Chapter 52 Distracted
This sex therapist could moonlight as a stand-up comic.
Lucky for me because I haven’t managed to focus on our conversation for more than thirty seconds at a time. She barely needs my prompts to keep the discussion going.
I didn’t draft the article last night. I emailed Maya and told her I’m going to need another week. Reed hasn’t gotten back to me. I muted my father’s text stream. He’s since texted ten more times. I need to get out of his apartment stat. Like after this meeting, I need to go home and pack a bag.
I broke the Ring camera. What the hell was I thinking? Why didn’t I try to disconnect it like a normal person?
When we’re done recording, I pull up the Canva presentation I started putting together months ago: an easily digestible comprehensive breakdown of Love Today’s podcast accolades, the stats we’ve acquired over the past year, and how much growth it’s brought to the Love Today column and the overall paper.
I’m about to run through my spiel for the fifth time when there’s a knock on the frame of my open office door. I look up to find Ted lounging in the doorway.
I drop my eyes back to my screen. “What do you want, Ted?”
He pads right on in and sits across from my desk. “How’d it go with the Witcher? You make up?”
I cut him a searing look. “You know what I should do, Ted? Get in contact with your exes. Who have you dated since me?”
“It doesn’t matter who I dated. This is your column. It’s about your life, and you’re getting dual perspective, not me. Your audience doesn’t care about my backstory. They just know of me via the shitty things you’ve written about our relationship.”
My brows slant downward. “Did you pitch this article to clear your pseudonym name in front of my readership?”
He rolls his eyes, leaning back in my guest chair. “Rikki, I pitched this because you were so upset about all the shit I said when we broke up, and so oblivious to the fact that you, too, played a big part in the downfall of our relationship. You’re not perfect! It wasn’t all me.”
I set my jaw, pressing my palms into the desk. “How sweet of you! What a noble fucking cause!” I take a slug of my water bottle. “You think I think I’m perfect, Ted?”
“You think you’re cursed, Rikki! I’ve heard the monologue! Wake up! The universe isn’t in your way, you are!”
“Are you referring to me not sharing my job right off the bat with these Hinge men? You write about sports, Ted, whoop-de-fucking-do. The most universally cared about and accepted conversation topic among general society. You have no idea how quickly people dip out when they hear I write about romantic relationships. I couldn’t even get to the part where we agree to meet in person.
I’m not pulling this out of my ass! It’s been my actual lived experience. ”
“Rikki, this isn’t just about you lying to people you date about your job.
It’s about how you keep every area of your life separate—in sealed-up Rubbermaid containers.
When you let people into your life, you can’t just show them one room in your house and keep all the others locked!
If you want to have a meaningful relationship, you have to let them walk around.
Open the doors. Get to know all your different corners.
It’s not that you’re too much of a hassle to love!
You literally don’t let people love you. ”
I stand, willing my jaw to stop quivering as renewed pressure mounts behind my eyes. “The absolute audacity you have to talk to my boss behind my back, take over my column for the week, and then try to lecture me about the way I live my life is fucking bananas.”
“I bet you did the same thing with this poor schmuck.”
“I didn’t!” I screech, eyes bulging out of my skull. “He knows what I do!”
Ted shrugs. “He didn’t know me.”
My eyes drop to the desk as my phone alarm starts going off. Two minutes till the meeting. Shit.
I’m unraveling.
I scoop up my laptop and grab my phone. “Fuck you, Ted.”
He holds up a hand as I stride out of the room. “So glad we’re talking again.”
My opening slide is on the conference-room screen: a before and after chart of the paper’s numbers in print and online in relation to Love Today.
I just finished greeting the board. Three men and one woman. Maya’s here as well. She shoots me a reassuring smile as I distribute little printed cheat sheets with the same info in a fun flowchart I designed.
“All right!” I clap, moving back to the front of the room.
“I’m so thrilled to be talking to you about the progress we’ve made this year utilizing the podcast as a way to reach an entirely new branch of readership!
” I carefully curate my gaze, attempting to make eye contact with each of the board members.
“This past year and a half has been a whirlwind! The work and care myself and my producer have put into the content we’re making has proven both .
. .” I trail off as I realize not one of them is paying attention.
“Sorry, we’re—are we not ready to start? ”
Maya lifts a discreet finger, pointing to the door behind me.
