Chapter 5
I stand outside the station with my mug of coffee, watching as Jackson tries to pull himself out of his car window. There’s a pale pink Volkswagen Beetle parked way too close to his Honda, making it impossible for him to open his door.
And I guess he decided the best way to proceed was to . . . climb through his car window.
“Jackson,” I call. “You good?”
He wrestles with his bag and tosses it over his head. It lands with a thud at my feet. His glasses are slightly askew, his face twisted in a furious frown. “I’m trying to get out of my car.”
I take a sip from my mug. “Is that what’s happening?”
“Yes,” he grunts, smacking his elbow on his side mirror. “It would be a lot easier if Delilah Stewart knew how to park.”
“Who is Delilah Stewart?”
“The woman who works at the news station.”
“That’s right.” I snap my fingers. “The weather girl.”
“The whirlwind of destruction,” Jackson spits. He wiggles farther out his window, his knee lying against the horn. We both flinch. “She has no respect for the weather and she keeps parking over the line.”
I glance at the ground. The pink bug is, indeed, parked over the line. Crooked. With the back windows still open.
“And there’s nowhere else to park?” I glance around the lot we share with the local news station, which is headquartered across the street. There are at least seven spots available, all without pink cars obstructing their doors.
Jackson stops wiggling around and gives me an offended look. It’s very hard to take him seriously when one of his legs is still sticking through the window of his car.
“This is my spot.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see your name on it.”
“I’ve parked here every day for years,” he defends, voice two octaves higher than usual. He drags his body the rest of the way out of his vehicle with a huff.
“You could have climbed out the back,” I offer, tilting my head to the side as he tries to slide his body free from the six inches of space between the vehicles. “Or maybe gone out the passenger side.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Is there a point?”
Jackson finally manages to free himself with one last grunt, bending at the waist and resting the palms of his hands on his knees. He wheezes out a deep breath and then stands, dark blond hair in complete disarray.
I should get to work early more often if this is the sort of entertainment I’m missing.
He points behind him. “She needs to respect the lines. That’s literally why they’re there.”
“The parking lines?”
“Yes. The parking lines.” He jabs his finger in the direction of the cars again. “Someone needs to hold her accountable for her actions. She can’t just flit through life, parking however the hell she wants. There are—”
“Lines. I hear you, buddy. No need to get worked up.”
He grumbles something under his breath.
“What was that?”
He grabs his bag from the ground and slings it over his shoulder. “I said, I think I liked you better when you were the grumpy one.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” I clap him on the shoulder and steer him toward the entrance of the radio station. “I’m still the grumpy one.”
Especially today. Maggie called at nine when my head was still buried under my pillow, screeching about a programming emergency. I can’t think of a single emergency for our radio show, short of that one hot dog commercial we had to take off the air because a guy named Winston kept talking about his wieners.
“You’ve been better lately,” Jackson says.
“With what?”
“Being a grump,” he answers, following me in, rubbing at where his shoulder bounced off the Volkswagen door. “You seemed happier earlier this week in the booth.”
I scratch roughly at the back of my head. “When?”
I know exactly when. When a woman got on the line and said she believed in magic and I thought maybe I could believe in it too.
Jackson raises one eyebrow. “The kid who called in. She asked for a boyfriend for her mom? You were smiling. I thought you were having a brain hemorrhage.”
“I smile.”
“Not like that, you don’t.”
“Whatever.” It doesn’t matter anyway. Whatever boost in morale I got from that call quickly disappeared during my next shift when Sharon from Federal Hill called in to talk about how her husband didn’t notice her new haircut. When I asked what sort of things she noticed about him, she told me she noticed when his paycheck was deposited in their shared account. My happy, optimistic bubble burst and I was dumped right back into the sea of sad, unfortunate love stories.
“Do you have any idea what this meeting is about?”
Jackson adjusts his collar. The scarf he wears every day in the winter is still hanging from the open window of his car, the forgotten remnants of a lost battle.
“I have no idea,” he says. “Maggie seemed pretty passionate though.”
“Passionate, overzealous.” I take a long pull from my coffee mug. “Boldly displaying the vocal capacity of a white bellbird.”
