The Ex Talk(77)

“I said I can’t.” The edge in my voice is too hard.

He holds up his hands. “Okay, okay. Sorry.”

I need some space away from him to sort out my feelings. My work life and personal life are already muddied, now that I’m texting him about my problems and meeting his parents, and I can’t have him in both. Casual has to end now if we have any hope of long-term success for the show.

When he drops me off after a silent drive, I don’t lean over and kiss him. I don’t look him in the eye. I’m not sure what’s going to come out of my mouth when I open it, only that I’m probably going to regret it, but—

“I’m not sure if I can do casual anymore.”

He pulls the parking brake. “What?”

God, don’t make me repeat it. But I do, and when I feel his hand on my shoulder, I shrink against the seat. I hate how right it feels.

And that’s the reason I have to end it, prevent something seemingly casual from warping my sense of reality when I fear it already has.

“Because . . . of my parents?” The confusion in his tone is evident.

“No. Not that. Well, kind of, but . . . no.”

I like you too much to keep pretending I don’t. I like you too much not to get attached because I’m already far more attached than I ever thought I’d be, and anything else is going to kill me.

“That makes a lot of sense.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I—I want to be able to explain it, but I’m not sure I can. With the show, it’s just . . . too complicated.” There. That can be my excuse.

He looks like I’ve just told him I’m breaking up with him—which, in a way, I am. His face is a mix of confusion and hurt, his brows knit together, his eyes wide. If I look at him a moment longer, I might try to take it all back.

“Shay,” he says, “let’s talk about this. Please.”

I shake my head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just—can’t.” And before he can say anything, I swing open the car door and head for my house.

I have to force myself not to look back.





28




Dominic has been a distraction.

By the end of the weekend, I’ve fully convinced myself of this. Ameena was wrong—it’s not that I’ve outgrown public radio. It’s that I’ve become complacent, letting Dominic and Kent speak for me when I have a microphone, too. I didn’t even stand up for my own idea. That was all Dominic. I was grateful at the time, but it should have been me.

Now it will be.

After a soul-replenishing cake tasting, which my mother rescheduled after the unexpected Orcas trip, I dig back into work in a way I haven’t in months. I camp out at a coffee shop, order a soup-bowl-size mug of chai, and clamp on my headphones.

We had a huge publicity push at the beginning, which I’ll begrudgingly admit was thanks to Kent. Then there was Dominic’s Saffron Shaw connection. I participated in all of that promo, sure. But it’s almost like I was so used to being behind the scenes that once I wasn’t, I didn’t know what to do. We have some loyal listeners, but our early buzz has definitely dipped. Nothing lasts, Kent said. I’ll prove him wrong. I’ll find our momentum.

He said we had a chance at PodCon—I’m determined to make that happen. The full lineup hasn’t been announced yet, and we sent over a handful of sample episodes last month. I’m going to make us impossible to ignore.

My social media following has scared me a little; even the blue checkmark by my name is something I’m not used to seeing. Still, I open Twitter and search our hashtag. People are still talking about us, discovering us every day. Our subscriber numbers have continued to climb.

I tweet out a shameless request for listeners to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher. It gets twenty, thirty, fifty retweets within a few minutes, and it’s hard to ignore the thrill of validation that brings me. I add a form on our section of the PPR website encouraging listeners to submit their dating stories, and I tweet that out, too.

Then I listen back to our most popular episodes, pull quotes from our guests, turn them into graphics for social media that Ruthie can post on our official Twitter and Instagram accounts this week. No—I’ll do it. I schedule the tweets and posts, spacing them out so we don’t bombard anyone.

I scroll through my friends lists, looking for people who have a connection to something bigger—former Pacific Public Radio employees who got snapped up by NPR, acquaintances with podcasts of their own. I send about a dozen messages. Hell, I even reach out to producers of some of the biggest dating podcasts, and I go back on social media and promote the shit out of their upcoming episodes.

It’s not glamorous work, but radio often isn’t. We don’t see the people painstakingly stitching audio clips together, waiting for files to upload, refreshing their subscriber numbers. We see the shows that take off beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, the Serials and the My Favorite Murders and the podcasts hosted by whichever celebrity decided to start their own podcast that week.

Fortunately, I’m no stranger to the unglamorous, to the behind-the-scenes. I’ve been there for ten years. I’m producer-ing the shit out of this, and if there’s anything I know for certain, it’s that I was a damn good producer.