The Gossip: New Wave Newsroom

by Jenny Holiday

  “Yes!” I shouted, because I didn’t want him to stop himself, to realize he’d forgotten to make me specifically say I wanted him to do that. I didn’t want him to lose momentum.

  He flipped me, picking me up and rolling on top of me, continuing to pound into me, but somehow managing to keep his hand on my clit. “Keep going!” I encouraged. I wanted him to come. I wanted him to feel as amazing as I did.

  But then, oh, but then…my exhortations became more urgent. My legs wrapped around his waist, almost of their own volition, to try to alter the angle slightly so I could—

  “I’m going to come again,” I panted, astonished. That had never happened to me before. I’d read about it in Cosmo, but, oh my God, I hadn’t known.

  He cried out, slumping against me but keeping his magical fingers moving. It only took a few more seconds for me to join him in falling over the edge.

  I lay there shaking, aftershocks rippling through me as he pulled out and dealt with the condom.

  Then he came back to bed and lay on his side next to me, head propped on one hand.

  “Shit,” I said.

  He smiled and nodded. “Shit.”

  Chapter Ten

  Arturo

  When I woke up the next morning with Dawn in my arms and a raging boner, I waited for the regrets to come seeping in.

  They did not.

  As she sighed and shifted, drawing my attention to her beautiful, makeup-smeared face, I couldn’t find one single thing to be sorry about. Probably we should have waited a few weeks until she graduated, but, honestly, I couldn’t find it in me to care at that moment.

  I had never had sex like that before. I sounded like I was in a fucking romance novel, but there had been something beyond just sex going on last night. Beyond making love, even. I’d had girlfriends I’d loved—or thought I had—and this…wasn’t that. Watching her ride me, looking deeply into her eyes as she surrendered to me even as she took possession of my soul, had been beyond my imaginings.

  She owned me. This slip of a girl owned me.

  And I was completely fine with that. So fine that I actually laughed out loud.

  It must have woken her, because she pressed against the enclosure of my arms. I released her and watched her stretch like a cat, all that gorgeous porcelain skin laid out before me. I wanted to touch it all at once, put my hands all over it, mark it as mine. I wanted her to tell me it was okay to do all that.

  She looked like a cat, too, when she opened her eyes, a small, sly smile spreading across her face. “Good morning,” she said, the feline smile growing wider.

  “I want to taste you again,” I said, seized with the need. She’d interrupted me last night as I’d been feasting on her. Not that I was complaining, but I needed more. More of her. “I’ve felt you coming on my cock, but now I want to feel you coming on my mouth.”

  She giggled, which I took for assent, but I paused anyway.

  “Enough with this continuous-consent thing,” she teased.

  “Eventually, we will move from continuous consent to singular consent.”

  “Eventually,” she echoed, and part of me wondered if I’d been too presumptive. I’d been so over-the-top with the consent thing because I was so wary of the age and power differentials between us and of the emotional wringer she’d been through this past fall. So many people in Dawn’s life had let her down, had “not seen her.” I wasn’t ever going to be one of those people.

  But I also wasn’t letting her go. There was going to be an eventually.

  So I said, firmly, “Yes, eventually.”

  She paused, and I prayed I hadn’t spooked her. But I didn’t want to pretend that this had been a one-night stand. Dawn and I had struck some kind of beautiful, unspoken deal where we called things what they were. We had always done that, in fact, had always spoken honestly with each other, even when we were at odds over some petty crime or other.

  She pressed her lips together, and for a moment, I thought she was going to cry. That she was going to get up and take her heart, which had come through its own eclipse, out of my bedroom and out of my life. What she didn’t know was that if she did that, she’d be taking mine, too.

  But then she said, “So continuous consent eventually gives way to singular consent. That means, like, once per encounter, right?” She was teasing me, trying not to smile.

  “Yes,” I said. “But of course it can be revoked at any time.”

  She nodded and touched me, starting at my abs and letting her hands slide up my chest. “And what about implied consent? When do we get to that?”

  “What do you mean by implied consent?” I choked out, trying to pay attention to her and not to the wave of lust she was summoning inside me with the lightest of touches.

  “Well…” She trailed off, tracing a finger lazily around one of my nipples. “Let’s say we were lying around one morning and you happened to notice”—she grabbed my hand and pulled it beneath the sheets, shoving it between her legs, where it found a glorious slick of moisture—“that I was dripping wet because I wanted you so badly. But maybe I didn’t outright say anything. I didn’t say, ‘Arturo, please go down on me.’ What would happen then?”

  Jesus, she was so impossibly hot. I could hardly stand it. But I was serious about my stance, even if I was overdoing it. “I wouldn’t do anything,” I said. “But let the record show that it would kill me.”

  She shoved the sheets down, kicking her legs free of them and letting them fall open. “In that case, Arturo, please go down on me.”

  So I did.

  And then I got up and made her breakfast, and when she grabbed the pancake batter from me and poured it into the shape of a heart on my griddle I thought, I love you. I almost said it too, carried away by the intoxicating feeling of the naked honesty that had characterized our recent time together.