Jackson looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “What’s a white bellbird?”
“It has the loudest birdcall ever recorded.” I duck into the break room halfway down the hall and refill my mug, grabbing a cookie from the middle of the table. One of the maintenance guys has a kid who works for the Berger cookie company, and he leaves boxes in the break room whenever he swings by to fix the toilet that is perpetually leaking in the men’s bathroom.
“It sounds like a human scream,” I say around a mouthful of thick chocolate icing. “The birdcall. Not unlike Margaret on the phone at nine in the morning.”
“Hmm. That feels about right,” he says. I grab another cookie and dunk it into my coffee, shoveling the whole thing right into my mouth. Fuck, I love Berger cookies. The chocolate. The shortbread. It’s hard to be pissed about anything when I have a Berger cookie in my hand.
Jackson tries to grab one and I tug the box closer to me.
“Hey.” He reaches for it with a frown. “Share the cookies.”
I twist myself around, giving him my back. “No. I need them more than you.”
“Why do you need them more than me?” Jackson makes a frustrated sound, still trying to reach around me for the box. “Did you not just watch as I was forced to slither my way out of my car?”
“No one forced you to slither.” I shovel another cookie into my mouth. These cookies are the only thing going right for me and I’m not giving them up. I’m not. “You could have parked in any other spot,” I say, a mouthful of crumbs exploding down the front of my shirt.
“But I always park in that spot.”
“It wouldn’t kill you to break out of your habits every now and again, Jackie.”
“I’d like to break a habit right now and have a cookie.” He punches me once in the side and grabs the box while I double over, spilling coffee down the front of my shirt. I pull the scalding-hot wet material away from my chest as he scarfs down the rest of the box like a goddamned barbarian.
I raise both of my eyebrows, watching in disbelief. “Was that necessary?”
“You did this to yourself.” His cheeks are bulging with cookie. “You wouldn’t share.”
“Because you’re an assh—”
“Children,” a voice snaps from the doorway. Maggie, our station manager and the woman in charge of our paychecks, leans in from the hallway, one perfectly manicured hand bracing herself on the frame of the door. Her hazel eyes slide from Jackson finishing off the box of cookies to me, trying to prevent third-degree burns on my chest. Her eyes narrow. “If you’re done with your little spat, I’d like to see you both in my office.”
She disappears without another word, confident that we’ll trail after her. I yank some paper towels out of the ancient dispenser next to the sink and dab at my chest.
“Maybe she’ll put me out of my misery and cancel the show,” I mutter. My clothing has consumed more caffeine than I have this morning.
Jackson chucks the empty cookie box into the trash. “Or maybe she’s sending you to one of those fancy performer retreats so you learn how to turn that frown upside down. You know. Icebreakers. Team building. All your favorite things.”
I freeze. “She wouldn’t.”
Jackson shrugs. “She might. And you’d deserve it too. I swear to god, you’ve regressed to the emotional aptitude of a high schooler.”
“I’d give high schoolers a little more credit,” I grumble.
Maggie is waiting for us in her cramped but neat office, her hands folded on top of her desk and an expectant look on her face. Our audio engineer, Eileen, is already tucked into one of the corners, face buried in a tablet, headphones slung around her neck. Her braids are dyed different shades of blue, pulled back in a bun on the top of her head.
“Is Hughie coming?” Jackson asks, making himself comfortable on a chair in the corner opposite Eileen, hugging a red heart-shaped pillow to his chest. Smug bastard is riding the high of chocolate fudge icing.
“He should be along shortly,” Maggie replies, watching me like a hawk.
I forgot about Hughie. I’m always forgetting about Hughie. I sometimes forget about Hughie in the middle of a show and then he appears on the other side of the window with a sandwich. I have no idea how long he’s been an intern here, or if that’s still his official capacity. I’m certainly not going to ask Maggie. Not while she’s looking at me like that.
“Sit,” Maggie says to me, gesturing to the chair directly in front of her. It’s within strangling distance, which makes me nervous.
“Why?” I ask, immediately suspicious. I don’t want to be sent to professional development. Icebreakers are my personal form of hell.
