Authors: Melanie Jacobson
Chapter 16
The most surprising part of being in the
Real Salt Lake
office turned out to be how little I was there. On nights I had concert reviews, I got to come in much later. Basically, I needed to put in forty hours a week in whatever combination of field time and office time that it took to get the job done. The whole office was in flux like that. Marin, the other staff writer; Chantelle, and I darted in and out as we chased stories. The four ad girls were in only for snatches of time between appointments with potential advertisers, and Ellie was gone for long stretches, schmoozing or doing whatever it was she did. The only regular fixtures were Denny of Homestar Runner T-shirt fame, who generally looked like he was suffering as the lone male in an office full of women, and Janie, our receptionist and sometimes salesgirl.
Since there were rarely more than four of us in the office at once, I lacked a rapport with the other girls like the one I had with my sandwich makers whom I’d shared shifts with for hours on end. I didn’t mind though. With everyone absorbed in their own tasks, I didn’t feel guilty about the time I spent with my head down, working on my own assignments. Besides a weekly concert review and my Indie Girl duties, I covered the grunt stuff like Ellie warned me I would. I wrote short stories on local leaders and businesses, pieces intended to ingratiate the magazine to the community.
The business articles translated into an astonishing number of advertising dollars. I tried not to be cynical about that. My pragmatic side acknowledged that it was smart business for Ellie to order these write-ups, but I felt like Rosemary at her first soccer game, nipping at her coach’s heels and hollering, “Put me in! Put me in!” Ellie had run the Marisol piece, and it had picked up a few comments, but the real results were in Marisol’s business. She e-mailed to say she couldn’t keep up with the orders, and she thanked me. Still, Chantelle and Marin got the human interest pieces, and Ellie assigned me the brainless stuff.
Even with running all over town and chasing down silly fluff stories, I carved out bits and pieces of time to work on projects I enjoyed, like my current side project, a story about a guy and his boutique vegetable business. He grew produce for high-end restaurants that paid top dollar for hard-to-find varieties of squashes and tomatoes. It didn’t give me the soul-deep satisfaction I’d found in writing about Marisol, but it was turning into an interesting piece—when I had a chance to work on it.
I glared at my computer screen and wished I was typing about a radishlike plant called Mooli and not just another chef at yet another high-end local restaurant. Especially since I didn’t get to go in-depth about at him all. Seriously, it was a two-hundred-word profile that didn’t dig any deeper than asking him to name his favorite dessert. When my phone rang, I snatched it up, still enjoying the thrill it gave me to have my own phone at my own desk.
“Pepper Spicer.” I had been an official full-time staffer for three weeks, but I was cycling through different inflections and phone greetings, trying to decide which one I liked best.
“Perky and professional?”
I smiled when I heard Tanner’s voice and relaxed into my chair. It was past five, and besides Denny, I had the office to myself. “Did you like it?”
“You know my favorite greeting.”
“Pepper Spicer,” I said, growling into the phone in my best jaded New York–reporter voice.
“That’s the one,” he said, and I heard his smile. My own smile grew bigger, and I heard a snort from Denny.
I glanced up, and he mouthed, “Tanner?”
When I nodded, he rolled his eyes and headed for the break room.
“How’s the city?” I asked Tanner the same thing every day, teasing him that he got to see and cover way more of Salt Lake than I did.
“Still there,” he said. “I’m done with it for the day.”
“You made your deadline already?”
“I just hit send,” he said, sounding tired. “What about you?”
“I’m covering that punk band tonight,” I reminded him. “I’m only halfway through my day.”
“That’s right,” he said. “What are they called? Something really inspiring.”
“Circling the Drain.”
“Fail.”
I laughed. “Maybe their music is better than their name.”
“I hope so for your sake. You want to take a dinner break?”
“I’d love to.” It was becoming a habit—dinner with Tanner. A really good habit.
“How does Chez Tanner sound?”
“Way better than my microwave dinner in the freezer.” Dinner at Tanner’s would trump almost anything, truthfully. His kitchen skills rocked. His mom had taught him well. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
After we hung up, I dug through my purse for my compact to make sure my eyeliner hadn’t migrated then touched up with a little bit of lip gloss. I had less time than ever to be high maintenance, but in a job where I had to be taken seriously as a professional, I’d learned appearances counted. Showing up places looking like a fresh-faced kid did
not
work in my favor. When I made the acquaintance of the Cover Girl section at the grocery store, Ginger cheered.
