The Ex Talk(11)

I didn’t mean for it to sound that exciting—it’s just a potential fresh take on a dating show. But maybe it’s not a bad idea.

“Um,” I say, feeling my face grow warm, the way it always does when I’m on the spot. Even in a room of people I know, people with incredible voices, I’m more conscious of the sound of my voice than ever. It’s more high pitched, more nasal than usual. These people don’t say um or like. They don’t stumble over their words.

Dominic is watching me very intently, as though I’m the news ticker on a cable network. Even when he’s sitting down, his posture is so stiff, the cut of his shoulders so sharp, that his muscles must ache when he gets home every day. I wish, not for the first time this meeting, that he hadn’t picked the seat directly opposite mine.

“Well.” An excellent start. I clear my throat. This is just like pitching a segment in my team’s weekly pitch meeting. I can do this. They’ve all heard me speak before. No one’s judging the way I sound, and if they are, they’re not going to make snide comments about it. “A dating show hosted by exes. It’s . . . exactly what it sounds like, really. We’d get the listeners invested in their relationship, in how they got together, and how it fell apart. We’d get them invested in the two of them as friends, as cohosts, as whatever they are now that they’re broken up. It would be part storytelling and part informational. Each episode, they could share more about their past, and they’d also explore dating trends, or interview dating experts, or even do some live counseling on the air to figure out what went wrong.”

And I’m surprised, hearing myself talk about it, that it actually sounds like something I’d love to listen to. Public radio can sometimes be fun averse, but something like this—my dad would have gotten a kick out of it. It would be like This American Life meets Modern Love. We could do a show that follows each side of a Tinder date, or one tracking down people who’d ghosted someone.

That’s when I have to stop myself. I’m using we in my head, like I’m the producer of this show. I already have a show.

“Like Kent said, there are tons of relationship shows out there, plenty of them hosted by couples,” I say, gaining more confidence. My coworkers, my fellow senior staffers plus Dominic, are still listening—to me. “But . . . but what if we really try to figure out what goes wrong in relationships by having two exes work through their issues? Because that’s what people want to know, right? What they did wrong?”

It’s a question I’ve had plenty of times. I allow myself to grin, to relax back in my seat.

“I kind of love that,” says reporter Jacqueline Guillaumont, after the chatter in the room dies down. “I’d listen to it.”

“It’s unconventional,” Mike says, “but I have to say, I like where Shay’s head is at. Maybe that’s what we need, something out of the box like that.”

“We’d need two exes to host it,” Isabel says. “But I guess we could figure that out?”

Paloma reaches over and scribbles on my notepad: Great job, and I feel myself glow from the inside out.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t see how it would work,” Dominic says, popping that bubble of pride. A wrinkle appears between his brows.

“Why not?” I’m so focused on him, on this sudden desire to press my thumb hard into that crease between his brows, that I can barely hear Paloma scraping the bottom of her yogurt next to me. The one time I get the courage to speak up in a meeting like this—a meeting he should never have been invited to—he rips apart my idea.

“It’s not exactly groundbreaking reporting.”

“Since when does everything need to be? It would get people talking, and it would have appeal beyond our regular listenership. Maybe it would even increase contributions to the station.” I look directly at Kent when I say this. “We can’t oust mayors every day.”

“No, but we should at least conduct ourselves with a modicum of respect,” Dominic says, spitting out that last word as he leans forward, gripping the edge of the table. “Exes bickering about why they broke up? Giving out relationship advice?” He scoffs. “This sounds like something on satellite radio, or god forbid, commercial radio. It sounds . . . tawdry.”

“And exposing the mayor’s private life isn’t?”

“Not when it’s news.”

The rest of the room seems oddly captivated by us. Kent has been scribbling on his notepad, uncharacteristically silent. I’ve never seen anyone argue like this at a meeting, and I’m convinced he’s going to let us have it. When he doesn’t, I keep going.

“You think public radio is only this one thing, but it’s not,” I say, clutching my pen as tightly as I can. In my head, the cap flies off and splatters his chest with black ink, wrecking the shirt he must have picked out so carefully this morning. It drips down those blue stripes and onto his jeans. “And that’s the beauty of it. It can be educational, but it can also be heartbreaking or thrilling or fun. We’re not just delivering facts, we’re telling stories. You’ve worked here four whole months, and you think you have this industry all figured out?”

“Well, I do have a master’s in journalism. From Northwestern.” He says the school name so casually, as though it wasn’t at all difficult to get into or didn’t cost sixty grand. “So I happen to think that degree hanging by my desk does qualify me to talk about journalism.”