  But the phone rang. I was prepared to ignore it, but when I didn’t move after the first couple of rings, she swatted me away and said, “Get your phone. I got these pancakes.”

  It was Manny.

  “What’s wrong?” I said, because I just knew. Dawn looked up, concern etched into her otherwise-smooth features.

  “Dad had another heart attack.”

  “And?” I pressed.

  “It’s bad this time. They’re doing a triple bypass this afternoon.”

  “Christ.” I walked as far as the phone cord would let me, wanting to look out the window for some reason but falling short. “Is he conscious?”

  “He was. They have him heavily sedated now because he was so agitated.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said calmly, like the world wasn’t crumbling around me.

  I didn’t even bother putting the phone back in its cradle, just let it clatter to the floor as I covered the final few steps to the kitchen window, which overlooked my snow-covered back yard. I pressed my forehead against the cold glass. This shouldn’t have been a surprise. And yet…

  “What’s wrong?” Her small arms snaked around me from behind, and she pressed herself against my back. I was generally an isolationist when it came to grief, usually didn’t want people in my face and in my space when shit was going down. But for some reason, with her, I didn’t mind.

  So I turned and said, “My dad had another heart attack. I’ve got to go home.”

  “Of course,” she said, her eyes widening.

  I shook my head. She wasn’t understanding. “No. I think I finally have to…really go home.

  She took my hand, led me to one of the kitchen chairs, pushed me back onto it, and climbed into my lap.

  “Go back now, yes, of course. Stay as long as you need to. But you don’t have to move back to Boston if you don’t want to, Art.” Then she kissed my cheek and added, “It’s okay to want what you want. Don’t let other people live your life for you—you’re smarter than that.”

  My breath caught as I recognized the words. They were the ones I had said to her when she told me she was considering a
master’s in journalism at the expense of doing something with her psychology degree.

  Then it hitched again as I realized the truth in them.

  And just in case I hadn’t, she smiled and brushed away a tear I hadn’t realized was making its way down my cheek and added, “If it’s true for me, then it’s true for you, too.”

  Dawn

  By the time Art pulled up at my apartment half an hour after his brother called, I was totally confused. Not that he was doing anything to confuse me, more that I was doubting my own sense of what was happening between us. I’d woken that morning with the residue of the previous night’s self-confidence still with me. We’d had a fun, sexy morning in which I hadn’t once thought about my problems. I wasn’t kidding myself that Art magically had the power to make my troubles disappear, but when I was with him, whether we were having sex or making pancakes, I was fully there. It was that same sense of relief, of respite, that walking and talking with him had given me earlier in the semester, but more.

  But now he was going to Boston. For how long, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure he was, either, but he’d hastily packed a suitcase and was going to leave directly after dropping me off. He’d let me comfort him, hold him, after he got the phone call, but he hadn’t said much.

  Anyway, it didn’t really matter how long he was going to be gone, did it? Because it wasn’t like we were going to ride off into the sunset and get married. He’d told me that night at Delta Chi that I’d rescued myself from Royce. I needed to do the same now—finish my semester and figure out what was next, without pinning any responsibility on him.

  I was struggling to figure out what to say as we pulled up to my building. “I hope…” Crap, I didn’t know what I hoped. “I hope your father is okay,” I finished lamely, because that much at least was true. The rest was all a jumble of conflicting emotions in my heart. I hope you come back soon. I hope last night meant as much to you as it did to me. I hope I won’t need you forever to feel good. I hope I can make something of my life. I hope… “Oh my God.”

  “What?” He spoke sharply, looking around as he pulled over in front of my building, like he was assessing the place for the presence of bad guys. “What’s wrong?”

  I couldn’t believe it. In my three and a half years here, he’d never once shown up on campus. Not for homecoming, not for parents’ weekend. I don’t even think he had called. I’d called him a few times—though usually when I needed something, I spoke to his assistant—but that was the extent of it.

  But there he was, standing next to his black town car, as out of place as you’d expect him to be in this neighborhood full of slightly ramshackle student housing.

  “Dawn,” Art said, his tone infused with urgency. “What is it?”

  I shook my head as if maybe that would clear my vision, sweep away the mirage before me. But no, he was still there, and he’d caught sight of me and was walking toward Art’s car.

  “It’s my father,” I said.

  * * *

  Daddy looked as out of place at my small kitchen table as he had outside my building. But maybe it wasn’t my apartment so much as it was…my life. My father was out of place in my life. It was the first time I’d thought of it in those terms, and it made me sad.

  “Are you going to show me what that is?” I asked, as I handed him a cup of tea I knew he wouldn’t drink. Making it had given me something to do with my nervous energy.

  He had been clutching an envelope when we pulled up in Art’s car. He’d passed it from hand to hand like it was something fragile when he’d shaken hands with Art after my awkward introduction. I hadn’t known what to call Art. I wasn’t presuming “boyfriend,” but “friend” seemed off base too. In the end, I hadn’t called him anything, had just used his name. And he’d been so preoccupied with his own father’s problems that I’m not even sure he noticed my lack of finesse.

