Page 14 of Business or Pleasure

“Fantastic work, tramps!” the instructor yells, and I turn to Noemie and mouth, Tramps? She just muffles a laugh as we head toward the gym’s locker room, grabbing a couple towels to dry off. “See you next week!”

“How do you feel?” Noemie asks, flashing me a grin as she unlocks her locker.

I dab my face with a towel, readjusting some of the pins I haphazardly slid into my hair to keep it from flying everywhere. “Amazing, and I hate you for it.”

Annoyingly, the trampoline workout has cleared my brain more than... well, more than I hoped the one-night stand would. Drew was a blip on my sexual timeline. And I’m sure I’ll be able to see Wyatt again soon without wanting to crawl into a hole and embrace the darkness as my one true god.

Although deep down, a tiny part of me is worried something’s wrong with me that Wyatt didn’t want a relationship. In the past month, I’ve had two one-night stands—the first because I thought it was heading toward something more, and the second because I wanted to feel good, desired, beautiful. The things I thought I could feel with Wyatt, who already knew me.

Wyatt Torres: kind eyes, incredible hair, the source of my agony. We met freshman year in a journalism prereq, and while I’d always thought he was cute, there were so many breakup horror stories in our cohort that I was terrified of acting on it. So I convinced myself I was happy to stay friends with him, and for the most part, I was. We lived in the same dorm, took the same classes, got the same magazine internship, but we were never competitors. A win for one of us was a win for both of us, for the future of journalism itself! Wyatt wasn’t picky about where he wanted to work; he’d go anywhere that wanted him. So we applied for the same fellowships. Were rejected from the same fellowships. Then, in a brilliant burst of journalistic hope, the two of us were hired at The Catch a year after we graduated. The online mag covered everything from politics to pop culture, hitting its stride with the kind of listicles that started popping up in the early 2010s. It was fresh and fun and felt so current, even though it wasn’t groundbreaking journalism. I’d been an avid reader for years, and getting a job there, working alongside names I’d read in bylines, felt like meeting a celebrity.

We had all these shared experiences that it only made sense to share the rest of our lives. Before we saw each other naked and ruined everything.

I open up my locker, digging for my phone. Three missed calls from my agent, who generally does her best not to work on weekends, and a handful of texts with increasing levels of urgency. Chandler, hi, are you free? I know it’s a Saturday, but I need to talk to you. Call me back asap!

“What is it?” Noemie asks, retying her ponytail.

“Stella.” I grab my bag as quickly as I can, phone in a vise grip. “Meet you outside?”

Stella Rosenberg is one of the top nonfiction agents in the country. She’s a fortyish mom of twins, living in Brooklyn, down- to-earth with her clients and an utter shark when she needs to be, and I still can’t quite believe we work together. Though I’ve never met her, I owe her everything for turning my freelance articles into something resembling a career.

After I was laid off, I sold some pieces for pennies as the journalism world went up in flames. I applied to so many jobs that when I got the email from Stella, I had to peek back at the posting to remember what it was. Looking for writing samples for a ghostwritten book. Utmost discretion required. Honestly, it had seemed like it might be a scam. I had to sign an NDA before I even learned the name of whom I’d be writing for.

At first, the fact that I was able to find something using my journalism degree—technically, communication with a concentration in journalism—felt like a good sign. Ghostwriting involved research, interviewing, deadlines, all things I’d had plenty of experience with. My parents always told me a college degree was a jumping-off point, that it didn’t necessarily matter what I studied because my skills would be transferable. But I didn’t want to transfer them anywhere. I wanted to write.

It isn’t that I’m not grateful for the work—I am, tremendously. Maybe it was turning thirty last year that made me reassess my career, but I’d love to have something I could put my name on. And maybe that thing is a book and maybe it isn’t, but there has to be some kind of story I’m the right person to tell.

Stella picks up on the first ring. “Thank god I caught you,” she says. In the background, I hear dogs barking, kids babbling. “Sorry, I’m at the park. It’s a zoo on weekends.”

I lean against the wall outside the gym. “No worries. What’s going on?”

“So, you know we’ve been submitting you for a few new projects.” Another thing about Stella: She doesn’t waste time. Dives right in, no pleasantries. “There’s an actor who just sold a memoir whose team is looking for a ghostwriter. And they loved your samples.”

“An actor,” I repeat with some trepidation. And, okay, maybe a little excitement. “Who is it?”

“Finnegan Walsh,” she says. “Lola, you know you need to ask permission before petting a dog! My kids had too much sugar for breakfast. Anyway—he was on this werewolf show that ended about ten years ago. Four seasons. Really devoted fans.”

The name doesn’t ring a bell. Then again, I can’t remember the last time I had cable, and I used my parents’ Netflix account in college, so if it’s not an early-2000s sitcom or Netflix original, odds are, I haven’t seen it.

“I know you said you wanted to do something a bit more serious this time,” Stella continues, “but I think this could be really exciting. He has a huge cult following, especially among millennials and Gen Z. And the team wants you two to work closely on this—it’s not going to be another Maddy DeMarco.” She curses under her breath. “I swear to god, they’re lucky you were such a saint about it.”

I can’t deny that’s appealing. “Okay, so what’s the next step?” I ask. “Do they want to talk to me?”

“That’s the best part. He’s in town for Emerald City Comic Con until the end of the day, and he and his manager want to meet you for lunch. That’s why I sounded so frantic—they’re going to be at the restaurant at one thirty.”

Lunch? It’s almost too many things to process at once. I check the time on my phone—it’s already ten past one.

And I’m wearing gym clothes, still dripping sweat from Trampoline XXX.

“I—I think I can make it.”

“Excellent,” she sings, just as there’s a commotion in the background, before giving me the restaurant name. “Tell them you’re there to see Joe—that’s his manager. And call me after to let me know how it goes. Thanks, Chandler!”

With that, she hangs up.

I stare at my phone for a few moments, my brain whirring as Noemie approaches, her gym bag slung over one arm. “Can you drive me downtown so I can meet someone named Finnegan Walsh?”

Noemie blinks wide dark eyes at me. “Excuse me, I blacked out for a moment. What did you say?”

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