She smiles like she can smell my fear. “Because everyone else in this room is sitting, Aiden. Don’t be ridiculous.”
I sit down in the chair. She doesn’t blink.
“You’re freaking me out,” I whisper.
“I have no idea why. I’m being perfectly normal.”
She’s being perfectly terrifying. Smooth, shiny hair. Shrewd, all-knowing eyes. Maggie is a force of nature in the body of a petite, well-dressed woman. And it’s entirely possible I have somehow pushed her past her breaking point.
“I didn’t mean it,” I try. “I don’t really think you sound like a white bellbird.”
A laugh bursts out of Jackson. He quickly tries to cover it with a cough. In the corner, Eileen’s lips twitch with a smile.
Maggie’s eyebrows tug together in confusion. “A what?”
“Never mind. What’s the emergency?”
Eileen tucks her tablet back into her bag with a sigh, a baby blue braid dangling over her left eye. She brushes it back with her hand. “Did someone loop the wiener commercial again?”
“No. No one looped the wiener commercial. It only happened once and it was an honest mistake,” Maggie says primly. Jackson snickers again. Maggie ignores him. “Have any of you checked the show’s social media accounts this morning?”
“I try not to,” Eileen offers. “Ever since that guy spammed us with like forty-seven thousand pictures of his feet.”
“God, El.” Jackson tosses the pillow across the room at her. “I forgot about him.”
“How did you forget about him?” She picks up the pillow and tucks it behind her head. “It’s burned into my brain. I have nightmares about it. I might never look at a foot again. I intend to bill the station for my therapy.”
I shudder in my seat. That guy was fucking gross . “Is that the emergency? Pictures of feet?”
Maggie massages her fingertips against her temples. “No. There are no pictures of feet and there is no wiener commercial. If you bozos would let me speak, I’ll tell you. We—”
Hughie bursts through the door. “We’ve gone viral, baby!” He lifts his arm and tosses a handful of confetti in the middle of the room. “101.6 LITE FM is back!”
Maggie leans up to high-five Hughie as tiny bits of colored paper float around us. I look around the room, bewildered. Jackson’s glasses are covered in glitter. Eileen looks like she doesn’t know if she wants to stay in the room or bolt from her seat.
I brush some confetti off my arm. “Back from . . . where?”
“From the edge of the hell you dragged us to,” Maggie seethes, all her goodwill melting to reveal the bone-deep exasperation beneath. I know she hasn’t been happy with me, but it is very clear I underestimated how much. “I don’t know what crawled up your ass and died, but you’ve been an absolute nightmare on the air lately. I’ve considered changing the name of Heartstrings to Heartbreak Hotel .”
I hold up both hands. “I’ve been better, haven’t I?” I glance at Jackson for support. “Jackson gave me a pep talk. I’ve been trying to be better.”
She puffs out a breath and collapses in her chair, more glitter fluttering off her shoulders. She looks like an angry, somewhat violent fairy. “Yeah, you’ve been better,” she reluctantly agrees. She picks up her phone and unlocks it, thumbing across her screen. “And I guess I can’t blame you for the quality of calls we’ve been getting.”
“Thank you. That’s exactly what I told Jackson.”
“Right, well. Regardless of who is to blame”—she scrolls and scrolls some more—”this is exactly the kind of attention we need.”
Jackson leans forward, trying to see her screen. “The show went viral?”
Her eyes flick up to me briefly and then back to her phone. “A segment of the show went viral.”
I don’t like her careful word choice and I don’t like the look on her face. I cup my hand around my jaw and wish I saved a cookie for emotional support because it feels an awful lot like I’m in trouble. Confetti notwithstanding.
“Which segment—oh.” Jackson leans closer, pressing his glasses up his nose. A smile hikes up one corner of his mouth and he lifts his head to stare at me.
I wish I had two emotional support cookies.
“Oh,” he says again, more knowing, raising both eyebrows.
I shift in my seat. I left my phone somewhere in my car and everyone is staring at me with varying degrees of amusement. “Was it when I threw the mug? I didn’t use any profanity this week.” No one says anything. “Did someone remix me to a Celine Dion song again?” Nothing. “I’d love to know what’s going on.”
