four: ignore
It was nearly 7:30 AM, and four radio DJs sat in a small encasement, filled with electronics “ soundboards and computers and microphones, to name a few “ regaling the city of New York with entertainment news, discussions on current events, and most often, details of their personal lives. It was called The Cameron Crew, named for its main host, Jeff Cameron, and his band of misfits “ Rachel de Santis, Caleb Shaffer, and Nadia Maraj. They were an interesting group, but a much calmer contrast to most morning shows. They didn’t do a bunch of crazy pranks, or sound like they were wired on caffeine and coke, they didn’t even play music for most of their time on air. It was just four people, with four mics, talking it out.
Every couple of days, the hosts would submit lists with topics to discuss in the event of downtime. Today, it was Nadia’s turn. “So Nadia, I’m hearing you have a dilemma on your hands,” Jeff read from her sheet of topics. He glanced at her from across the room. “Is now a good time?”
She studied the clock for a moment, deciding that all parties involved were most likely not listening at this particular hour. “Now is a good time.”
“All right, let’s roll,” Jeff encouraged her. “And this ‘dilemma’ is not unlike one that many of our listeners probably encounter, right?”
“It is not uncommon,” she confirmed. She glanced at the other two DJs in the room, knowing they usually chimed in before a story began. But now, they were all ears. “Okay, so I met this guy about two weeks ago.”
“Over Memorial Day weekend, right?” the other female host, Rachel, asked.
“Right. And… I’m not even gonna lie, we hooked up the first night.”
“Nastay!” Jeff chimed in jokingly. “Okay.”
“Now is this a Hamptons boy? Like a kind of rich, snobby kid?” Rachel wondered. She had attended the party, and had a pretty good idea of exactly what went down, but she was just enriching the story with her line of questioning.
“Well not a kid. I don’t mess with boys,” Nadia laughed. “But rich, yeah, super stylish and kind of hoity toity, I guess.”
“So not your type at all.”
“Exactly. Like, anyone that knows me knows I like ‘em to have a little flavor, not so vanilla, not so clean cut.”
“You like hoodlums,” the fourth cohost, Caleb, finally inserted himself into the conversation. “We know.”
“Shut up,” she chuckled into her mic. “But yeah, this guy was not someone I would usually give a second glance to.”
“But you gave him more than that,” Jeff suggestively commented. “No shame in your game.”
“None whatsoever, apparently,” she laughed. “But the problem is, I left early early the morning after “ you guys know I have things to do. And all right, so Saturday night was cool enough, I decided to leave him my number on the kitchen counter and… it’s now June thirteenth and this guy hasn’t called!”
“What?” Rachel squeaked. “Who wouldn’t call you?”
“I know, right?!”
“So he’s a douche,” Caleb noted factually. “That’s not a dilemma, Nadia.”
“No, it is, because it is inevitable that I will see him again. And I’m just wondering how I handle this.”
Jeff began to give out the phone number to the show so that listeners could call in and weigh in on the situation, as they tended to do. He also offered his own two cents, “I think you have to just, like, when you see him, get it out in the open, y’know? Almost jokingly, like, ‘Sorry I missed your calls, man.’”
“You think so?”
“That’s what I would do.”
“And it’s not like I really care that he didn’t call. I mean, I do, but I wasn’t, like, waiting by the phone or anything. I just kind of thought about it one day like, ‘Hey! That… so-and-so never called me.’”
“I don’t know if I would do that, though,” Rachel disagreed with Jeff. “I would just ask him, point blank.”
“You would?”
“Why not? Why beat around the bush. The New York dating scene is hard enough without having to add playing games to the equation.”
“You’re right about that,” Nadia agreed. “I just don’t want him to think I was, like, waiting by the phone. Like my life has been altered by the fact that he didn’t call or something. Because no.”
“Well he’s gonna think that no matter how you bring it up,” Caleb reasoned cynically. “Guys, by nature, just have unbelievable egos. And if he’s from The Hamptons, you should multiply that by ten.”
“By twenty,” Rachel injected.
"He's not actually from the Hamptons, by the way, but let's go with that anyway," she agreed.
“Right. So if you bring it up, you just have to keep in mind that this guy is going to think you’ve already cried over him at least three times.”
Nadia could only chuckle at the thought of crying over Justin Timberlake, but took Caleb’s advice to heart. “So you think I shouldn’t say anything.”
