Dating the Enemy

by Nicole Williams

  “Yet you believe in lots of things that aren’t real, so don’t dog me on one word that might not be.” Quinn turned toward me, dropping her hands on my shoulders like she was about to give me a pep talk at halftime. “Go get that promotion, Miss Arden. Show the world pink angora and runs in pantyhose can get the job done just as much as a smart pantsuit.”

  “Crap. I’ve got a run? Already?” My head twisted over my shoulder to find, sure enough, a run peeking up through the back of my suede heels, already stretching to mid-calf.

  “Forget about the run—you’re about to be offered a kickass position and have your salary doubled. I, on the other hand, have a sterile cubicle to return to, where I’ll be forced to write about why my beloved Mets lost their preseason game last night, after which I’ll check my social media accounts over lunch like everyone else and pretend I’m swimming in potential male suitors the way Molly Kennedy does every damn Monday after a weekend spent in debauchery.”

  I scooted close and lowered my voice. “Molly Kennedy might have a mess of male suitors, but they’re only in it for one thing.”

  Quinn nudged me. “Sex?”

  My head shook solemnly. “No-commitment-required sex,” I said just as gravely. “And that, my friend, is not the kind of male suitor we’re looking for.”

  I dropped my hand on the conference room door handle as Quinn mumbled, “No-commitment-required sex is better than no sex at all.” Before I could say anything back, she lifted her finger at me. “And before you go all preachy on me, you’re the one who hooked up with a total stranger last month.”

  “He wasn’t a total stranger.”

  Quinn huffed so loudly it stretched all through cubicle land. “Please. You knew him for a few hours before you let him do the kind of filthy things I’m afraid to repeat out loud for fear of being smote where I stand.”

  My cheeks flamed instantly. “We had sex. It’s not like we dog-earred every other page of the Kama Sutra.”

  “From the details you gave me, you two dog-eared every page of the Kama Sutra.” Quinn tugged at the ends of my nonconformist red hair. “Hussy.”

  “Jealous hag.”

  “Shameless harlot,” she crowed as she turned to leave.

  “Bitter wench.” I stuck my tongue out at her before opening the conference room door.

  Promotion. Dreams coming true. It was all waiting for me on the other side of that door.

  “Good morning, Mr. Conrad,” I greeted as I stepped inside.

  Mr. Conrad was sitting at the head of the conference table, waiting, but he wasn’t alone. My feet stopped moving before my eyes landed on the unexpected third party. A small gasp spilled from me when I saw him.

  “You,” I said, my hand forming around the edge of the nearest chair to keep me steady.

  Momentary surprise filtered from his face. “You,” he echoed, his address sounding like less of an accusation than mine had. His jaw moved as he appraised me, blinking a couple of times as though he were questioning his vision. I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was real either.

  “You two know each other?” Mr. Conrad’s voice broke through my haze of disbelief.

  My mind went blank, unsure how to answer that. Not even sure why this person was sitting at the conference table of the company I worked for in New York City. Had he tracked me down? Figured a phone call was too prosaic for the connection we’d shared that one night?

  But why at my office? And why would Mr. Conrad’s presence be required?

  The questions would not end, the answers remaining far out of reach.

  The room started to revolve.

  “Arden, are you okay?” Mr. Conrad asked, his voice sounding muffled and far-off, like it was coming through a dream.

  Snap out of it.

  I managed to crack out of it a fraction, just enough to clear my throat and work up some kind of semi-coherent reply. “I’m confused.”

  “That makes two of us.” Mr. Conrad waved his fountain pen between us. “Do you two know each other or not?”

  “A little.” His voice filled the room as his head turned away from me.

  A little? There is no other man on the planet who has more cardinal knowledge of my body than him and we know each other a little? Not the word choice I would have gone for.

  “And you two are on friendly terms?” Mr. Conrad asked, the slant of his brow doubtful.

  “Friendly enough terms, yes,” he answered again.