“No, it wasn’t when you threw the mug. Theatrical as that was.” Maggie hands me her phone. “It was your conversation with the girl last week. The girl and her mom.”
Lucie , my brain supplies instantly. Lucie and her honey voice.
I’ve been hearing the ghost of her laugh since she hung up with me seven days ago. I blame sleep deprivation and the string of bad callers we’ve had since, not a single person as compelling or as honest as Lucie was.
It only takes two quick swipes of my thumb to realize that viral might be an understatement. Link after link is posted, the Heartstrings logo in a looping red font. I tap one of the audio excerpts and cringe when I hear my voice on the playback.
“That’s all right. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Lucie’s response, her voice clear and bright.
“No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t want to try. All I do is try. All day long I’m trying, and I’m so tired. Why can’t this be the one thing I don’t have to try at? Why can’t it be a thing that just . . . happens? I don’t want—I don’t want to think about what I should say or how I should act or . . . or have talking points in the notes app of my phone for a dinner date at a restaurant that I don’t really like. I want to feel something when I connect with someone. I want sparks. The good kind, you know? I want to laugh and mean it. I want goose bumps. I want to wonder what my date is thinking about and hope it might be me. I want . . . I want the magic.”
I read the caption that’s been paired with it:
Realest thing I’ve ever heard.
It’s been played more than 6.3 million times.
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
“Holy shit,” Hughie echoes with enthusiasm. Another shower of confetti rains down on us. I scroll through the rest of the comments while glitter slips down the collar of my sweatshirt.
brING BACK THE MAGIC. This lady knows what’s up.
She’s gotta find HER PERSON. Please?? I’m dying here. She deserves the WORLD.
Lucie sounds hot. Is she hot?
This is romantic AF.
Where can I send in my application? They’re taking applications, right?
Oh my god, I think I believe in love again.
There must be thousands of them. And not just people from Baltimore. Strangers from all over the world have weighed in on our conversation. Comments about love and what it should feel like. Arguments about the realities of dating. Well-wishes for Lucie and her daughter. People wondering if she’ll find her match. Even more people volunteering to be her match.
I swallow hard and hand Maggie her phone. My palms are sweating. There’s an itch between my shoulder blades. My brain is spinning in circles. I can’t latch on to any thought long enough to examine it.
“This is good, right?” I rub my hands against my thighs. “This is what we want?”
Maggie nods, still giving me a look that’s faintly accusatory. “This is good. This is why I hired you six years ago. We need more of this .”
“All right.” I nod. My heart is somewhere in my throat. “I can do that.”
Possibly. Maybe. Nothing about the call with Lucie felt like a programming choice, but maybe I can re-create some of it. Maybe we can do a better job with screening calls. Maybe I’ll work on some new prompts. Maybe with an influx of new listeners, we can make the show more interactive.
“You absolutely can,” Maggie says. “You will.”
“Sure.”
“I imagine it’ll be easier when Lucie joins you in the booth.”
I go still. “What?”
I watch as everyone’s eyes shift from Maggie to me and back again. We are the world’s most interesting tennis match right now.
Maggie leans back in her chair with a smug look on her face. “I imagine,” she says, enunciating each word, “that it will be easier”—she brushes some glitter off the sleeve of her blouse— “when Lucie joins you”—she widens her eyes—”in the booth.”
“I heard what you said, I’m just—”
“Which part of that sentence is a problem for you?”
I scratch above my eyebrow. All of it? All of it feels like a problem for me. And I have no idea why. “I don’t—” I start and stop. I swallow twice. “How—”
“I called her yesterday and asked if she’d be interested in joining the show. Our listeners have skyrocketed since that interview went viral.” She holds up her phone. “Most of the comments want her to find her happy ending. I plan for Heartstrings to help.”
I frown. “How can Heartstrings help?”
Maggie looks at me like I’m stupid. Jackson coughs into his fist. Eileen ignores everyone, still scrolling through her phone, head tilted in concentration, completely oblivious to the rest of the room. I have no idea what Hughie is doing behind me.
“Are you not the host of a romance radio show? Do you not think you’re capable of helping one woman find the love she deserves?”