“Say nothing.”
“And Nadia, we know how hard it is for you to say nothing,” Jeff joked, “but just this once. For your own good.”
“Ha ha,” she rolled her eyes, but laughed when she realized how right he was. “Seriously, that will be very hard for me.”
“Just talk about the weather,” Caleb appended. “Or sports. Or nothing at all. Why, exactly, do you have to see this guy again?”
“Ummm… we might be in a wedding together,” she winced at the ridiculousness of it all.
“Producer Kristin’s wedding?” Jeff exclaimed. “Oh man, this just got interesting.”
“I don’t know if I should have said that,” she chuckled.
“Can we all try and guess who it is?”
“No! And there are like fourteen people in the wedding, so let’s not go down that road.”
“I know who it is,” Rachel smiled evilly. But she was close with Nadia, and certainly wasn’t going to spill the beans on air.
“No you don’t,” Caleb dismissed her. “You just wanna sound important because you were there.”
She flipped the bird at him, thankful that no one could see them. “Your secret is safe with me,” she assured Nadia. “Also, nice work.”
“Well it must not have been that nice,” Jeff laughed. And then he took a call. “Nadia, we have someone on the line for you. This is… Audrey. Hi, Audrey.”
“Good morning, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. Love the show,” the caller greeted them.
“Hi, Audrey,” the rest of them cheerfully retorted.
“Audrey, what’s up?”
“Well I just wanted to ask Nadia, why didn’t you call him? Did you get his number?”
“Nadia, you got his number?” Jeff glanced at her.
“I didn’t get his number! I was in a rush, and like I said, I left before he even woke up, I just left my number on his kitchen counter.”
“Right before you did your walk of shame,” Caleb recalled for her.
“Correct,” she rolled her eyes playfully. “So I didn’t get his number.”
“And is it possible that he just didn’t see that you left it?” Rachel wondered. “Like, was it in plain view?”
“I mean, unless he doesn’t use his kitchen ever, I can’t imagine he didn’t see it.”
“Well for a rich boy, that is totally possible…”
“True.”
“Yeah,” Caleb agreed hesitantly, “but if a guy wants to see a girl again, he will find a way to get in contact with her.”
“Even a douche like this guy?”
“Especially a douche like this guy.”
“And we all know that Caleb is an expert in douchebaggery,” Jeff chuckled. “Hey Audrey, thanks for your call.”
“You guys have a good day.”
“You, too.”
“Yo, that didn’t help me at all,” Nadia smiled as she adjusted her headphones. “Because I’m gonna see this dude again in like a week and I don’t know whether I’m supposed to act normal, be a bitch, act like nothing ever happened. You guys really need to help me here!”
“You guys, I think Nadia is freakin’ out,” Caleb astutely observed. “In her four years on this show, I think this is the first time I’ve seen her freak out.”
“I’m not freaking out!”
“Okay, except you kind of are…”
“Am I?”
“You seem a little bit pressed,” Rachel agreed. “Which is normal for us girls; it’s just not the Nadia that we know and love.”
“Oh, like you guys know me so well.”
“Well we spend twenty hours a week doing nothing but talking,” Jeff reminded her coolly. “I think we know you pretty well.”
“Can we go to commercial? I’m getting depressed,” she chuckled. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
“Your Hamptons Honey hit it and quit it is what happened.”
“Jeff!”
“I’m just sayin’,” he laughed with the other two. “But yeah, we’ll go to commercial, and when we come back, we’ll take a few more calls.”
As they broke for commercials, Kristin knocked on the window to the studio in an attempt to get Nadia’s attention. Nadia removed her headphones and scurried out the door to where her friend stood.
“You’re not mad at me are you?”
“For sleeping with Justin and then talking about it on air? No, of course not,” she answered sarcastically. “I especially like the part where you told me about it first.”
“Kris…”
“No, it’s cool,” her expression softened to a chuckle. “I’m sorry he hasn’t called.”
Nadia shrugged, looking back into the studio where her coworkers were drinking coffee and undoubtedly checking Twitter and Facebook. “No big deal. Something to talk about.”
“I can pair you up with someone else for the wedding if it’ll help.”
“I’m chillin’,” she promised her friend-slash-boss. “In fact, I’d rather keep things the way they are. Make him squirm a little.”