  Friendly enough terms? Is that what you call it? I decided taking a seat was a good idea, but I selected the one a couple down from him and on the other side.

  “Well now I’ve seen everything.” Mr. Conrad chuckled.

  “What are you doing here?” I smiled tightly across the table at him, reeling to catch up.

  He clicked his expensive-looking silver pen, his gaze aimed away from me. “I’m guessing for the same reason you are.”

  The head of the Life and Style department position. That was the whole reason for my meeting with Mr. Conrad this morning.

  “I’m here to talk about the Life and Style position opening soon,” I said.

  One slow pen click. “Me too.”

  The room went from revolving to spinning like one of those damn Tilt-A-Whirl rides I’d yacked on.

  “You’re a journalist?” I asked. “With what paper?”

  Mr. Conrad cleared his throat. “I thought you two knew each other.”

  “Not in the professional capacity, Mr. Conrad,” the pen-clicker announced, the corner of his mouth twitching.

  My eyes narrowed at him, not that he was looking at me to notice. “Not in an unprofessional one either.”

  “Hannah, this is Brooks North,” Mr. Conrad continued, not hearing—or ignoring—my comment.

  “I get a name.” My head tipped across the table at “Brooks North.” “Thirty days later.”

  His gaze floated to me for a fleeting moment. “And do I get one as well?”

  “Not until I figure out what you’re doing here, at my place of employment, sitting at the same table as my boss, looking at me like I’m the only one in this room who doesn’t know what’s going on.” I shifted in my chair, holding myself back from tugging at the waist of my pantyhose. The chocolate croissant was not settling well.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Brooks took a drink from the mug resting in front of him—from the looks of it, I guessed it was green tea. He was a tea drinker. One of those people. The kind fanatical coffee drinkers like myself did not consort with. I should have known.

  “You might know Brooks better by his nom de plume.” Mr. Conrad cleared his throat, the kind that was a stall, not caused from a tickle in his throat. “Mr. Reality.”

  My fingers squeezed the underside of my forearm, followed by a twist when I didn’t jolt awake. Nothing was happening.

  I wasn’t dreaming.

  This person, the man I’d slept with, was the Mr. Reality? Surely the fates couldn’t have been such cruel bitches.

  Brooks’s brows were drawn together as he stared at me pinching my arm. “What are you doing?”

  “I have an itch.”

  A slow smile crept into place. “One you couldn’t help scratch?”

  My fingers curled. He was screwing with me. No wait, not screw . . . messing with me. For being all amazing and wonderful that one night, he sure was letting his jerk flag fly today.

  Too good to be true: the words I’d used to describe him to my friends that next day. How tragically prophetic those words had been.

  “Hannah here is a bit of your professional nemesis, Brooks.” Mr. Conrad cut through our verbal volley, seemingly clueless to the tension rising to a head down the table from him. “She writes under the alias of Ms. Romance.”

  Brooks’s throat moved. When his gaze traveled back to me, there was a new glint in those pale blue spheres.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Conrad?” The speaker on the conference room phone crackled to life with Mr. Conrad’s receptionist, Shelly. “It
’s Mr. Davenport on the other line. He has a quick question for you.”

  Mr. Conrad’s eyes lifted to the ceiling, no stranger to the innumerable “quick” questions that the World Times’s CEO had for him. “Patch him through.” He lifted his index finger at the two of us. “This will just take a minute.”

  Mr. Conrad had no more than picked up the phone before Brooks popped off a chuckle. “You? Ms. Romance?”

  It didn’t really look like he was waiting for a confirmation, but I still gave him one in the form of sliding a business card from my purse. If I’d left one of those on the nightstand early that morning—instead of where I’d actually left my number—he would have known thirty days earlier that I was the Ms. Romance. But in my experience, there was no better way to exterminate the chance of a second date than by mentioning I was one of the most well-read romance journalists in the country. It was the equivalent of hinting at engagement ring preferences.