Denny walked out and caught me primping. He rolled his eyes before tossing his crumpled soda can into a wastebasket near the front door. “Dinner with your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Right,” he said, settling in front of his monitor. “You talk multiple times a day, go out several times a week, you spend every Sunday with his family, and can’t face him without your lip gloss intact. What was I thinking?”
“We don’t go out,” I said. “We hang out. And we’ve only been doing that for a few weeks.”
“My bad again. You’re right. Big difference. Why would I think he’s your boyfriend? Especially when you’re dating other guys every single week too.”
Yeah, there was that. I wadded up a piece of paper and bounced it off of his head. I winced. “Sorry. I was trying to swish it in your trash can to intimidate you.”
He grinned and went back to zipping through the murky digital underpinnings of the magazine’s programming code.
I turned back to my fluff piece on Chef Tom, but it was too late. I had lost the tiny shred of interest I’d barely had in it before. First of all, Chef Tom was a dumb name. It didn’t sound right. Chefs have names like Wolfgang Puck. How was I supposed to take “Tom” seriously? And I definitely couldn’t concentrate with Denny’s teasing ringing in my ears. My conscience throbbed.
Even though Tanner and I still had a full week to go before we had our first agreed-upon DTR, I knew I was in trouble. The emotional wiggle room I thought my Indie Girl dates would buy me had evaporated after a week with him. Without even trying, he’d shut down all my defenses. The humor I’d often seen lurking in his expression over the previous two months proved irresistible up close and personal, and we spent a lot of time laughing and debating and drifting into comfortable silences that neither of us hurried to break. There was no defense against that except distance, and I wasn’t willing to give up time with him. Not when there was so much to learn about the way his fascinating brain worked. Not when he made me feel like the cleverest girl that had ever been born. Not when Rosemary was already madly in love with him, and my mom had automatically set a place for him and Courtney at the dinner table every Thursday for three weeks in a row.
Not when every date with him ended in a kiss that curled my toes.
It made the Lookup dates so much worse. I’d gone back to looking for dates with no real romantic future, thinking it would keep things less complicated for everyone. It did in one sense: it made it clear to me that I wanted Tanner and no one else. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.
It also made me dread every new date. Not only did I spend most of the inevitably uncomfortable dates wishing I were with Tanner, but I also spent them feeling guilty because he didn’t know about the whole “Single in the City” column. I wanted to tell him, and I knew it needed to be soon, but I hadn’t found the right way to bring it up with him. What was I supposed to say? “So I’m really into you, but I have to date other guys every week for my job. Hope you don’t mind.”
I didn’t know if it would be worse for him to not mind at all or to mind so much that it forced me to choose. I wasn’t sure that I could walk away from the column without losing my job altogether, and I couldn’t walk away from
Real Salt Lake
because I didn’t have a Plan B.
My phone chimed with a text from Tanner.
I’m home. Come see me, woman.
I sighed and leaned back to study the ceiling for a happy moment.
Denny groaned, and I groped on my desk for a projectile. I snatched up the clay paperweight Rosemary had made me in Brownies and chucked it at him. He didn’t even duck, and it bounced off the wall a foot to the left of his head.
“You could at least pretend like you’re scared,” I said.
“It’s only scary when you’re aiming at something
near
me,” he said. “You never hit what you’re actually aiming at.”
I laughed. “I need a break,” I said. “Maybe dinner will improve my coordination. Watch out when I get back. Tanner’s food is magical.”
“Enough!” Denny said, bouncing out of his chair. “I cannot take the goopiness anymore.”
I scanned my desk for more missiles and snagged a full water bottle from it. I winged it at Denny, intending to hit him square in the chest. Instead, it hit him lower. Significantly lower. Denny dropped to his knees with a hiss.
“I’m sorry, Denny! I’m so, so sorry!” I winced as his eyes crossed. “What can I do? Can I do anything for you? I’m so sorry!”