“I like the way you think,” Kristin grinned. “By the way, I did not call you out for that reason. Your friend Alex is actually here.”
Nadia’s narrow eyes widened at the mention of the name. “She’s here? Like in the building?”
“Like at your desk,” Kristin nodded. “Should I have told her to go?”
“Fuck me,” she sighed in exasperation. She had been avoiding Alejandra’s calls for days now, so really, it was inevitable that she would get caught soon. “Umm… Okay. I don’t have time for this right now, tell her I’ll call her?”
“I’m not your secretary, but okay.”
“You da best, mama!” Nadia hurried back into the studio just in time for their return from the break. “What’d I miss?”
“Nada,” Rachel replied breezily as she scrolled through her emails. “Oh, except people on Twitter calling you a slut.”
“Oh, well what else is new.” She was about to reclaim her equipment when she noticed Alex storming down the hallway with Kristin in tow. This was not a good sign. “What the fuck,” she mumbled at the scene unfolding. “You guys start without me.”
Jeff looked up from his countdown clock, confused as to how he was going to do a segment about Nadia without Nadia. “Where are you going?”
“I have business to handle. Have Rachel do the Entertainment buzz or something.”
“It’s not eight o’clock yet,” he called after her.
Ignoring him, she found herself back in the hallway, where it appeared that Alejandra was verbally assaulting Kristin. “Alex, what are you doing here?”
“What the fuck is going on,” she demanded from Nadia, crossing her arms over her chest. “Why won’t you answer my calls?”
“I’ve just been really busy,” she lied, sounding dangerously similar to the guy that doesn’t call after the first date. “I’m sorry.”
“Nadia, you are un-fucking-believable!” her Bronx accent echoed throughout the corridor.
“Please keep your voice down.”
“You’re such a cunt,” she shook her head. “I know I should probably take your silence as a no, but my back is against the wall, and I need an actual answer.”
“Do you really want to live with me?” That was her go-to answer whenever Alex brought up the subject of moving in together. “I mean Brooklyn is so far from your mom… It’s far from the hospital…”
“You get here from Brooklyn everyday…”
“And I hate it.”
“Well I don’t really have much of a choice now, it’s either move in with you or find a new spot.”
Nadia’s perfectly arched eyebrows furrowed at her statement. “You gave up your apartment? Why the fuck would you do that?”
“I had a very small window of time to renew my lease or give it up, and stupid ass me thought that you would actually answer me within that time frame. But that ship has sailed, so… what’s it gonna be?”
Fuck me was all Nadia could think. She didn’t want to be heartless, but she really didn’t want to live with Alex. Or anyone. She enjoyed her time alone. Her space to do her own thing. She did not want to have to answer to anyone about anything, and most certainly not some nagging, overly expressive roommate. “Alex…”
“At least say the words if you’re gonna say no.”
“I’m not trying to say no. It’s just…”
“I don’t even understand what the big fuckin’ deal is. You work early mornings, I work late nights. We won’t even have the chance to get in each other’s way.”
“It’s not you,” Nadia promised. “It’s me. I like my space.”
“You have plenty of space!”
“It’s New York! No one has plenty of space!”
“Ha, ha fuckin’ ha.” Alex shoved her hands into the pockets of her scrubs while her gray eyes searched Nadia for the smallest shred of empathy or even truth. “I need you to be honest with me right now.”
“I don’t know what to say, chica. I don’t wanna be a bitch, but… I’m really not feeling this.”
Alex’s vanilla face immediately turned a pink shade and a tear threatened to roll down her cheek, but she had no choice but to accept her decision. “Okay then.”
“Alex…”
“It’s cool,” she rested her arm over her short jet black hair while she tried to think of what to do. “Umm… all right then.”
“I mean, if you wanna keep some of your stuff at my place for a while. Or if you need a place to stay until you find a new apartment…”
Alejandra nodded, but didn’t accept or decline. She just hoisted her messenger bag onto her shoulder and began to head towards the elevators. “You should get back to your show.”
“Alex...”
“I’ll call you.”
Watching her friend disappear, Nadia sighed, exasperated. The last thing she needed was another reason to wait by the phone.
Author's Chapter Notes:
I'm back! I really have to get used to these shorter chapters, because I feel like it's moving super slow lol. But! I've got most of the story done, so I really will do my best to update a few times a week. Thanks so much for reading, you guys.
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