Dating the Enemy

  How could I ever trust myself with another man again? How could I trust that I recognized love when I saw it or felt it? How could I know it wasn’t all some fabrication? I’d spent my career proclaiming to be the expert on relationships and love, yet had become the fool where both were concerned.

  Those who can’t do, teach. The cliché played through my mind as I made my way inside of the building. Perhaps in my situation, it wasn’t so cliché.

  Waiting for the elevators, I noticed a cluster of women talking in hushed voices, eyes scanning my direction. I waited for the next elevator.

  Dean slid in front of me when we climbed onto the next available one, almost as though he were shielding me for as long as he possibly could. I wasn’t sure how much longer the company would have Dean assigned to me, but when he left, I’d miss him. Go, figure. I had a soft spot for a robot with a soul.

  I took off my sunglasses when the doors chimed open forty floors up, knowing no amount of camouflage would conceal me from my co-workers. I’d arrived early, but not my usual time before anyone else had staggered in. My palms started to sweat the moment I set foot in the lobby, not sure what I’d find waiting for me. Would my co-workers lead with the overly-supportive vibe? Or the pretending like nothing had happened front? Would Conrad call me into his office before I had a chance to sit down? Would a certain counterpart still be working from the cubicle across from mine? And if so, how would we act around each other now that the experiment was over?

  The stream of questions were about to give me a headache so I concentrated on the tile floor, making a game out of not stepping on any of the cracks as I meandered through the office.

  The soft din of noise dissipated with every step I took, figures in my periphery vision freezing to a halt, heads angling toward me. When I’d worked up the courage to return some of their stares, I found faces formed in varying phases of pity and sympathy.

  My knees gave a wobble, but I pushed through it. I might have been a romantic and adored pink more than was appropriate for a woman my age, but I was strong, god dammit. I’d survived my parents dying at a young age, and I’d endured three months of being followed and filmed, having every blink analyzed. Confronting my co-workers after all of the votes had been tallied was nothing.

  My eyes jumped to Quinn’s cube, knowing I was going to be in deep trouble with her for dodging her calls and texts the past couple of days. I still hadn’t turned on my phone to see what messages I’d missed, but I knew my best friend well enough to guess she’d tried getting ahold of me a good three dozen times.

  Maybe more.

  I’d offer to buy chocolate éclairs and coffee for the next month and that should mollify her a little at least.

  My desk was exactly how I’d left it Friday evening, save for the newspaper resting on top of my keyboard, a neon green sticky note pressed over the top headline on the front page. It was familiar handwriting; my best friend’s small, precise letters.

  Setting down my bag, I dropped into my chair as I read the words she’d scratched onto the post-it: Maybe he’s not such a douchecanoe afterall.

  Automatically, my eyes lifted to the space across from me. There was no head bobbing above the cube wall, no keys beating wildly, no foot-tapping when those keys went silent as he contemplated his next words.

  He wasn’t coming back. At least not to that desk. He’d earned the big fancy one in that coveted corner office. He’d earned it by doing exactly what he vowed he would three months ago at that conference room table.

  My vision blurred as I peeled the sticky from the newspaper. No tears, I reminded myself. I’d already humiliated myself enough without turning into the woman who melted down at her desk on Tuesday morning.

  The headline was printed in big, black letters, front and center. My New Reality.

  In much smaller letters, I read who the article was written by. Brooks North. Not Mr. Reality. I’d never seen him attach his given name to an article.

  When I picked up the paper to begin reading, my hands were trembling too much to make out the small words, so I set it back down. I had no idea what this was about, and maybe I shouldn’t read it at all, but I couldn’t stop once I started.

  Readers know me as Mr. Reality. Viewers know me as Brooks North. However, as I sit down to write this article sometime before sunset Sunday morning, I have no idea who I am anymore.

  I stopped. I reread that first paragraph again. He had no idea who he was anymore? Make that both of us.

  When I signed on with the World Times to take part in this “social experiment,” I had one goal: to succeed. Based on the way the polls are looking as I write this, it looks as though I will accomplish exactly what I set out to do. Win.

  But all I feel is loss instead.

  Loss of self. Loss of belief. Loss of purpose. Loss of . . .

  Her.

  Readers know her as Ms. Romance. Viewers as Hannah Arden. Me? I know her as an adversary. A thorn in my side to begin, who would become my Achilles Heel, who is now the woman I love.

  My heart stopped, stalling for a few beats from the unexpectedness of his words. Certain I’d read them wrong or there was a typo, my eyes scanned that last sentence again. And again. And eleven more times.

  Love.

  That was the word. It wasn’t a typo.

  I guess I proved my point. I suppose I was right about relationships and love. That’s what the results from the show have demonstrated. Maybe I was correct the past eight years of penning articles about the reality of relationships, and what I believed for years before that from my own life experiences. Love is a lie. Soul mates are nonsense. Happy endings are for the mentally deranged.

  Maybe I was right.

  But I know I love her. It’s the ache in my chest when I watch her walk away, it’s the pit in my stomach when she’s not near. It’s written inside my very soul, the nuance of my essence, the center of my existence. Her. She’s there. She feels more real to who I am than I do. She has become—she is—my reality.

