THIRTY-TWO
Maeve
“I’m thinking about pitching the therapy show next week.” It’s been a week since we fell back into being together, really being together, and Finn and I have spent all day today in bed. This morning he got up and made French toast and coffee and brought it back to bed. Now, it’s almost two and our plates are discarded on the floor, but we’re still here.
I’ve never been a stay-in-bed-all-day kind of person. Even with other people I dated, I always would get up at a reasonable time so I could start the day and get things done. But with Finn, doing nothing in bed is the thing I most want to be doing on a Sunday. Every moment feels so perfect that it should be illegal and I want to bottle this feeling so I never lose it.
“Why next week?” Finn asks as he traces lazy circles on my back.
“We’re going to break the record next Sunday,” I say as I rap on the wooden nightstand with my knuckles. Our agents did a fantastic job renegotiating the terms of the bonus incentive in exchange for the personal—and therefore super viral—bonus episode. “Maximum leverage power. And Shazia has preemptively set up a magazine shoot.”
“Oh really? I haven’t heard about it yet,” Finn remarks casually.
I stiffen slightly, without meaning to. Finn has always done separate press, because he’s famous and the media loves him. But I’ve never done anything without him. I roll over so I’m looking at him. “Just for me. W Magazine is doing a feature on how I broke the glass ceiling in podcasting.”
I don’t know why I worried for an instant that because Finn assumed he would be included, he would be jealous not to be. He just smiles and kisses me, genuinely so happy for me. “That’s amazing.”
I kiss him again, lingering for a moment to take in his scent, his stubble on my cheek, the firm weight of his body next to mine. He’s so attractive. And it’s not just how he looks, it’s everything about the way he carries himself. He has this charisma and confidence that makes him light up any room he’s in. Knowing that he’s my person in every way feels surreal. “Do you want to edit together?”
Although we’re in a great place now, I’ve still been mainly editing by myself. I got used to doing it that way while we were fighting and it’s much more efficient. I know I don’t need to, but Tell Me How You Really Feel still feels like my baby and I don’t know that anyone else would have the same attention to detail with it that I do. I can tell Finn’s been a bit bored lately, though. He’s been texting me constantly and stopping by my place unexpectedly with flowers or food, then looking like a crushed puppy when I’m too busy working to hang for more than a few minutes. So even though I don’t need his help, I want to extend the invitation.
“Absolutely,” Finn agrees. We head over to my editing bay without getting dressed, me still in his giant T-shirt and a lace thong, and him in just boxers.
Our episode this past week was with a former Olympic gymnast, who talked about the sexual abuse warning signs. It was more serious subject matter than many of our episodes, but at the end, during the Questions of the Week, we kept it lighthearted. I sit at the computer and start playing the episode, stopping here and there to cut pauses, or to pause it and hear Finn’s thoughts.
About ten minutes in the gymnast stumbles over her words. “Should I cut around it, do you think?” Typically we would. But since this is such a personal story from her, one she’s never talked about to the press, I feel a bit hesitant to touch it.
Finn exhales. “Hmm. I’m really not sure. I wouldn’t want to edit anything out, but also I feel like it’s bad to let her stumble like that. I got the vibe that she wanted to sound confident and in control.”
I play back her audio again. “I just … well, you know, I think that he … actually, you know, forget him , really, we are who everyone should be talking about. Like, center the narrative.”
I like the way Finn’s thinking. I don’t want to edit her either, but I do want to make her sound like the most confident version of herself. I start splicing and rearranging, dragging clips and adding cross fades, then play it back. “You know, forget him . Center the narrative. We are who everyone should be talking about. Our resilience.”
“I like that. Where did you get the ‘our resilience’ line?”
I glance over at him. “I took it from later on in the episode. Think it’s too much of a stretch? It’s what she was getting at.”
“She gets approval for the episode, right?”
We don’t typically let guests approve our episodes, but given what she’s been through and the intensity of the subject matter here, I offered to send her the edit after we finished recording. “Yeah, I felt like it was the right thing to do.”
“Then I’d keep it. If she doesn’t like it, we can change it. But I think she will.”
The next three hours of editing pass in a blur as we continue to spitball ideas and play off of each other. By the end, I’m completely confident this is a great episode. An episode that will get press, and not for talking about blow jobs. Plus I think it’ll be another episode that will help the conversations about my solo show, since I want that to be elevated content as well.
“You know, this is so different from where we started. I kind of like that it’s the episode,” Finn remarks.
“I almost wish we did more of a sure thing for this week, so we’d know that we hit the mark and are getting the pay bump. This is so serious, you know? What if people don’t listen through to the end. Maybe we should just talk about blow jobs one last time.” I’m exporting it from Premiere via media encoder, so I can create the face out graphic in Photoshop while the export runs, and my computer is humming with effort.
Finn has been walking around the living room, but now he drops into the chair next to me and takes my hand. “Maeve, it’s a great episode. I think it’s our best yet, it’s serious content, yeah, but it really matters . We’ve got this.”
A week later the episode drops, and Finn is completely right. The Today Show covers the episode in their nine a.m. segment, The New York Times jumps on it and publishes an op ed interviewing all of us, and clips are reposted right and left. It takes twenty-four hours for the ratings to roll in, but I feel good about what they’ll say.
So good, that instead of anxiously waiting for the call to come in from Shazia, I let Finn persuade me to go to Carbon Beach, the celebrity-studded stretch of ocean directly outside his parents’ house.
“Let’s go in,” Finn exclaims the moment we step onto the sand. It’s high tide, so there’s almost no beach exposed, and he shucks off his shoes and shirt and leaves them on the sand in front of the house.
“Why don’t we just sit here and look for a bit?” I argue. “The call is going to come any second. Then the swim can be celebratory!”
I so badly want to find out whether we beat The Paul Myers Show . Paul Myers gets paid so much more than us, the gap between what he makes and what we do isn’t even funny. Right now, we’re paid like a really good podcast. We make around what the other top solely female-hosted shows do, although our ratings are on par with The Paul Myers Show . This raise will mean that not only do I become the highest-paid female podcaster, I completely shatter the glass ceiling and show women everywhere that women can be paid commensurately with men when they are just as successful. Our salaries weren’t public during the initial deal, but if we get this, the article will tell the whole world what I make, and how it’s making history.
“The call could come in two hours. It’s not an exact science, and who knows how long it’ll take Streamify to tell them. They’re probably cross comparing all the ranking sites, trying to find one that ranks us lower so they don’t have to pay up. It could be tomorrow for all we know! Let’s just—”
The sound of my phone ringing cuts Finn off, and I shriek in delight. “It’s Shazia!” I pick up, and Finn steps close to me to listen. “Shazia? Did we get it?”
We wait with bated breath. “You got it,” she confirms. “Congratulations, Maeve. You’re officially the highest paid female podcast host. You two have beaten The Paul Myers Show to be the highest paid show. Now go celebrate!”
I end the call and Finn wraps me in a huge bear hug, swinging me around in circles until we both collapse in the sand, laughing. And, okay, crying, just a tiny bit. The water breaks over us, getting our legs wet, but we don’t move.
“I can’t believe it,” I whisper. And I can’t. This feels too good to be true. I have the deal, I have Finn. My anxiety is whispering in my ear, telling me it’s not possible to have it all like this. But we really fucking do.
“I can,” Finn says firmly. He leans on one arm so he can look down at me, my hair frizzy and full of sand, and my face wet with water and salt and happy tears. “You deserve it.”