I spin around. My soul leaves my body as I set eyes on the distraction.
Dressed in a black suit, standing in the doorway, is my father.
He’s my father. And not my father. It’s the man I’m careful never to be within reach of. His eyes are saucer wide. Face flushed. Mouth set in what I can only describe as a subtle scowl. I know it well. I could clock it across a football field.
I glance around the conference room, trying to gauge the exits. Escape routes. And peer back at him like a caged animal.
“Um,” I fumble shakily. “Hi, Richard, would you mind waiting for me in my office? I’m in an important meeting.”
His brows rise. “Richard?” He says it like it’s funny, but his voice is too loud. The delivery is warped. “Are we on a first-name basis now?”
I laugh weakly. “Dad, it’s so nice of you to visit me at work. Sorry. I’ll be done in here in about half an hour. If you could just take a seat in my office, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
His impossibly wide eyes, somehow manage to expand. “No, I got my ass on a plane last minute and flew five hours to New York. I think we need to talk right now.”
I swallow, glancing at my boss and my boss’s bosses, who are eyeing my father with thinly veiled impatience.
“Um,” I say quietly. “Is it an emergency?”
He shrugs cartoonishly and takes a step into the room.
“I don’t know, is it? You thought you could destroy property, change my locks, and just go on about your day, Rikki?
Is this you setting a boundary? Acting like a petulant child?
Smashing my expensive camera and locking me out of the apartment that I’ve let you live in? What are you, fifteen?”
No. I’m eight, shivering on the steps with hands shoved against my ears, and I’m ten, sprinting to the kitchen for paper towels and ice, and I’m thirteen, glancing over my shoulder as I sling clothes into a bag. I’m thirty, and I’m scared to move.
“Are you the people who pay her?” He takes another step.
I take a step farther away as he fixes his manic gaze on the people who control my job.
Points a finger at them. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves! She’s working two full-time jobs here, and a card shop, and she still can’t afford a damn studio apartment. ”
I clear my throat. “Dad, please stop.”
He paces around the board table like a shark. “You know what I caught her doing yesterday? On a Sunday afternoon? The Lord’s day?”
Oh god oh god oh god.
“Trying to pull in cash as a sex worker. My daughter!” He aggressively points to me from behind the far end of the table like they don’t know who he’s talking about.
“Dad, no, that’s—”
“Keep your mouth shut, Rikki. I know about OnlyFans—I’ve seen it on the news.
I’m not a goddamn idiot.” I cringe as he raps his knuckles against the table.
“She’s so desperate to make extra cash, you’ve made her into a whore!
She turned my apartment into a fucking brothel!
Seven guys went in and out of there yesterday! ”
“That is not what was happening!” I bleat.
He stalks toward me at the front of the room, reaches out his arm, and casually knocks my laptop off the table.
I dive to catch it before it crashes to the carpeted floor.
I land on my ass with the computer in my hands, breathless as I struggle to push an explanation from my lungs.
“I was interviewing them for an article!” I glance blindly from Maya to the board members.
“I’m so sorry! I have to reschedule our meeting, please excuse me.
” I fold the laptop, grab my phone, dart for the door, and burst into the main area of the office.
I’m thirty, and I’m being chased from my conference room.
“How does it feel, Rikki?” my dad says loudly.
Fear plinks through me as I slow to a stop in the no-man’s-land, among the cubicles at the center of the floor.
“To have someone try to break your expensive things?”
I spin to face him as tears spill their way down my cheeks. He’s standing in the conference-room doorframe. “Dad. This is my place of work. You just derailed a meeting I’ve been preparing for since July.”
His jaw doesn’t unclench.
“Don’t think I didn’t hear about your little text to Enora too,” he snarls. “You’ve more than overstepped.”
I glance around at my coworkers in the cubicles. Every head is turned in our direction. Some people are gathered in the doorways of their offices.
All of them are frozen. Unmoving. Unsure. Like I’m a show to observe. I glance over at Ted, who’s looking on, aghast and still, in his own doorway.
No one’s coming to help me.
I watch my father’s fingers stretch and curl in on themselves at his sides. “Rikki, I’m gonna need that key to my apartment.”
I’m ten feet from my office.
“Security has been called,” someone says.