  Brooks glanced at the card, turning it over before slipping it into the pocket of that pristine suit jacket. Today’s was slate in color. That night I was fast coming to regret, the suit had been granite.

  “How’s that for irony?” he announced at last, going back to clicking his pen.

  I had to unlatch my jaw before I could muster up a response. “Irony? Not the word I’d use.” Leaning into the table, I checked Mr. Conrad to make sure he was still indisposed with his call. “Did you know?”

  Brooks’s forehead creased. “Of course I didn’t know. Did you?”

  “Do you really think what ensued would have happened if I did?”

  The corner of his mouth tugged up. “With the amount of gin in your system, I could have proclaimed I was Hitler incarnate and that wouldn’t have stopped you.”

  My eyes narrowed as I put a stranglehold on that Irish temper that had gotten me into plenty of trouble in the past. This man sitting across from me was nothing like the one who’d slid onto the barstool next to me last month. In fact, the two couldn’t have been any more different.

  Mr. Conrad plunked the phone onto the receiver before I could fire off a response. “Sorry about the interruption. Let’s get back to discussing both of your applications for the head of the Life and Style position.”

  For the second time that morning, my eyes felt as though they were about to burst from their sockets. My finger stabbed in Brook’s direction. “You’re actually considering him for that position?”

  A huff resonated across from me.

  “I wouldn’t have flown him all the way from San Francisco if I wasn’t ‘actually considering’ him.” Mr. Conrad gave me one of those looks I was familiar with—they usually followed one of my far-fetched article pitches, like “duck falls in love with fish.”

  “He doesn’t even work for the World Times. He’s a freelancer.” Based on my tone, that was an offense as grave as clubbing seal pups in front of preschoolers.

  “That’s because no one can afford to keep me on staff full-time,” Brooks interjected. “That’s what happens when you build a following like mine. More readers means more money.”

  I ignored the coat-tail rider. “He has no idea what the culture is like here. You can’t put an outsider into a role like this, Mr. Conrad.”

  “Go ahead. Keep talking about me like I’m not in the room. I’ll just sit here, waiting, while you argue with your boss, who holds the decision as to who will get the job.” Brooks clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “You can just keep paving the way for me to land the position we’re both here for.”

  My tongue worked into my cheek to keep from shouting something childish at him. I couldn’t believe I’d actually found him attractive. Sure, he might have been hard all over and built like an Olympic swimmer, with dark hair that contrasted against light eyes and a face that could make a nun blush, but he was the Mr. Reality. Which translated to him possessing a soul that could put Satan out of a job.

  I forced myself to take a breath before speaking. “Mr. Conrad, you can’t be serious.”

  “He applied for the job and is just as qualified.” Mr. Conrad pulled at his checked bowtie before continuing. “And he has more readers than your column.”

  There it was. The sore spot. Ever since Mr. Reality pounced into the editorial world—hot on my heels after Ms. Romance’s column started taking off, I might add—he’d been gaining a loyal, bordering on cult-like, following. Just a few months ago, his column had tipped more online reads, comments, shares, and likes than mine. Because he wasn’t riding in on my coat tails or anything.

  Sore. Subject.

  Once I was mostly certain I wouldn’t breathe fire when my mouth opened, I said, “That’s because it’s human nature to latch onto something negative over something positive.”

  Across the table, a sharp grunt sounded. “It’s also human nature to prefer to be told the truth rather than fed a spoonful of lies.”

  “You’re an asshole.” Temper alert. This is not a drill.

  In the face of my ire, Brooks remained completely chill as he glanced at the sleek watch on his wrist. “Eight twenty a.m.” He shook his head. “Sorry, you don’t hold the record.”

  “What record?” I asked, pulling at my grandma’s pearls as though they were strangling me.

  “Calling me an asshole earliest in the morning. That honor belongs to someone else.”

  “I’m sure plenty of women call you asshole in the morning.” My arms crossed as I twisted in my chair a little more away from the steaming pile of cocky across from me. “When they roll out of bed once the alcohol’s worn off.”

