“Girl, there aren’t enough hours in the day to crawl into his wacky brain.”
The show is my guilty pleasure, pure dumb fun watching a bunch of guys get filmed doing stunts as they try to win over unsuspecting women on a yacht docked near a resort town.
Somehow the scenarios that unfold on those ships are beyond scandalous, beyond controversial: champagne-fueled sexcapades, lies, and justifications for infidelity; husbands pretending to be single to compete on the show, all while believing their wives won’t find out—and of course they do.
People just seem to combust when they get in front of the cameras. The show has been on for a decade and it’s ratings gold. Cassie and I figured out that we were both suckers for it a year ago and we dissect every episode.
“Dean, OMG. Could you believe Jake ended up making out with Sally while that other guy was lying naked next to her in the bed. And she was totally fine with it?”
“It was pretty awesome,” I agree. Just thinking about Bachelor Bay makes me smile. It’s so far-removed from reality that it relaxes me to contemplate it. I’m almost bummed when the instructor gets on the mike and starts coaching us. But not really. I need a good sweat-drenching if I’m going to counteract the day’s bad juju so far. We cycle in time with the music, we stand and run on the pedals, and we raise the temperature in the room by at least ten degrees.
Cassie hoots and hollers from the saddle next to me and I sing Pink’s “What About Love” out loud. No one can hear me and that’s the point. What started out as a slog uphill has turned into a full-throttle, joyous race to the finish. Drenched in sweat and three degrees away from a heart attack, I am transformed.
By seven-fifteen, I am fully awake and feeling almost invincible. I have forty-five minutes to shower, drive to work and pick up my latte from the coffee place in my building before going upstairs.
I love my job, even on the days when I get nasty letters from people who think I’ve missed the point of a story or even threats of lawsuits from people accusing me of slander. I was taught early on that hate mail is the sign of good reporting. I’ve wanted to be a journalist since I was a kid, long before I became a reporter for the ThesBEE, a publication for theater news that no one read at my tiny high school.
I worked my way up over the next ten years, through a college major in journalism, internships, terrible beats in tiny towns and semi-successful attempts to freelance in bigger towns. Since I had only ever wanted to be a journalist, landing a job at the Examiner was my dream. The paper has its main headquarters in New York, but there are news bureaus all over the country in all major cities. I was lucky to get hired in the LA bureau, so I didn’t have to relocate.
There is, unfortunately, one thing I hate about my job. And it sits in the cubicle next to mine in the fine form of Jack Galloway. He’s a star reporter who’s treated like he walks on water, which feeds his already-giant ego. Before I’d been at my job for a week, I learned that Jack consistently writes more stories and gets more exclusives—meaning he’s beating every other media outlet to report on breaking news—than almost anyone else at the paper.
He also lays claim to the only Pulitzer Prize won by anyone in the Los Angeles bureau for a series of stories he wrote a couple of years ago about a pattern of sexual harassment at several major film studios that led to major reform in the industry. He broke a story each day for weeks and was responsible for billions of dollars paid to compensate victims. When I started my job, Jack’s journalistic reputation preceded him. I was ready to kneel at the altar of his skill and experience, grateful to be able to learn what I could from a master.
But he was nowhere to be found.
For the first couple weeks after I was hired, Jack was working at the paper’s New York headquarters, so I didn’t meet him until I rushed in one day—a half-hour late—and found a broad-shouldered man in a navy sport coat hunched over the news desk. When he heard me and turned around, my first thought was I’m done for. As in, there’s no chance I can work around this guy every day and not want to have sex with him on the daily, starting right at that very moment.
Yes, please and thank you.
His deep blue eyes did me in at first glance and his perfectly straight, white teeth and dimpled cheeks unleashed a flutter in my belly when he smiled at me. I’m sure he expected me to melt into a puddle when I looked at him.
I almost did.
The only thing saving me was the need to take in the rest of his face: the strong jaw, the cheekbones that could cut glass, and the plush lips that mesmerized me even when he wasn’t talking.
He tipped his head up in acknowledgment, “Jack Galloway.” Then he looked back at whatever had his attention on the news desk. It was fortunate that he didn’t seem interested in conversation because I was having trouble stuttering out my own name. When I did manage to enunciate it, he looked up at me with a smirk, like he was all too familiar with the effect he has on women.
Oh shit, this guy’s trouble, I thought.
And I’m a magnet for trouble. Or at least, I used to be. If there was an egotistical, emotionally stunted, magnificent-looking guy within a ten-mile radius, I would find him like a heat-seeking missile. Then I’d let him wreck my capacity to make good decisions until he decided to move on, and I was left like sad roadkill, wondering what just ran me over.
Guys like him were the reason I never got promoted beyond reporting on brush fires and “dog bites man” stories at tiny papers—because I overslept one too many times after making bad decisions. Like going out instead of working late and coming to work unfocused after blindingly good sex.
It’s been years since I’ve made those mistakes because I finally realized that for me, ambition and dating don’t mix. So here I am, with no blindingly good sex in my life, no boyfriend, but one hell of an opportunity to do good work for one of the biggest papers in the country.
I’m done with distractions. I’m leaning into the job and ditching all relationships. It’s for the best.
But man, if I have to look at Jack every day, it’s just going to be painful.
He’s the kind of guy who uses his hair for emphasis, running his fingers through it when he’s thinking, shaking it forward and back again to settle the loose strands in place whenever he needs to get someone’s attention. He comes into work with it wet and slicked back, as if communicating he’s just come from the gym. Then he goes ahead and communicates it himself, in case any of us happened to miss the swell of his biceps and the broad span of his shoulders from whatever he does there.
“I caught that on CNN at the gym,” he’ll say, jumping in on a conversation about how a company’s stock took a turn after a bad earnings report. Or, “On my way to the gym, I saw a three-car pileup. We should do a piece about airbag technology.” When he rolls up his sleeves, he has to stop midway up his forearms because his muscles prevent the fabric from going higher.
Some reporters wear jeans and T-shirts unless they have a meeting with an executive or a business lunch. Jack wears a dress shirt and tie most days, even if he’s wearing jeans. He keeps a sport coat on the back of his chair for the off chance he has to run out and meet with someone important. He never gets rattled by anything at work. At least nothing that can’t be solved by running a hand through his hair.