The Ex Talk(52)

“Good.” He visibly exhales, his shoulders dipping at least an inch. Now he can pursue the someone he mentioned on the air, guilt-free. “Then if it’s not that—”

“Dominic. I’m fine. I’m spectacular,” I say. “Nothing to investigate.”

“I’ve never heard you use the word ‘spectacular.’”

“Better take me to the hospital. It sounds serious.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “I’m going to figure it out,” he says.

A ding indicates we’ve reached the fifth floor. I’ve got to talk to maintenance about how slow the elevator’s been lately. There might be something wrong with it.



* * *



—

“I always feel like I’m in the principal’s office,” Dominic whispers as we wait for Kent to make his tea. It’s some complicated five-step process. He explained it to me once, and I promptly forgot it.

I refocus on the meeting itself. What’s at stake is far worse than the equivalent of detention.

Kent walks inside with his mug, smiling as always, but it’s a little tight. “Well. I’m sure you two know why you’re here.”

“We tried to get him off the air as quickly as we could,” Dominic says, and it’s strange he says we when I was mostly silent. “We were near the end of the show, and I didn’t know how else to fill for time, so . . .” He trails off with a sheepish shrug. “Couldn’t we cut it from the podcast?”

“The fact remains that it’s out there,” Kent says. “If we cut it, it’s going to look like we’re hiding something. We have to take this seriously, do some hard-core damage control. People heard it, and now they’re going to be scrutinizing you more than ever before.”

Dominic runs a hand over his face. “Well . . . fuck,” he says, and I’d laugh at him uttering the word in front of our boss in such a serious meeting if I weren’t so worried about what’s going to happen.

“Fuck is right.” Kent blows over the top of his tea mug. “If more people latch onto this, if they call the show’s premise into question, then we are deeply, deeply fucked.” He sighs, and then: “I’ve heard murmurs. Nothing is a guarantee, but we could have some big things on the horizon.”

I scoot to the edge of my chair. “Big how?”

“Big like PodCon,” Kent says, and I have to fight to keep a straight face. “And there’s been interest from some exciting sponsors. Again, nothing certain yet, but do you realize how huge that could be for the station?”

I’m dying to know more about PodCon, about those potential sponsors, but the show’s integrity—or lack thereof—is the more pressing issue. “We could . . . stage some photos from the relationship?” I wince even as I suggest it. More lying. It reminds me that anything good I feel about the show is accompanied by this disappointed voice that sometimes sounds like Ameena and sometimes like my dad.

It’s a bit of a relief when Kent shakes his head. “It’s not a matter of creating evidence,” he says. “It’s in the way you two talk to each other. It’s almost too scripted. Too staged. I can hear it sometimes, too. And I know part of this is on me. I’m the one who encouraged this, and neither of you had solid on-air experience yet. But we looked through some listener feedback, and it turns out some of them also feel the show was a little too carefully choreographed, which makes me worry it seems as though you two don’t know each other well enough. Which, again, to be fair, you don’t. We didn’t give the two of you much time to get acquainted with each other, on top of creating both your relationship and your breakup.”

Dominic and I are quiet for a few seconds. Kent’s admonishing us, but not blaming us?

“I don’t understand what you’re asking of us, then,” Dominic says, once again proving he has more courage than I do when it comes to our boss. He makes no attempt to curb his frustration, while I’m always eager to please Kent any way I can. Is it because he’s been Kent’s favorite since the beginning? Why, then, did Kent text me about this meeting and not both of us?

“This is what we’re gonna do,” Kent says. He gestures to the two of us, though we’re the only two in the room. “You two are going to spend the night together.”

I practically leap out of the chair. “Excuse me?”

“The weekend together, actually. Clear your schedules. This is urgent. We rented an Airbnb for you on Orcas Island, all on the station’s dime. You’re going to spend the weekend together, and you’re going to figure this shit out. You’re going to make me believe you spent three blissful months as a couple. I want you to know how the other person brushes their teeth. When they replace the toilet paper, if it’s hanging over or under. If they snore. What they look like when they first wake up in the morning. I want you to know every fucking thing about each other so we don’t get into another mess like this.”

His words render me speechless. My jaw doesn’t just drop to the floor—it hits the basement parking garage. Kent returns to his tea, deadly serious. He’s always been a take-no-prisoners kind of boss, but one with a considerable amount of empathy. This . . . this is something different entirely.

I’m afraid to even look at Dominic, let alone spend a whole weekend with him.