  The envelope was now lying facedown on my kitchen table. It had been slit at the top with a letter opener. Daddy slid it over to me, and I flipped it. It was addressed to me. I wanted to take him to task for invading my privacy, but there was no point. I had long ago learned that my father did what he liked, and to suggest that he do otherwise was a waste of energy.

  The return address was that of Columbia University, which made no sense. I had no reason to be corresponding with Columbia. Warily, I slid a letter out of the envelope and scanned it.

  “It’s an acceptance letter from the journalism school,” my father said, with what sounded like excitement in his tone, but I wasn’t sure, because Daddy didn’t really do excitement.

  “I can see that,” I began slowly. “But I didn’t apply to Columbia.” I hadn’t applied anywhere. It was too late for the spring semester, and my mind was in such a muddle that I’d thought I’d get through finals and then worry about a game plan for the rest of the year and beyond—whether that included grad school or something else. And even if I had gotten my act together for spring semester grad school, I would never have applied to Columbia. I was expecting great grades this semester because I’d thrown myself into studying as a distraction, but they wouldn’t be enough to make up for my previous lackluster performance.

  My father quirked a smile. “You actually did.”

  I let the letter flutter to the table. My father was one of those powerful men who did what he wanted, took what he wanted. I had a flashback to the events of last night, of Art, another powerful man. But Art didn’t take things. He asked. He made you want to give them.

  “You can start in January.”

  “But that’s…impossible.” I didn’t know why I was protesting. Nothing was impossible when you were Edward Hathaway, media titan. Especially when what you were trying to do was get your kid into journalism school.

  “I showed the dean your story,” he said. “Both of them, actually—the one about the football player, too.”

  I shook my head. Part of me wanted to ask what Daddy had promised. Money? Access to jobs and internships at his outlets? Because even if the dean had been impressed, the J-school at Columbia didn’t let in gossips with 3.0 GPAs and no legitimate journalism experience to speak of. Even Jenny, the academic and editing superstar, said she wouldn’t get in without some real-world experience under her belt.

  “The dean was as impressed as I was.”

  I couldn’t have been more shocked if he had slapped me across the face.

  “You were…impressed?” I hated the way my voice sounded, all small and needy. But I couldn’t help it. I had gone through a straight-A phase in early high school—after my acting-out phase of late junior high—and I’d never gotten an “impressed.”

  “Those pieces were serious investigative journalism.”

  A lovely warm feeling started spreading through my chest at the praise.

  “You did them a disservice by calling them gossip.”

  “Well, my column had a sort of existing brand, see—”

  He waved a hand dismissively as he got up and paced my small living room while I remained at the table in the adjacent kitchen, stunned. “Once you shed that gossip veneer, get rid of the fluffy, emotion-driven stuff—”

  It was my turn to interrupt him. “But emotions were the whole point in those two stories.” I was trying to get justice for people who were suffering, I wanted to add, but I feared that to do so would make me sound humiliatingly naïve.

  He wasn’t listening, anyway. “The thrill of getting the story. Of seeing your game-changing words in print.” He paced back to the table and smiled at me, which had the counterintuitive effect of making me want to cry. “I have to say, I never knew you had it in you, Dawn.”

  It wasn’t about the thrill of the story for me, though. I’d begun the column for entirely selfish reasons, banking on it to make me popular. If I had come to take any kind of deeper satisfaction from it, it was because of its emotional nature. Because people were so fascinating—in the way they behaved in relation to their values, their secret yearnings, their fear
s.

  “It’s a two-year program, so by January of ’86, you’ll be able to write your ticket. I’ll put you on any paper you want. Or maybe broadcast. With some work on your hair and makeup, you could be pretty enough for TV.”

  Maybe journalism wouldn’t be so bad. I hadn’t hated some of the arts and entertainment profiles Jenny had talked me into doing over the years. I’d even gotten to interview a famous artist who was an alum—he’d been a virtual recluse and hadn’t granted any media interviews for years before he talked to me.

  “And nobody will ever expect such a small girl to be a hard-hitting journalist. You’ll always have the element of surprise working for you.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat back down at the table. “And maybe you’ll keep following in my footsteps. Do a decade or so in the trenches, and then you can assume an executive position at Hathaway Media.” He patted my head. “But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?” He slid a paper toward me, one that had been in the same envelope as the acceptance letter. “I just need you to sign here, and I’ll take care of the rest. You can pick up right where you left off with that story about that girl. Figure out what the next story is.”

  And maybe get it right next time, said my inner critic.

  He rolled his pen across the table, and it sounded like thunder in my ears. What was the matter with me? I was usually pretty fearless. I’d stolen Ace three—almost four—times. I’d talked my way onto the college newspaper, creating a niche out of nothing. So why was my heart beating so hard it felt like it was going to pop out of my chest?

  “I’m so proud of you, Dawn,” said my father. “You’ve got, what? Another week here for finals? Then you can come home.”

  I signed.

  Chapter Eleven

  December 20, 1983

  * * *

  Dear Art,

  I probably should have just left a message on your answering machine, but this felt like something that shouldn’t be done over the phone.