The Ex Talk(93)

“And I let you down.”

“No,” she says firmly. “Especially now, I’m so, so glad you had that time with him.”

I lean my head against her shoulder, and she combs her fingers through my hair until Phil tows her back onto the dance floor. I watch the couples as the sun dips low in the sky and the stars blink on, but I don’t feel like the odd one out, the third or fifth or fourteenth wheel. I’m not lonely, exactly. I don’t need someone next to me, and I’m not rushing to fill an emptiness. It’s that I want one person in particular, and it’s the person I don’t know how to forgive.

I used to think that without my dad, I’d never be whole again. But maybe that’s what we all are—halfway-broken people searching for things that will smooth our jagged edges.





35




Dominic eventually stops texting. I guess it confirms that whatever we had, it’s really over.

I don’t expect to miss it as much as I do, but the love lingers like a bruise, aching even when I’m not actively thinking about it. My past breakups never made me this miserable. Maybe it’s because I was forcing those guys to fill a space I thought needed to be filled, while Dominic slid into my life so naturally. A want, not a need.

Every now and then, Ruthie texts to check in. She’s still processing, but she says she wants to be there for me, wants to remain friends. I don’t think I could have forgiven myself if I’d torched that relationship, too.

I have enough savings to last me through January if I manage to avoid any major crises, but I’m not used to being idle. So I focus on my job search. If Dominic can be content working at Pacific Public Radio, then I can at least send out a few résumés. I don’t know what’s out there for a disgraced public radio host. I try a TV station, a few PR firms, a handful of companies looking for whatever the hell a content creator is. But I don’t get any bites. Maybe I’m unqualified, or maybe they’re googling me and don’t love what they find.

In mid-August, I get a text from Paloma Powers that nearly knocks me out of my kitchen chair.


Heard what happened. Kent’s a fucknugget. Let me know if you need anything.



Before I can overthink it, I message her back, and just like that, we have lunch plans for the weekend. I’m not sure what I’m going to get out of meeting with her, but I’ve worked with her longer than anyone. The rapidly shrinking optimistic part of me wants to believe she can help.



* * *



—

Paloma and I meet at a new restaurant she claims does the best panzanella in Seattle. It’s such a Paloma thing to say that it comforts me immediately.

She’s in one of her lighter shawls for summer, and her hair is longer, skimming the tops of her shoulders.

“I can’t seem to find a producer as attentive as you were,” she says with a sigh between sips of her turmeric juice. “But it’s going well. I thought I liked jazz, but turns out, I love jazz. So that was a relief. And it’s much less stress than what I did on Puget Sounds. That’s the last thing I want in my life at this point.”

“That’s good to hear,” I say. It’s strange, this lunch with her. When we worked together, I’d never have considered us friends. We never grabbed lunch. It wasn’t that I didn’t like working for her. I respected her, and there was a hierarchy. Or it felt like there was.

We both order the panzanella, which I’m thrilled to learn is a bread salad. It instantly becomes my favorite kind of salad.

She steers the conversation like a talk show. “Kent has been a sexist piece of shit as long as I’ve known him,” she says. “He hides it well.”

“I guess I was always quick to find an excuse for it, or I’d be afraid to say anything because, well, he was my boss.” I think back to the way he trusted Dominic’s opinion over mine, or how he’d ask a woman at a meeting to take notes, never a man. Because the woman was “so good at details.” He made it seem like some special treatment we were getting. “But it was so clear he loved Dominic, and I felt like I was second tier, even though I’d been at the station so long.”

“That’s how he works, the sneaky fuck. He’s overly nice to make up for the fact that he doesn’t fundamentally respect women. He might not even be aware of it—internalized misogyny is a hell of a drug. But that doesn’t excuse it. I’ve also heard him brag about hiring people of color, like he’s single-handedly solving this industry’s diversity issues.” She leans in conspiratorially. “And did you know that he asked me out once?”

“What?”

“Yep. I wasn’t out at work yet, and when I told him I wasn’t interested, he played it off like it wasn’t a big deal. He was head of the news department back then, and I was a reporter, and he started assigning me stories no one else wanted to cover. Stories so bland the station probably shouldn’t have been covering them at all, and then sometimes he wouldn’t even air them. I tried to talk to him about it, but he insisted I had to pay my dues. It went on for a year before I got tapped to host Puget Sounds—by the board, not Kent.”

“Jesus,” I say. “Paloma, I’m so sorry.”

“What made it worse was that everyone else seemed to love him so much, respect him so much,” she continues. “And because of that unspoken hierarchy, I couldn’t say a damn thing.”