  I am still a realist. You can still call me Mr. Reality on the sidewalks and it won’t offend. But my reality has shifted, a new truth rising in its place.

  Ready for the big reveal? Make sure you’re sitting down first.

  (drum roll begins playing in the background)

  You don’t find a soul mate. You become one.

  You don’t fall in love. You create it. You live it. You shape and mold and build upon it until it has become the sacred thread tying two unlikely souls to one another. An unbreakable bond that defies meaning, refusing to be lumped into a definition one can pen into words, or fit into a box.

  She is the one. My one.

  I love her. Not because I wanted to. Or tried to. Or even consciously thought to. I love her because I had to. There was no choice. No fight I could muster that would result in victory.

  I fell in love with her the way one breathes: unconsciously.

  Yet I will stay in love with her the opposite: consciously, exactly, precisely, concentrating every fiber of my being on protecting it.

  I was love’s greatest cynic, and now, it’s most infamous casualty.

  Ms. Romance, Hannah Arden, was right about love, in all its intricacies and idiosyncrasies. She achieved the impossible in proving it to me.

  I believe.

  A ragged exhale spilled past my lips as my vision tunneled in on the last couple of sentences. My hands were still trembling, now joined with the rest of my body as I contemplated what I’d just read.

  Another lie?

  A satire?

  A prank?

  The truth?

  Before I could give it too much thought, my phone’s speaker buzzed. “Arden. My office.”

  Conrad didn’t add another word before the speaker buzzed off.

  As I stood, I touched the newspaper. An attempt to ascertain its existence. It was real as far as I could tell, but there was no telling. My mind could have drug me into an alternate reality with the way the past coupl
e of days had gone.

  As I headed down the hall toward Conrad’s office, I ignored the stares of my co-workers.

  Setting aside the mind space Brooks’s article was taking up, I stepped inside Conrad’s office without knocking.

  “Close the door,” he greeted, not looking up from his computer.

  And this was where he jabbed the pin into my dreams, causing them to burst. The promotion I’d wanted since the day I finished writing my first article in the junior high newspaper would remain just that, a dream.

  “Congratulations, kid.” Conrad’s gaze found me after I closed the door.

  My eyebrows pinched together. “Congratulations? For what?”

  “You, Hannah Arden, are going to be the new department head of the Life and Style department.”

  My hands reached out for the chair back. “You mean, the votes . . . I won?”

  A single laugh-snort shot from Conrad. “Hell no. You lost by a landslide, barely thirty percent of the votes for Ms. Romance.”

  “Then why am I getting the job? The winner, the one who proved their point, was supposed to get the position.”

  “Exactly. Except when I called the winner up last night at twelve-oh-one after the polls closed to congratulate him, he informed me he was removing his candidacy from the position.” Conrad shook his head as he waved at the chair I was standing behind. I didn’t move. “Therefore, you get it.”

  “By default.”

  “However you want to look at it, Arden. You still wind up with everything you wanted.”

  My chest squeezed. “Not everything,” I whispered, more to myself than to Conrad. “Where is he?”

  “Where’s who?”

  My eyes lifted. “Brooks. Where is Brooks?”

  “Like where is he exactly at this exact moment?” Conrad slid on his reading glasses before opening his copy of the morning paper. “How should I know? Somewhere in San Francisco. That’s about as specific as I can give you.”

  My fingers curled into the chair back. “He went back to California?”

  “That’s what he told me. If he wasn’t going to take the job, what reason was there for him to stay?” Conrad paused, his brow drawing together. “Unless . . .” His pointed look aimed my direction gave no mistake as to what he was referring to.

  “Mr. Conrad, how quickly can you requisition a private plane and get Jimmy to meet me at the airport with that stupid camera?”

  One bushy brow lifted at me. “You might think you’re hot shit because you landed this job, but in my twenty years as Editor in Chief, I never once got a green light to fly a private plane at the drop of a hat. Nice try, kid.”

  “And what if I could guarantee you something that would make the Romance Versus Reality finale ratings seem like a made-for-TV movie?” Moving out from behind the chair, my arms crossed as my plan formed. “You get Jimmy and me on that plane this morning and I will give you a show that will make your ratings-fixated head spin.”

  “What could be better than you subliminally showing everyone you’d fallen in love with Brooks North on camera?” Conrad’s fingers rolled along his desk. He was considering my request.

  I marched closer, until I’d run into his desk and was staring down at him. “Saying it out loud.”

  I was in San Francisco by three that afternoon. Jimmy and camera equipment in tow.

  I’d had a layover in San Francisco once, but never actually stepped foot in the city. It was vibrant and beautiful and everything that made my tourist’s heart go soft and melty, but I was not here to see the sites. I was here for him.

  Now I just had to find him in this metropolis filled with seven million people.

  Thankfully, Quinn had managed to find a personnel file and text me his address mid-flight, so I had a starting point. If I didn’t find him there, I wasn’t sure what I’d do other than wait, or begin searching the city, one grid at a time.

  “When do you want me to start filming?” Jimmy asked as we climbed out of the cab in front of Brook’s apartment building.

