Chapter Three
Ari pushed the door to the coworking space open with her butt and set a tray of three coffee cups down on the table she shared with Naima George and James Yang, her only two New York–based coworkers at KisStory, an interactive fiction app specializing in the smuttiest of the smut.
“That line was out of control,” she grumbled.
“I don’t know if these are even still hot. ”
“The coffee can wait,” Naima said, leaning forward on her elbows. “We have a question.”
“The coffee definitely cannot wait,” James argued, spinning the cups until he found the one with his name. “But okay, we’re ready now. Do you know the hot Jewish singer going viral?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Ari selected her own peppermint mocha and took a long, soothing drink before setting up her laptop and plugging it into a dock. “You know we don’t all know each other, right?”
“You do seem to know a lot though,” Naima pointed out.
One hand tipped in masterfully done nails—neon-orange ovals that glowed beautifully against her dark brown skin—wrapped around the white paper cup holding her vanilla chai latte while the other held her phone out to Arielle.
“You really haven’t seen this? It’s everywhere. ”
It took Ari all of two seconds to realize she did, in fact, know the guy in question. “You’re joking. Yes, fine, I know this guy, and he sucks.” Her forehead pounded with phantom pain at the memory of their last “meeting,” and she rubbed at the small bruise he’d left her as a souvenir.
“Really? I think he’s great, and so do the fifty million comments,” Naima said, replaying the video for what Arielle would guess was the thousandth time that morning. “You should read them.”
“Hard pass.” Ari took a quick look at her email—nothing, which wasn’t surprising since pretty much everything at the company ran through group chats—and then opened up the KisStory homepage. “Are we seriously featuring ‘Pregnant by the Vampire Don’ on the main banner again?”
“We’re giving the people what they want,” James said in a singsong voice, “and the people apparently want vampire mafia secret baby books. Get with the times, Becker.”
“I continue to understand absolutely nothing about our readership,” she grumbled as she skimmed through the stats of their biggest hit books for the past week, and sure enough, “Pregnant by the Vampire Don” was number two in both the number of reads and the number of bonus (read: sex) scenes purchased, behind only The Alpha CEO’s Soulmate.
“On the contrary,” said Naima, “you understand everything about our readership. Not sharing their kinks is a different story. But you did call that it would be a massive hit. You’re why Ross sank so much money into marketing it in the first place.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ari said with a slow smile, lifting her cup back to her lips. “I am brilliant.”
“Which is literally what we’re always telling you,” James pointed out, pressing his greige-painted fingertips into the desk. “Now will you apply for the lead position?”
She took a long drink, hoping the conversation topic would change before she set it back down.
As the longest-tenured editor at KisStory, it wasn’t that she didn’t think she was qualified for the lead position that was opening when their boss, Millie, left to join a new game startup in Stockholm; it was that it would mean becoming Naima and James’s boss.
She liked what they had going, meeting up at a coworking space on Mondays so they could kick off the week by shooting the shit in person, even though their jobs were fully remote.
Would it be nearly as fun if she were their supervisor? Absolutely not.
Why was everyone always so eager for things to change?
“Can we talk about something else?” she asked as she skimmed the rest of the top twenty-five.
Unsurprisingly, it was heavily populated by their smuttiest paranormal romances, and she smiled as she thought of the new book set to launch that week that would undoubtedly leap to the top.
A gay werewolf hockey romance felt like a particular stroke of genius.
“Sure—we can go back to talking about the hot guy from the video,” James suggested cheerfully. “How do you know him?”
“He’s my friend’s brother,” Arielle said sourly, “and he sang at my roommate’s wedding on Sunday.
I was a bridesmaid, and he glowered at me under the chuppah the entire time because he’s wildly lacking in sympathy for women in heels.
And then we whacked heads—literally, so do not try to make a sex pun out of this—before he yanked his hand away from me as if touching me for half a second was going to send him straight to hell. ”
“Wait. You, like, know him know him,” Naima said in awe, her warm brown eyes widening.
