Chapter One
Molly
That’s when I realized that all my friends were losers. Sad, luckless losers. And I could be their savior. I wrote the rules in a flow state. When I finished, I knew I had created something with the power to change not just our lives but the world.
—Augusta Glower, Bad Luck Club
“This is about the sourdough starter piece, isn’t it?” I ask, sitting in the transparent plastic chair across from my boss’s desk. It’s viciously uncomfortable, and my friend and coworker Beth says Constance chose it specifically because it makes people feel like they’re falling.
“Among other things, yes,” Constance says, giving me this arch look that says I should know exactly what she’s talking about. “Our readers aren’t interested in reading a retrospective about why you decided to break up with your sourdough starter. They read Beyond the Sheets for the dating articles. For the pieces about men.”
“I named him Fred,” I counter. “Fred’s a man’s name. Besides, it does feel like a breakup. Do you know what it takes to get a sourdough starter rolling? Serious commitment. That’s not easy for someone like me.”
“Molly, dear,” she says in a way that makes it clear that A) I am not her dear, and B) she seriously questions my parents’ choice of name, “you’re boring me just talking about it. Imagine how our readers felt reading it. I know you did this to get back at me for not green-lighting that investigative piece about the girlfriend experience.”
I bite my tongue to keep from launching into an explanation of how it would have been peripherally related to our whole dating schtick. And how I have an in because I actually know one of the women who works on the circuit. Because, yeah, Constance isn’t wrong. I’ve been wanting to write about something different, something interesting, for a while now. But as she has not-so-gently reminded me, many times, that’s not our thing either.
What is our thing?
A couple of years back, when I was our uncontested star, I was putting out content like “The Twelve Dates of Christmas,” “Microdating for Microbrews,” and—a personal favorite—“Fakesgiving,” where I posed as the fake fiancée of a guy who’d posted a personal ad online. I might have felt like I was living in a romantic comedy with that last exploit—if the guy hadn’t smelled like ham and had a tattoo of Elmer Fudd on his shoulder. I mean, go for one of the Looney Tunes characters, sure, but Elmer Fudd? I only learned about his terrible tat because he was the kind of guy who couldn’t go five minutes without finding an excuse to take off his shirt to show off his abs. While there wasn’t snow on the ground, it was Seattle in November. There wasn’t exactly any sunshine either.
And he was shocked he was still single…
I realize Constance is looking at me, waiting for me to grovel, but I’m in no mood to make apologies. “Did you forget what you told me after I wrote my last viral post about dating? You told me not to be so vicious. You asked me to write something softer and more feminine. What’s more feminine than writing about baking? People love that shit.”
“Hardly,” she says, rapping a pen against the surface of her desk. Where she got it, I don’t know. I’ve never seen anyone in this office sign anything with a pen. People will add five steps to any task to make it more “efficient” (i.e., virtual). This includes everything from signing documents to sending cards and gifts to loved ones. “And let’s be real. We all love your wicked sense of humor, Molly, but the last person you should publicly eviscerate on the internet is the grandson of the man who owns us.”
“I never used his name,” I say. “Not once. It could have been about anyone.” I cringe a little, then add, “It’s not my fault he stormed into the office with his grandfather. I mean, who does that? No one would have ever known it was him otherwise.”
“I should have let you go then,” Constance says, shaking her head sadly. “Matthias wanted me to, but I stood up for you. I said it was an honest mistake. I told him not even you would be stupid enough to purposefully write such a harsh piece about his grandson.”
The look she’s giving me suggests she certainly thinks I’m stupid enough, and to be fair, I knew exactly what I was doing.
“Bigwig’s grandson,” as I called him in my blog post, showed up at Beyond the Sheets’ Christmas party. I didn’t stick around long enough to meet him, but he cornered Beth, talking up his connections. Making it pretty clear he’d find a way to get her fired if she didn’t give him a blowjob in the coat closet. She managed to slip away, thank God, but she spilled the whole story to me over drinks a few days later.
Which was why I felt compelled to arrange a date with him. Not because I wanted to go out with him, obviously, but because I’ve gotten pretty good at getting people—men, especially—to tell me their secrets, reveal their weaknesses, and proudly hoist their freak flags. Wasn’t my fault the guy was collecting used panties from all the women he’d slept with so he could make “art” with them under a nom de plume—his words. (I’m fairly sure he didn’t realize that term only refers to writers.) I wasn’t necessarily planning for everyone to figure out the piece was about him. He would know he’d been publicly humiliated, and so would Beth, and that would have been enough.
But then he stormed in and raised hell about it, and his name was linked to the article after all.
Constance is giving me that look again, like she wants a proper apology for the grandson fiasco. For me being me.
She’ll keep waiting.
This was my first job out of college. At the time, we had a miniscule following. Now, the blog is one of the foremost dating publications in the country, and I damn well know I’m one of the people who made it that way. It’s on the edge of my tongue to say so, and to remind her that she encourages all of us to stay on brand with Beyond the Sheets’ wicked sense of humor, whether we’re writing about the best type of bedsheets for your big O or a speed dating fiasco, but I realize something a bit stunning.
She might not have specifically brought me back here to fire me—maybe she wanted me to give her a reason not to—but hell, I want her to.
I joined the blog because I thought it would be fun, and for a while it was. But I’m tired of what we do. I’m tired of passing up dates with men I might actually like so I can go out with people who are interesting enough for a viral article. Or for a heavily edited video other people can watch on their lunch breaks. I’m tired of the constant pressure to poke fun. Most of the men deserve it, and I consider it a public service to puncture overinflated male egos…but some of them don’t.
I’m not sure what comes next, but I’m ready for something to come next.
“So are you going to write a piece called, ‘Breaking up with Your Writer’?” I ask, arching my brow.
“You’re backing me into a corner, Molly,” Constance says, letting the prop pen drop. “I don’t appreciate that. You were one of our best writers.”
“Were?” I press. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Constance. According to the guy I went out with last week, women are incapable of understanding subtlety. Help out my tiny brain here.”