  “Whenever you want. I don’t have any idea for how this is going to go, and we don’t have a detailed itinerary from Conrad. Go with whatever your cameraman gut tells you.” I stood outside of the building, smiling at it. This was where he lived. His home.

  “How are you going to get inside?” Jimmy lifted his chin at the entry door.

  “Just like this,” I said, rushing to grab the door when someone shoved through it.

  “You know, maybe you just should have called him before showing up at his doorstep like this.” Jimmy flashed a peace sign at the middle-aged woman who’d come through the door, giving us a suspicious look.

  “Too late for second guessing myself now,” I said as we began climbing the stairs to Brooks’s apartment on the third floor. As we went, I gave my outfit a brief onceover. My skirt was wrinkled from the flight, my jacket reeking of the Sprite I’d dumped on myself mid-flight compliments of turbulence, matched with an undertone of body odor thanks to nervous sweat. The glimpse I’d gotten of me from the neck up in the plane’s bathroom gave the impression I’d spent hard time for something related to meth use.

  Let’s hope he’d meant what he said in that article, because what I was about to surprise him with, matched with how I looked, would be the gold standard of putting love to the test.

  “I can’t believe the way this whole thing turned out. Talk about a mind trip.” Jimmy elbowed me as we scanned apartment numbers on the third floor.

  “Can’t imagine a better person to document this mind trip than you.” I smiled over at him as we came to a stop outside apartment twenty-one.

  My heart started to beat like a hummingbird’s as my fist lifted to knock on his door. I wasn’t sure what he’d think or exactly what I’d say; I just knew I had to be here.

  My hand was still hanging in the air when the apartment one door down opened. A young woman emerged, her eyes landing on Jimmy and me instantly. Recognition lit up her face. “Oh. My. God. You’re her, aren’t you?” Her feet tapped the floor excitedly. There wasn’t time to confirm or deny it before she pointed at Brooks’s apartment. “He’s not here.”

  “He left?” My face fell.

  “Yeah. But he’ll be back. Eventually. He went out on one of those globe-trotting runs of his.” Her earrings jingled when she shook her head, chuckling. “Somebody needs to tell that guy that whatever he’s running from he left it in the dust ten thousand miles ago.”

  “Do you have any idea where he might be?” I asked.

  She paused for a second, as though she were considering something. “He likes Golden Gate Park. Usually all of his runs wind up weaving through there at some point.”

  I was already jogging down the hall. “Thank you,” I told her as I rushed past.

  “Hey, Ms. Romance,” she called after me, waiting until I’d stopped before continuing, “You know what I’ve figured out about those closed-off, removed types? From having lived next door to one for the past five years?”

  My head shook. “What?”

  The corners of her mouth pulled. “It’s not that they’re in possession of a black soul, they’re just protecting a really big heart.”

  My chest squeezed. “I think I’ve recently realized that too.”

  “Good luck!” she called after me as Jimmy and I thundered down the stairs.

  “Maybe you should just wait here until he comes back.” Jimmy shoved open the outside door for me. “It’s going to be looking for a needle in a haystack out there.”

  “No. It will be like searching for my needle in the haystack. Much easier.” I sprinted into the street, flagging the first cab I saw. The driver hadn’t come to a full stop before I flung myself inside. “Golden Gate Park!”

  Jimmy grabbed onto the overhead handle as the driver sped down the road, seeming to pick up on my urgency. I didn’t miss the glances he kept throwing me in the rearview mirror.

  “You’re Ms. Romance, aren’t you?” he finally said.

/>   “I used to be.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been reading your column for years. My wife hooked me.” He blasted his horn at the car in front of him when it took half a second to react to the green light. “I was really rooting for you. Voted for you too. Still can’t believe so many people thought you fell for that bastard.” He huffed, and was quiet for a few minutes while I passed the miles bouncing in the backseat.

  “What are you doing in San Francisco anyway?” His brows were pinched as he examined me in the rearview again.

  Jimmy cleared his throat, looking out the window.

  I met the driver’s look and replied, “To confess to that bastard I’m in love with him.”

  Priceless. The look on the driver’s face that followed. I guessed it was a look I’d have to get used to when my diehard fans learned of my betrayal. The accusing brow. The impression that I was a fraud.

  But wouldn’t I be an even bigger fraud if I didn’t admit my true feelings? Denied the way I felt for him?

  Whatever it all boiled down to, I was here. Determined.

  The opinions of my readers, the masses, the world, didn’t matter where this matter was concerned. All I was cared about was his.

  “Any special place you want to be dropped at the park?” The driver asked as it came into view.

  “You pick.”

  His forehead crinkled. “This feels like a lucky spot,” he said at last, inching up to the curb outside of one of the park entrances.

  “Thank you so much,” I said as I dug out some money from my wallet.

  “My treat. As a way to thank you for all of the advice that has been responsible for making the past five years of my marriage the best.” He bowed his head at me. “A forty dollar cab bill is a bargain compared with weekly marital counseling sessions. A steal.”

  I stuffed the money in his hand, including a hefty tip. “And your readership and loyalty are priceless to me.” I squeezed his hand before climbing out the door. “Thank you.”