasn’t there, and I found myself a little sad and a little relieved, because I needed to talk to him, and I didn’t want to do it with an audience.
I made my way outside and through Tonic’s door, up the stairs and to his apartment, where I took a breath, smoothing my skirt. And I rapped on the door, waiting only through a couple of heartbeats before he answered, brow low.
“Yeah?” was all he offered.
“Do you have a second?”
He seemed to think on it for a moment before stepping back, opening the door to make room for me.
I took a few steps in, not feeling welcome enough to venture any farther in, though I did sweep the space quickly out of habit. It was clean and homey, with couches that looked worn without being worn out, furniture that felt old without feeling outdated. It felt comfortable.
He closed the door and stood expectantly in the small entryway.
“I …” I started, feeling unsure of myself, of what I wanted to say. It was impossible to think with him standing there, looking angry and hurt. But I found myself, somehow, and swallowed the rest like a lump of sawdust in my throat. “Joel, I really am sorry about earlier.”
He didn’t say anything, just folded his arms across his chest.
So I kept going. “All I have to offer are a string of excuses, and I’m not sure any of them matter.”
“Try me,” he said.
I took a breath. “Well, we’ve made a habit out of having a go at each other, you and I. And when you came at me, came on to me, pushed me, I pushed back. I just … I pushed too hard.”
He didn’t say anything, but his face changed almost imperceptibly, just a little softer around the edges.
“Do you know much about where I worked before this?”
He shook his head.
“I was a producer for Fashion Forward. Have you heard of it?”
His eyes narrowed, and he nodded once. “The fashion designer show? Big competition?”
I nodded back. “That show … well, it wasn’t like this show will be. That show was built around drama, from the timelines and materials they could use to their relationships with each other. We’d put them all in this pressure cooker and crank up the heat until the lid flew off. And my job was to push people together and apart, to manipulate them. To make them fight or make them friends or make them kiss or whatever the show called for. To make it interesting.”
He shook his head, brows furrowed. “Jesus.”
“When I started there, I was naive. I thought I was walking into a musical, when really I was walking into a meat grinder. Within the first year, I realized what it would take to be successful, and for me to be successful, I had to check my conscience at the door. It changed me, it almost … split me in two — the old me and the soulless me,” I admitted, wondering why I was telling him so much, feeling like he understood, like he wouldn’t judge me. “Laney was my mentor, and Laney is a shark. It’s how she’s gotten ahead — being ruthless.” I thought back to the years I worked on the show, years of lying, exploiting, and I didn’t want to admit any of the specifics to him, not in that moment. “Joel, I’ve been trained to push buttons, and old habits die hard. But I crossed the line today, and I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m not being filmed. I put you on the spot, on camera. On your first time on camera. It was a dick move.”
“Damn right.” His arms were still folded, biceps fanned out, covered in ink. I caught myself looking and averted my eyes.
“So, what can I do to make it up to you?”
His frown shifted into a smirk. “So many answers to that question.”
I huffed. “Seriously, Joel?”
But he put his hands up and laughed. “I’m sorry. It’s just too easy.”
I chuffed. “Why’s that?”
He smirked. “You set yourself up for it, and you get too mad. Mad in a way you can’t hide. That blush of yours — it’s just about your only tell.”
The offending blush reared its head at that. “Good to know.”
“Anyway, I get it, about pushing buttons and all.” His face hardened a little. “You wanted to know about Liz? Well, that’s all she and I did — push each other. We pushed each other until we self-destructed, taking everything down with us. I don’t want to talk about her on camera, Annika. It’s not fair.”
I nodded and swallowed hard, feeling worse. “I get it. I do. But just know that it’s not something you can avoid forever. I’ll be more careful with my words, with how we talk about it on camera, but just know that Laney won’t let it go. And you’d rather have me asking the questions than her. So, think about it. Work with me, and I promise we’ll work together. Okay?”
He watched me — sometimes I thought his eyes were brown, but they looked green occasionally too, always with flecks of gold and blue, like in that moment as he assessed me. “I’ll think it over.”
“Thank you.” I felt the pressure in my chest release, pressure I hadn’t realized was there until it was gone. “So, are we good?”
“Yeah, we’re good,” he said, his voice light, the smirk back, shoulders squared.
I found myself smiling at him, wondering how he managed to affect me like he did. I ate most men for breakfast — they never stood a chance. But Hairy could smirk at me and pop off a snarky line and BLAMO. Involuntary bodily reactions like blushing and thigh clenching. I secretly hoped there was something about me that affected him like that. I then made a mental note to look for his tell, because if there was something I did, I needed to know what it was and what it did to him so I could exploit the hell out of it.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it. They’re just straightening the shop up and you guys will be ready to roll. I’ve got a PA down there all day to help you guys remember to get waivers from all your customers, and if they don’t want to sign one, they’ll need to be tattooed in one of the private rooms. If you have any questions or anything, just let your PA know and they’ll come get us, or you can come up. We’ll be in the office.”
