Chapter One #2
I flipped through the note cards until I found the one I was looking for.
“Did you know that this year, consumers are expected to spend a record $27.5 billion on Valentine’s Day?
That’s an average of $188.81 per person.
And another study cited that a significant portion of Valentine’s Day spending is driven by societal expectations, with forty-nine percent of consumers prioritizing cost when purchasing gifts.
Prioritizing cost. Not thoughtfulness, or genuine oh-hey-this-random-thing-made-me-think-of-you vibes.
Just how much was spent. Is that how we’re measuring love these days?
Isn’t buying into this holiday saying exactly that?
What do you think? Let’s hear from . . .
” I looked at Ravi and he held up a whiteboard with a scribbled name on it.
“Maggie. Morning, Maggie, you’re on the air with Elliot West. So let me have it, where do you stand in all this? ”
“Hey, Elliot. I just wanted to share that my husband and I got married two years ago on Valentine’s Day. Yes, we both realize it was a bit of a cliché, but why not fully embrace love on a day that’s already dedicated to it? It felt like the perfect way to mark the beginning of our forever.”
I read off the card I’d specifically prepared for this type of anecdote: “Did you know that couples who marry on Valentine’s Day are eighteen to thirty-six percent more likely to divorce within five years compared to those who marry on any other date?
I’m sure you’ll beat those odds, but it does show just how many of us go into this day with our emotional blinders on, and I want all of you to have your eyes wide open to the possibility of disappointment. ”
Ravi set down his coffee mug, scribbled, “Ooh, nice!” on his little whiteboard, and flashed it at me with a huge thumbs-up.
There was silence on the other end of the line, and I was pretty sure Maggie had hung up until I heard, “I, um, I mean, stats are one thing, but I know what my husband and I have, and I’m not sure the fact that we chose February fourteenth as the day to mark our relationship changes anything.”
“Look, I’m not here to rain on anyone’s parade or crush romantic dreams. That’s the last thing I want, but over the years, my listeners have come to count on me for honesty, and sometimes honesty stings a little.
Actually, not gonna lie, sometimes it stings a lot.
But I’ve come to think of myself as the big sister who tells you the things you don’t necessarily want to hear but need to, because I truly care about you all.
Trust me, love is a four-letter word and that word is pain. Because when it hits, it hits hard.”
My throat seemed to tighten around the words, and my eyes filled with tears that I hurried to sniff back.
I felt this raw and hadn’t even told Maggie the worst part: that you never see it coming until it’s too late.
If you’re smart, you learn to protect your heart or at least keep your expectations low.
That was the only way to avoid the kind of heartbreak I’d barely survived.
I was just telling her what I wished I’d learned sooner.
What hundreds of my callers wished they’d heard before they were cheated on, betrayed, belittled, or left devastated.
Take your pick. Better they heard it from me than suffer it themselves when they were inevitably blindsided . . . like I had been.
For the next hour and a half, I fielded more calls, spread more of the gospel according to Elliot, cited a few more unsettling statistics, and comforted a few more members of the Lonely Hearts Club Band until Ravi queued up the show’s final outro music and I saw the light in the booth switch from green to red.
Pulling off my headset, I wrapped my cards with a rubber band and filed them in my drawer with the rest of the week’s show notes. The door swung open, and without looking up from where I was still rummaging through the desk, I said, “So what’d you think?”
“Another home run. The switchboard was going crazy. Fully illuminated the whole show. I sent a video clip to Greg at Sirius and Colleen at iHeart. They’re gonna go nuts.”
I stood up to retrieve my shoes from the other side of the room. “It’s a ratings game. You know that as well as I do.”
“Well, you’ve been playing the game like a pro lately, El. As of last week, Love Is a Four-Letter Word became the top-rated show in the metro area. Now Sirius and iHeartRadio are practically in a bidding war.”
It was still hard to wrap my head around the idea that our little college radio show built on bad dating stories and no-holds-barred advice had morphed into a bit of a phenomenon with a devoted, cultlike following of women trying to navigate the treacherous world of modern love.
Moving to either of those platforms would be a total leveling-up, taking my message from the metro area and pushing it into the stratosphere.
Not to mention that my agent managed to ride the wave of the recent buzz surrounding our show and negotiate a book deal with Simon & Schuster.
Love Is Dead, Let’s Have Brunch would be a sharp, quick-witted takedown of romance, packed with the wildest calls I’d gotten while hosting Love Is a Four-Letter Word over the years: cheating scandals so convoluted they belonged on a crime board, disastrous first dates that ended in emergency-room visits, and enough ghosting stories to put the notoriously haunted Eastern State Penitentiary to shame.
The book would be part survival guide, part cautionary tale, and would entirely prove once and for all that love was nothing more than a beautifully packaged illusion.
This dream of mine was finally coming true.
I had become the guiding light that I myself had so desperately needed in my own moments of emotional turbulence.
The rational, detached, straight shooter who could move beyond feelings and just dish facts.
What made it even more incredible was that my words seemed to really be resonating with people.
It was the confirmation I needed to know that walking away from Leo had been the right call, no matter how perfect our short time together this past summer had been.
Because there was no such thing as perfect, not in love, not in life.
“Perfect” was just a filter we placed over things to make them easier to believe in.
And happiness that depended on someone else was too much of a gamble, one I wasn’t willing to bet on, especially not when the odds were stacked against us all.
“Hey, don’t you have that Galentine’s Day speaking engagement thing later tonight?” Ravi asked. “Should provide some good fodder for Thursday’s show.”
“Yup,” I said, scrolling through my phone to find the email from my agent about the event. “Rooftop Reds at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I better get home so I can get myself together.”
“And, um . . . change your pants?” Ravi joked, pointing to my cheeky undies flashing from beneath my jeans.
“What do you mean? Why? Not a cute look?” I joked, craning my neck over my shoulder to take a glance at just how bad the damage was.
Ravi smirked. “Just saying, might not be the best first impression.”
I rolled my eyes, grabbing my coat. “Noted. I’ll try to dress like a fully functioning adult.”
“For once!” I heard him call out behind me as I hurried out the studio door.