  Mr. Conrad was looking between the two of us, his expression drawn in a way that suggested he’d consumed too much cheese the night before.

  “Ms. Bitter might be a better title for you,” Brooks quipped, accompanied by another damn pen click.

  “And Mr. Delusional might be more fitting for you,” I replied, pulling out my own preference when it came to writing implements. And it wasn’t a fancy silver fountain pen that had likely cost as much as my first month’s paycheck working at the World Times almost eight years ago.

  Brooks leaned into the table, one dark brow carving high into his forehead. “And what’s your relationship status? Ms. Romance?”

  I felt heat seeping into my face as I squished the urge to shift in my chair.

  “That’s what I thought,” he continued. “Might want to take some of that relationship advice you deal to your junkies.”

  At the end of the table, I didn’t miss Mr. Conrad covering his mouth. What was the level beyond wrath? I was a writer and couldn’t find the right emotion to describe what I was feeling. A word had yet to be invented for the surge of fury jolting through me.

  “Now that we’ve gotten the pleasantries out of the way, let’s cut to the chase of why we’re all here.” Mr. Conrad planted his hands on the table as he rose from his chair. “Readership is down across the board. Physical papers are becoming obsolete. In fifty years, they’ll be displayed in museums as antiques.”

  My expression pinched together.

  “There’s no shortage of competitors out there, and we’re all fighting for the same scraps. We need something fresh, different. We need to do something no one else has done. Something that will grip the nation like an addiction, readers refreshing browsers and dashing toward inboxes for the latest update.”

  This was the point in Mr. Conrad’s spiel when Brooks’s face showed uncertainty.

  “We need ‘Man Walks on the Moon’ and ‘America Enters World War II’ and ‘Women Win the Right to Vote.’ We need something big—massive—and we need it now.”

  While Mr. Conrad paused to catch his breath, I jumped in. “I thought we were here to talk about the job position.”

  “That’s precisely what we’re talking about,” Mr. Conrad replied.

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Brooks cleared his throat. “I write an advice column. I’m not a big headline journalist.”

  “You wri
te an anti-advice column,” I mumbled.

  “Coming from the person who penned the dribble entitled ‘We Can Have it All’? I’m good with you thinking I’m wrong because our definition of right could not be more different.”

  “Are you two going to sit here and argue all day? Or would you like to act your ages and confirm I wasn’t wrong in believing either of you would make a fine department head here at the World Times?” For being a short man, Mr. Conrad had a way of making me feel small based off his tone alone.

  Both Brooks and I clamped our mouths closed and let him continue.

  “I’ve hatched an idea, our Hail Mary, our ‘headline’ that will go down in history. Except it won’t be just one article readers can’t help but fawn over every word—it will be numerous. So many it will put us back on top and secure our future in these unsure times.”

  I uncrossed and recrossed my legs. I didn’t have a clue what Mr. Conrad had come up with, but that wild glow in his eye told me enough. This was the man who’d rose to his height after pitching the idea that the World Times should charge an online subscription price for people to read our articles while every other paper was peddling their online goods for free. From the stories I’d been told by some of the employees who’d been around back then, the company knew it would either sink them faster than the Titanic or be the one thing that managed to keep the World Times solvent. Lucky for me, Charles Conrad’s wild idea had panned out.

  Mr. Conrad remained quiet, looking between Brooks and me like he was waiting for our own excitement to bubble up from within.

  “What, exactly, is this idea?” I could almost make out the note of uncertainty in Brooks’s voice, but it could have just been a bout of indigestion.

  “It’s a kind of social experiment.” Mr. Conrad’s stubby finger waved between Brooks and me. “And you two will facilitate it.”

  The gnawed-to-bits yellow number two pencil dropped from my hand. I didn’t know where Mr. Conrad was going with this, but I could sense the direction was concerning.

  “What kind of social experiment?” Brooks asked the question on my mind as well.

  “The kind two journalists like yourselves should find enticing.”