He nodded. “All right.” He pulled open the door and leaned on it in a way that was effortlessly cool. “I’ll see you when we close up tonight.”
I walked past. “Sounds good,” was the coolest thing I could manage, which wasn’t really cool at all, and he smirked one last time before closing the door behind me.
I decided then that maybe I wasn’t fully recovered from my concussion after all.
Composing myself became my number one priority as I climbed the stairs to the control room apartment. The crew bustled around, some already working on editing what we’d gotten that morning. Joel was on one of the screens, pulling his monitor out of his ear, and my stomach clenched, hoping to God they didn’t choose to use that for anything. Ever.
We call it Frankenbiting — taking sound clips and video, chopping them up, then splicing them together to make it look like what we want. Whether or not it was in context didn’t matter, so long as the end result worked for the story we were trying to tell. And the thought of Joel being misconstrued sent an unfamiliar feeling of unease through me. I felt protective over him, and found myself frowning as I walked into the office.
Laney was on the phone,
her tone firm — though I didn’t register who she was talking to or what they were talking about as I sat down across from her, opening my laptop to stare blankly at my spreadsheet for that night’s schedule.
I wasn’t really sure how it had all come about, all the feelings I was having, all the things Joel seemed to bring out in me. Frustration. Annoyance. Amusement. Caring. I typically prided myself on not caring, keeping myself purposely separate. I’d venture to say that I hadn’t even let the men I’d dated all the way in. I didn’t trust them to show them all of me, and the only people who did know that part of me was my family. But somehow, I trusted Joel enough to care.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me. He’d done nothing to earn my trust other than be unabashedly honest and open. Truth be told, I saw a bit of myself in him, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. But he was somehow a kindred spirit, and I recognized that. And that recognition was mystifying and terrifying and almost unfathomable, mostly because it had occurred so naturally.
“—said everything is on track though.” Laney paused. “Are you listening to me?”
My eyes snapped back into focus, and I looked up at her. “Sorry. Weird morning.”
She smiled as she shuffled through the papers on her desk. “Yeah, I heard. Day one, and you’ve already had a blow up. Not bad.”
Inside, I cringed. Outside, I kept my face still. “It was too soon to push him about Liz.”
“Probably. Everything okay now?”
“Yeah, I just spoke to him about it all and apologized.”
“Whatever you have to do to get the job done. Keep him happy. Pump the breaks on Liz for now. You can find the cracks later and stuff them full of dynamite.” Laney leaned back in her seat. “So, what happened when he took you home the other day?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. He just got me home and that was that.”
“That’s all? I’m surprised he didn’t try to make a move on you.”
“Was that your plan all along? Is that why you pushed me off on him?”
“Honestly? I just wanted to see what would happen, how you would handle it.”
I gave her a look. “What’s your deal?” I asked, feeling prickly. “I’m not interested in him.”
Her smile faded. “He’s into you, and if you hook up with him, it can go one of two ways. Either you can use your lady bits to control him, or your lady bits will implode the whole thing. I want to know which path you’re going to choose.”
I fumed. “Neither. The lady bits are locked up and out of commission when it comes to Joel.”
She inspected her nails. “Yeah, I don’t believe that.”
“Yeah, well, neither does he, and you’re both assholes for it.”
“Listen, I’m only saying you need to be smart. If you’re going to cave, have a purpose, a plan. Because if you go into anything with him blind, you could take the entire show down with you. It wouldn’t be the first time, either. Remember Tina?”
Cold slid down my back. “Yeah, I remember Tina.”
“She couldn’t keep her shit together, and we almost lost the show. You’re not allowed to have feelings for him.”
“Oh, so now you’re telling me what to feel?”
She looked up, leveling her eyes at me. “Who even are you right now? He’s a meat puppet, Annika. You can’t have feelings for him, or you’ll fuck us all over, Joel included. Use your brain. If you want to fuck him, be my guest. But don’t go falling for him or we’re screwed.” She pointed at her desk, leaning forward as she said the word.
I broke her gaze and opened my vodka drawer, unable to really be mad. Because if the tables were turned, I’d be doing the exact same thing to her. So instead, I poured a shot and said, “Got it, boss.”
NO RAGRETS
Joel
THE SHOP SEEMED TO BUZZ all day, even though the crew was gone, save a lone PA who sat behind the desk on his phone. Everyone who’d had an interview that morning was zinging, high off it, and the ones who were interviewing that night seemed full of nerves. But I sat in my chair, mostly quiet, spending the day working, blaring The Black Keys’ discography on repeat as I thought about her.
