Jake:Okay, Bowen. How many deejays does it take to change a light bulb?
Mabel:How many??
Jake:None. Nobody wants to turn on a light and see their faces anyway.
Mabel:Gasp! How do you drive an accountant insane?
Jake:Text him bad jokes?
Mabel:No! Tie him to a chair, stand in front of him, and fold up a map the wrong way.
He groaned. He actually groaned out loud in his bedroom, not from the corniness of the joke but from the thought of Mabel and ropes and a chair. Instead of begging her to do just that, he returned fire.
Jake:You asked for it: Knock, knock.
Twenty minutes later, he couldn’t stop smiling because Mabel wasn’t spending the night with her date. She was spending it texting with him.
Not very professional. But he didn’t care.
Twenty-Five
Mabel was stretched out on the greenroom couch on a Monday in early November when Dave slouched in wearing a rumpled shirt and a weary expression.
“What’s up?” She put down the magazine she was reading. “You look like hell.”
Dave batted at her legs until she lifted them enough for him to slide underneath. “Just tired.”
She craned her neck to look at him more closely. The skin under his eyes was dark, and lines bracketed his mouth.
“It’s more than that.” She nudged his side with her ankle. “What’s up?”
Dave’s hands tensed around her shins, and he dropped his head against the couch and closed his eyes. “This Brick Babe cohost situation has been such a time suck. Each Babe who’s interested gets a one-week tryout, but I’m spending at least a couple of days beforehand showing them around the studio, explaining the equipment, running down how you and I always prepped. And then they get in front of the microphone and malfunction like faulty droids.”
She waved her arms like C-3PO and intoned, “Danger. Dave. Robinson” in her best robot voice.
But the topic wrapped its arms around her and refused to let go. Brandon had selected fifteen women to be Brick Babes last month, and they’d all been quickly outfitted with a variety of tiny WNCB T-shirts and slapped across the station’s social media sites. Of the fifteen chosen, only six were interested in an on-air tryout once they learned about the wake-up call for a morning show. The tryouts had been disasters so far, and each one had Mabel feeling worse than the last, so she changed the subject. “Did Thing Two ever shake his cough?”
Dave scrubbed his hands through his hair. “No. He’s still hacking all night, and now Thing One’s caught it. I can’t remember the last time Ana and I got more than three consecutive hours of sleep.”
Mabel made a sympathetic face at him, then got distracted when her phone vibrated. She fished it from her pocket and smiled at theBarbarian Time Brigandsmeme Jake had texted her. Over the past few weeks, they’d fallen into a texting relationship—light, funny stuff and jokes about their favorite TV show, none of it serious—and somehow the buzzing of her phone had turned into the highlight of her day.
She turned her screen to show the image to Dave, who was also a hugeBTBfan, but he only offered a thin smile.
“Seriously, what’s your deal?” she asked, setting her phone down.
“Nothing. It’s just… life is so short, you know? I want to spend it being happy.”
The huge sigh he gave might as well have come from the soles of his feet, and Mabel swung her legs around so she could sit up and face him. “I know. We’ll get me back on the morning show somehow.”
Dave squeezed her shoulder, then deftly maneuvered behind her to swipe her place on the couch.
“Mmmm. Warm spot.” He crossed his ankles and assumed his favorite napping position, nudging her to the edge of the cushion.
She rolled her eyes. Apparently sharing and caring time was over.
That afternoon she stepped into the studio to devise the latest plan for her upcoming shift. She’d been doing her best over the past month to do such a subtly shitty job that Brandon wouldn’t be happy with her performance but he wouldn’t be able to complain about anything specific. She was actually pretty proud of herself. It took skill to bring the wrong type of energy to an afternoon show by keeping her voice just perky enough and her delivery a shade below frenetic. She knew damn well people should be winding down at the end of the day, not ramping up with a manic pixie radio girl, but Brandon didn’t know she knew it.
And then there was her second wave of attack: playing the worst music in the universe. Last week she’d worked through the unknown B-sides and deep cuts of every one-hit wonder of the past three decades, which absolutely nobody was clamoring for. She didn’t have a good idea yet for this week, so she browsed through the music list, hoping inspiration would strike.