He waved toward the door, and a strangled version of his normal voice said, “Go. Go now.”
I snatched my purse and laptop bag off my desk and babbled as I hurried to obey him. “Denny, I feel so bad! I’m so sorry.”
He pushed himself back up and limped toward the break room, maybe for ice.
“Go eat!” he called.
Once I reached The Zuke, I dropped my stuff in the front seat, the only open space in the car. I’d procrastinated cleaning it all week, but I really needed to get rid of the borrowed rock-climbing gear that ate up all the room in the rear seat. The grimy harness and other assorted equipment Mace had lent me for my last Indie Girl date hadn’t made it back into the house after I’d limped home from an exhausting date on Saturday with “Fly Outdoor Guy.” He was not, in fact, “fly.” A talkative braggy pants, yes. But not fly. The conversation had exhausted me more than the forty-five-foot wall we’d tackled.
I revved the engine, anxious to see Tanner again. Fifteen minutes and a few borderline yellow lights later, I knocked on Tanner’s door. What was this crazy pull he had on me that made me rush across town for a chance to grab dinner with him when I had a million other things to do? And why didn’t I care more about his ability to distract me? In the middle of these muddled thoughts, the door swung open, and Tanner stood there, looking rumpled and delicious in chinos and a deep purple button-down shirt.
“How was the mayor’s office?” I asked as he pulled me into his arms.
He dropped a kiss on my head before answering. “Not as huggable as you,” he said.
His roommate Tyler groaned and raised the volume on the Jazz game. The eruptions from the television crowd provided pleasant white noise while I watched from my perch at their breakfast counter as Tanner cooked up chicken fettuccine alfredo, my favorite. “Are you going to tell me your secret ingredient this time?” I asked.
“I told you, I pass my hand over it.”
I rolled my eyes, and he grinned, turning back to the pan where the cream slowly heated for the sauce. “What did you work on this afternoon?” he asked.
I sighed and told him about the puff piece on Chef Tom. By the time I finished my litany of complaints on all the boring “snapshots” I’d had to sketch out for the local profiles, the fettuccine noodles were boiling.
“Anyway, it’s not fair,” I concluded.
Tanner nodded and pinched a noodle from the boiling mass, taking a small bite to test its consistency. I waited for him to offer his input when he finished chewing, but instead, he took another bite of noodle.
“Well?” I asked.
He responded with a crook of his eyebrows that said, “What?”
“It’s totally not fair, right?” I prodded.
He finished chewing and swallowed then took a long swig of his ice water.
“Tanner!”
“It’s totally fair,” he said. “That’s how this business works. This is the dues-paying I told you about way back when.”
I grimaced and traced an amorphous doodle on the countertop. Tanner never pulled punches. I really liked that about him, even when I didn’t like what he had to say. I tapped my invisible drawing a few times then smiled.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m pretty lucky I got a full-time gig at all. Remind me of that next time I complain.”
“Okay, but I’m also going to remind you that you told me to remind you.”
“Sorry. Do I complain a lot?”
He smiled and gave a small shake of his head. “No. You don’t.” He grabbed a plate from a nearby cupboard and plopped fettuccine on it then ladled sauce on top before sliding the whole shebang in front of me.
“It smells insanely good,” I said.
“It’s my mom’s special recipe. She’ll teach it to you if you want.”
I took a big bite and chewed, basking in the rush of happy endorphins that only heavenly pasta can unleash.
“I want,” I said.
It would be my second cooking lesson from her. Tanner and I had spent one Saturday evening in the Graham’s kitchen while his mom taught me how to roast a duck. His parents’ house was becoming a second home.
“Did Courtney call you about Saturday?” he asked after downing a few bites of his own.
A small pit formed in my stomach. “No. What’s up?”
“She and Josh want us to go up to Park City with them.”
The pit yawned wider. “What time?” I asked, hoping against hope the answer would be that it was a dinner thing.
“I think they want to grab lunch and walk through the shops.”
It was their third date. Josh’s sense of humor put Courtney at ease, and I didn’t know if they were the love match of the century, but Josh’s low-key approach was the perfect fit for Courtney and her reentry into the single life. They liked each other’s company, and they both seemed content to leave it at that for the moment.