“Like a . . .” My hands are sweating again. “Like a Bachelorette -type thing?”
“Exactly like that.”
The rejection sits heavy on the tip of my tongue. Not because I don’t want Lucie in my booth but because it doesn’t feel right. Not for what Lucie wants. She said on the phone that she wants magic. That she wants love to find her exactly where she is. I can’t imagine that participating in a radio show where dates are lined up like appetizer options at an Applebee’s happy hour will be very magical.
I clear my throat and shift in my seat, very aware that I’m on thin ice with Maggie and any disagreement with this plan might encourage her to wedge her stiletto right up my ass. “Did she agree to this?”
“Who?”
“Lucie,” I explain, doing my damned best to stitch together every ounce of my patience. “The woman you plan to extort for engagement.”
Hughie sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. Eileen sinks down in her chair. Jackson looks like he wants to climb out the narrow window on the far end of the office.
But Maggie doesn’t reach across the desk to throttle me.
She studies me for a long beat, eyes narrowed. Then a smile blooms across her face.
The woman who once hurled an orange down the hallway at me when I told her she had shitty taste in ballpoint pens gives me a wide and toothy grin, her eyes crinkled in delight.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “You’re terrifying.”
She chuckles. “I know.”
I subtly try to shift my chair away from her desk. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because you’ve got a big, squishy heart in there, you grumpy asshole.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t,” I say again. Christ. “I just don’t want to drag an unwilling woman into some weird love competition. I’d say that’s baseline decency.”
Maggie rolls her eyes. “Noted. There will be no dragging involved.” Her calculating eyes watch me twitch around in my seat. I feel like a bug pinned beneath a microscope. “I think it’s sweet you’re looking out for Lucie.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“You care.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t want me to take advantage of her.”
“Of course not.” I huff, frustrated. “I also don’t want you to run over a litter of puppies. It doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and adopt a dog.”
Jackson straightens in his seat. “I actually think a dog might be good for you, man.”
I ignore him. “What’s the end goal here, Maggie?”
“End goal. Listen to you. You’re acting like I’m some Bond villain.”
I stare pointedly at her and she tosses her hands in the air. “I am trying to capitalize on our momentum, you walnut. I am trying to channel all of this interest into programming. If you haven’t noticed, our numbers haven’t been great lately. Orion has been up my ass about acquiring this station and I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.” She’s referring to the mega-giant satellite radio corporation that’s been hounding her for the last six months about folding us into their portfolio. We’re all in agreement that we want to stay local, though we’re quickly losing ground to stand on.
“This is an opportunity to save this show and this station. Not to mention the jobs of everyone in this room.” She circles her finger around once. That explains why we’re all here, then. Nothing like a good emotional blackmail from the puppet master herself. “I’m not extorting anyone. I simply asked Lucie if she’d like to join you on the air to explore some of the engagement around your conversation. My hope is that people tune in and stay tuned in.”
That sounds like a fancy way of saying Maggie wants to do a radio version of The Bachelorette , but sure.
“And what did Lucie say about all of this?”
“She said she’d think about it.”
I exhale. “Good.”
Thinking implies hesitation. And if this is something that is going to happen whether I’m on board or not, I at least want to know Lucie agreed after careful consideration. She was bullied into that initial conversation, no matter how good Maya’s intentions were. I don’t want her to be bullied into this too.
“But I’m confident she’ll say yes,” Maggie adds.
“How do you figure?” I manage, daydreaming about the cookies I already ate and a shirt that is dry. Confetti-free hair and the blissful silence of my soundproof booth. I’ve been thoroughly outmaneuvered this morning and it’s not even noon.
“You should know this by now, Aiden.” Maggie’s smile is assured. “I always get what I want.”
CALLER: I just think I’m a good candidate, is all I’m saying.
AIDEN VALENTINE: For what?
CALLER: Dating Lucie.
AIDEN VALENTINE: [sighs]
AIDEN VALENTINE: You and the rest of Baltimore.
CALLER: She sounded hot on the phone, you know?
AIDEN VALENTINE: That doesn’t explain why you think you’re a good candidate.
CALLER: Some women say I have a magical di—
[dial tone]