Page 4 of Love in Training
CHAPTER
ONE
It’sfifteen minutes until the Monday meeting and time to regret all my choices.
“Hi, is this Chloe? This is Caprice Phipps with theMile High Observer.” I flip through hangers in my closet, land on an olive blouse I don’t hate, and yank it over my head.
“Oh,” the woman on the line says as I readjust my earbud. “Hi.”
I zip my skirt and clear my throat, zeroing in on my lucky pair of Louboutins. I used to be better at this. I’d show up to the office early, dressed to the nines and armed with five or six leads on a spreadsheet. Spend some time bantering with my colleagues about the previous week’s stories before we’d settle into a friendly pitch competition. Randall gets the final say, of course, but I always had a selection of solid features to choose from.
But here I am rushing around at home, smoothing my hair into a ponytail and still trying to scrape together one pathetic idea.
“Listen, I know it hasn’t been long since we last talked, but we had so many comments about you and Greg after our feature, I thought a follow-up might be?—”
“Yeah, don’t bother,” she says, flicking the words off her tongue like they taste bad.
I pause, ears perking up as I sit on the bed to fasten my shoe straps.
“Oh . . . did something happen?”
“You bet it did.”
The corner of my mouth tugs, but I don’t rub my hands together quite yet. I glance at my smartwatch and wince at the thought of running in these heels. If this story goes the way it sounds like it’s going, though, it’ll be worth it.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I say. “I’d been hoping to write a part two about you guys after the wedding.”
She snorts. Greg and Chloe had been the darlings of my Valentine’s Day feature last month. They were supposed to get married at Loveland Ski Area’s annual Mountaintop Matrimony ceremony after literally running into one another on the slopes the year before. She had a concussion—he scooped her up and skied down the mountain for help, then lied to the ski patrol about being her boyfriend just to stay with her and get her number.
Honestly, Valentine’s Day is not my thing, and I’d kind of phoned in the feature. But apparently they were the meet-cute story everyone else wanted to hear. I’ve had more comments and emails asking for an update on their nuptials over the last few weeks than anything else I’ve written for months.
“Yeah, I found Greg in bed withtwoother women the morning of the wedding,” Chloe snarls.
I try not to squeal. This just keeps getting better. I might be late for this morning’s meeting, but I’m going to dash in there with a story that’ll make Randall salivate. Scandal, sensation, a happily-ever-after in ruins because of a degenerate man. This is the kind of thing I live for—and it also sells ad space.
“Oh, Chloe,” I say. “I’m . . . so sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am,” she huffs. “He actually had the balls to invite me to join them.”
My eyebrows shoot up. Oh hellyes. I’m already writing the feature in my head—a Valentine’s Day postmortem with a twist no one saw coming. Our readers will be scandalized, and my editor will love it. I’ve been searching for the right lead to position myself for a raise, and I think I might have just found it—right until the moment Chloe bursts into tears.
“I thought he was everything. I just wish I’d never even met him!”
Her words echo through my head and sink into my chest, slowing the world down. Suddenly, I’m aware of each breath moving in and out, each thud of my heart. My gaze flickers involuntarily toward my closet. To the garment bag barely visible in the back, holding a beautiful champagne-colored dress. Quietly, I rise from the bed, closing the doors on the wedding gown and the ache in my heart. I grab my keys and glance at my smartwatch.
“Girl, believe me...” I say to the woman sobbing quietly in my ear. “I get that.”
By the time I blow through the front doors of theObserver, I’m a full ten minutes late. I ignore the judgy look Tracy shoots me from reception, hurrying past her for the conference room, though the temptation to slink into a ball under my desk is strong.
On the speed-walk from my apartment, I tried to manifest some other leads. Yesterday, I had three in the running, but they fizzled one by one. Love—or love gone wrong—became kind of my brand last spring after I published a series of controversial articles about Unmatched, a dating app for married cheaters.Lately, though, it’s started to feel less like a brand and more like a pigeonhole.
I slip into the conference room in the middle of Randall’s review of last week’s hits and misses, grateful to find an empty chair at the end of the table. We make eye contact as I sit, but his gaze is neutral, so I let myself breathe. He’s going over the stories that got pushed because of the primary elections. An opinion piece on downtown taco shops, an update on local population growth, and a feature of the local band Cognitive Distortion.
“All right, so I’ve got a stack of assignments up for grabs,” he says, pushing back in his chair at the head of the table. “But before I get into those, let me hear what you’ve come up with.”
I place my laptop in front of me, opening up the spreadsheet where I organize my pitches, trying hard to swallow despite my throat being bone dry.
“I’ve got a lead on nefarious funding for downtown construction projects,” my colleague Brian says, taking the stage. Randall nods, giving him an instant green light. Of course. Ever since Brian broke a story about a member of the Colorado House of Representatives blackmailing interns at the state capitol, he’s been Randall’s golden boy.