Everyone was talking about my blow up, since half the shop and crew had been present for the outburst, but I wasn’t sorry. She was out of line, and I’d been so pissed, I’d barely been able to see as I flew out of the shop and upstairs. I’d planned on watching everyone’s interviews to be certain everyone felt comfortable and that no one was taken advantage of under my roof. But they were on their own after what she’d said. There was no way I could have sat there next to her all morning and pretended what she’d done was okay.
I thought about Liz and Hal, my past that I rarely revisited, never mind talked about, getting dragged out into the daylight for Annika to kick and prod. Especially since she was the last person I wanted to talk to about it all. In front of a camera, no less.
See, when my parents died years ago, they left Shep and I everything they had, which wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to start our own shop. We were kids at that time, Shep eighteen and just coming out of apprenticing, me twenty-one, married to Liz, and sure I had all the answers. Hal had worked with us at the shop we were at, and when we came into the money and opened Tonic, he came with us. We were friends, though the kind of friends based more on proximity than brotherhood. But we were friends.
I thought, at least.
The bigger we got, the worse he behaved. You know the type. The one who thinks he’s the best at everything and jumps at the chance to tell you all about it. The kind who drops names and gloms onto someone he thinks might take him somewhere.
Honestly, I thought Liz had better taste. She and I met when I’d only just moved out of my parents’ house at nineteen and I’d landed my first job at a shop. Liz and I excelled at two things: fighting and fucking. Typically while drinking. I asked her to marry me after a month of dating — pre-fighting. At that point, we excelled at fucking, which was spectacular. So we flew to Vegas and got married in the Chapel O’ Love by a drag queen.
Thus began the longest five years of my life.
Days were long at work, nights were long with cycle of drinking, followed by the fighting, then fucking. When my parents died, everything intensified until the heat of it was almost all I could bear. Shep moved in, and we opened the shop, and the stress compiled, making the days seem even longer until I felt grey and deflated. The fucking stopped. The fighting didn’t, made worse by the drinking.
The night she sent me to the hospital after knocking me out with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s was the last. I kicked her out and filed for divorce. She went to stay with Hal.
Smug didn’t begin to cover it. Hal had always been so sure he could do everything better than me. Run a shop. Handle Liz. So when he walked out the door, taking my baggage with him, I waved goodbye without a regret. I just didn’t know he’d be my shadow for the rest of my days.
It started with him opening his shop, modeling nearly everything after mine. He tried to shark my artists. Tried to copy my life. But in the end, a copy of an original is never as good. Like a fax, distorted by perception, made grainy by misinterpretation.
And now, here I was. I’d have to talk about Liz. On camera. I’d been warned, and I believed every word Annika said.
Annika.
I was still chewing on the exchange, just as I had been all day. We’d been having a go at each other, all right. And at the mention of it, I couldn’t help but think of Liz again in comparison. I’d done this before, survived a relationship fueled by gasoline and a hot match. Barely survived. And now, after all this time, the first girl to wake me up wasn’t much different.
Part of me wanted to justify their differences. Annika wasn’t Liz, not by a long shot. We pushed each other, but it wasn’t destructive. Was it?
After her display that morning, I wasn’t so sure.
The difference between Annika and Liz was that Annika was sorry.
She apologized and meant it, I thought, at least. Liz and I would just wake up and pretend like nothing had happened. Nothing was ever solved, and so the wheel would turn again and again, over and over, to no end.
But I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to push. I just wanted to be happy.
My head ached, and I popped some ibuprofen between clients, wishing there were a pill to set the rest of me to rights. Annika said she wasn’t interested in me, and that was probably for the best. The whole ordeal was doing its best to remind me why I’d been single for so long, resigned to be alone, maybe forever.
I took a long pull from my water bottle as I waited for my next job to walk in, and Patrick rolled his chair over to the short wall between our stations, his eyes somehow bright and dark, searching mine.
See, Patrick knew me, and he knew me well. He’d come into the shop near ten years before, all arms and legs, eyes sunken into his head, with a sketchbook under his arm packed cover-to-cover in promise. So I hired him, the quiet boy, the drug addict, and I gave him a place to stay, a place to work, a place to call home, which wasn’t something he’d had much of in his life. And in doing that, he became like a brother to me and to Shep.
I smiled at him to cover for the fact that I was broody. “Going okay over there?”
He nodded and leaned on the wall. “How about you? Doing okay?”
“Never better, man. Never better.”
He jacked a dark eyebrow. “That so? Penny spilled the beans about earlier with Annika.”
I chuffed. “She would. It really wasn’t anything to talk about.”
“You cussed her out in front of half the crew.”
I shrugged. “She had it coming.”
He laughed at that. “I’m sure she did.”
“Really, it’s fine,” I reassured him. “She just hit a soft spot, that’s all. Wanted to talk about Liz and did it in a way that wasn’t copasetic. But she came up after and apologized, so we’re good. And that’s all there is to tell.”