“Well, he doesn’t know who I am, because he’s an asshole, but I’m guessing he’d be able to pick me out in a lineup at this point. He’d probably try to murder me with the power of his mind and a laser glare.”
“He looks like he’d give hot glare.” James’s voice had taken on a dreamy quality that made Arielle consider poisoning his coffee.
“Do I need heterosexual coworkers? Because I thought we straights made all the bad calls, but the two of you really have terrible taste. Except Jackie,” Ari amended, because Naima’s wife was legitimately awesome.
“But this—this is pathetic. He’s a humorless twerp, and he’s probably been married since he was, like, eighteen, and now has eight babies. Not hot.”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Naima said with an eyebrow waggle.
“Methinks the lady would rather edit another chapter of ‘The Ghost of Christmas Pleasure’ than discuss Judah Klein for another minute.” She turned pointedly back to the screen to check how many writers had actually hit their deadlines that weekend and was both pleased and relieved to see chapters from the vast majority in the publication queue.
Thankfully, her coworkers took the hint and got to work on their own chapters.
Their schedules required impossibly quick turnarounds more often than not, and while the overtime pay was good when needed, the increasingly frantic and passive-aggressive messages that came down from on high at missed deadlines were rarely worth it.
For the next two hours, Ari read through the new work, wrote up editorial notes, approved a new cover, left some thoughts on the brainstorming document for the book they hoped would be their summer blockbuster, and walked a writer through the process of submitting their payment paperwork.
By the time she came up for air, she needed another coffee more than she needed oxygen.
“I’ll get the next round,” James volunteered, and Ari was only too happy to let him go rather than step back into the madhouse. Even at eleven in the morning, Café Expresso simply did not live up to its name.
“Bless you both.” Naima’s long fingers, stacked with gold rings, rubbed at her temples. “If I have to read one more of these chapters without additional caffeine, I’m going to lose it.” She looked up at Ari. “Distract me. How was the wedding? What number bridesmaiding was this for the year?”
“The wedding was beautiful.” She didn’t feel like getting into the mixed-bag feelings of seeing her best friends pair up for good.
“And this was the first. I have an old friend’s coming up at the end of October, and my cousin Aleah’s right before New Year’s.
All I can say is we better hit every fucking KPI target imaginable, because if I don’t get a bonus, I’m gonna get bankrupted by bridesmaid dresses and shower gifts, and that is a very boring way to go. ”
“Any dresses you’ll be able to wear again, at least?”
“Not unless floor-length baby-blue satin has suddenly become acceptable anywhere but a wedding. Yeah, don’t think I’ll be wearing that again.”
Naima shuddered. “Does anyone look good in that?”
“Bella’s sister Lily would look good in a dress made of dirty diapers.
She put the rest of us to shame.” Ari was willing to bet she could’ve stomped on Judah Klein’s foot wearing concrete boots and he wouldn’t have said boo.
As if Ari needed another reminder that she was the biggest bridesmaid by two dress sizes.
“Psh, she’s no Arielle Becker.”
Arielle unlocked her phone, scrolled through her photos from the night before, and held up a picture of Lily.
“Oh, damn.”
Ari snorted and put her phone back down. “Exactly.”
“Well, I stand by that you are hot as hell, and someday soon, you’re gonna be the one picking out hideous bridesmaid dresses,” Naima said affectionately.
“I assure you,” said Ari, “I know I’m hot as hell, but I’m not doing this to my friends or myself.
There are no contenders for Mr. Arielle Becker in the entire Tri-State area, and I will not be crossing borders to find myself a ball and chain, thank you very much.
I am perfectly happy with single life.” And she was, in theory; it was everyone else leaving her alone in single life that was the problem.
“You say that now…”
Ari just rolled her eyes and got back to work.
Coupled people always seemed to think that coupling was the only route to happiness, and it was annoying as fuck.
“Just wait until you meet the right guy,” her older sister Dana was fond of saying, and it drove Ari mad, and not just because the irony of her sister talking about “the right guy” when her own boyfriend was a total dickbag was through the roof.
Why did she have to “wait”? Why should she center her life around this stupid hunt when she could just live it?