Page 2 of Lovetown, USA
I look a fucking mess.
And not just because I fought through forty minutes worth of Atlanta traffic to get here.
My dress is wrinkled, my hair is falling out of my bun, and I’m wearing sunglasses inside the Peterson building like a self-important celebrity at a nightclub.
But I’m here.
“Rough night?”
I shoot a glare at Kassie, forgetting she can’t see my evil glare with these sunnies on. She snickers as I pass her cubicle.
“You need coffee?”
I stop walking and turn around. “Don’t I look like I need coffee?”
Kassie’s a freelance writer here atVerve, but she sometimes doubles as my assistant. I swear, I never set out to be the alpha around here, but for some reason, folks cower to me. Do my bidding. Try to please me.
Who am I to question it?
I’m at my desk with my head in my hands when Brittney, my managing editor, knocks softly.
“Oh my. You look like shit,” she says. “Are you okay?”
I lift my head slowly. “I’m hungover, Britt. Don’t act brand new. You’ve seen this a million times.”
Brittney and I go way back to journalism school, which is why we talk to each other any kind of way. On paper, she’s my boss, but we’re equals in every other way. The only reasonI’mnot the managing editor somewhere is because I derailed my own future.
But I don’t like thinking about that.
I know this is serious business because she has her iPad in her hand. I won’t be able to hear a word she says before my first sip of coffee, but I sit here with a pounding head, nodding while she takes a data dump all over my morning.
Metrics. Heatmaps. Acquisition channels. Scroll depth. Britt takes this shit seriously, as she should. She once broke up with a man because he didn’t understand what ‘bounce rate’ meant.
Kassie walks right in and sets the cup on my desk before scurrying out. Britt doesn’t stop talking as I sip my latte in relief.
“So anyway,” she says, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder, “all that to say Melanie is very impressed with your last three pieces.”
Melanie is my section editor.
And what is my section here at the fourth most popular women’s magazine in the country?
Get this.
Love and Relationships.
Of all the things. Of all the fucking things.
I’m kinda like the Black Carrie Bradshaw, except I know even less about successful relationships than she does about sex. But they really, really like my, and I quote, “biting, sardonic reporting from the front lines of modern dating.”
“All three outperformed projections,” Britt continues. “Very impressive.”
I shrug. “I’ll never get over the fact that people actually read my stuff. And take it halfway seriously.”
“Well, they do,” she says. “That’s why we have a new assignment for you.”
I have to remove my sunglasses for this. She got one more motherfucking time to pitch me that story about the yoga teacher who faked her own death to get a marriage proposal before I lose it.
I don’t like stuff that’s too on-the-nose. It’s cheap.
