homewrecker lookalike’s head.
“Aaaahhhh … you’re Guiliana. I should’ve recognized you.” She leans forward conspiratorially. “You’re famous around here.”
Before she has a chance to elaborate on her sass, I blurt out, “Abrams! Ben Abrams. I’m here to see Ben, please.”
She spins around in her white chair and looks across the room, to the crowd of guys around the Ping-Pong table. She motions me to come closer and points him out. His back is toward me and the first thing I notice is his hair, or lack thereof. He’s got a clean crew cut around the sides, but not much on top. Of course it’d be some dirty, old, balding man writing about a girl taking her top off.
No one notices as I walk across the room. Fake Courtney didn’t announce my presence, and they all seem overly engrossed in the monitor hanging above the Ping-Pong table. God, these guys are so competitive—it’s pathetic, watching their stories like that.
I slip into the group without anyone even acknowledging me. What are they looking at?
And then I hear it. The song. My voice. They’re looking at me.
Unce, unce, unce.
It’s amazing that after almost eight years in the news business filled with countless tape reviews, appearances, and mic checks, I still can’t stand the sound of my own voice. But there I am, accompanying T.I. with my now famous rap skills:
“One thing I ask of you/Let me be the one you back that ass to/Go, from Malibu, to Paris, boo …”
And there is my bra, in all its neon glory. It’s a good-looking bra, I think to myself. But only JR was supposed to be looking.
“I knew she had a nice rack,” one of the bloggers says.
“You should have said that in the blog post,” I interject. The music literally comes to a screeching halt and all heads turn my way. At least the shirtless Guiliana-fest is over. Silence. So they do have some shame.
“Guiliana, wow—hi.” Ben is the first one to turn around and say something. “You’re so much … shorter … than I imagined.”
And you’re so much younger than I imagined from that hairline, but I don’t say it out loud. The blue of his eyes is so striking that I almost forget that I hate him. I look down so he doesn’t see my reaction and notice that his brown shoelaces are double-knotted. So he’s not totally reckless. I look back up, unsure of how to greet this creep who is trying to sabotage my career, grateful when he extends his hand.
“… and not as drunk, right?” I can’t even believe I’m being funny right now.
He gives me what looks like a patronizing smile, and I hate him again.
I smile back anyway, because the longer I can perpetuate his horny-man thought process—the easier I can lead him to believe that he has me—the more likely I am to get him to take this post down. Eyes on the prize, Guiliana. You can’t lose your job and fiancé within forty-eight hours.
“So, what do I and the Banter team here owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“I wanted to see if you would please take the post down.”
Scoffing and laughter erupt behind him.
“No waaaaaay, dude,” says a guy in a red plaid button-down shirt. “That video made me want to chug YouTube straight.” A second guy in black skinny jeans nods along vigorously, his eyes never leaving my chest.
Ben looks at me with sad eyes and I can’t tell if he’s being a total dick or there’s some sort of feeling behind the eye contact. I haven’t had much of that with the opposite sex lately; JR must’ve been lying to me for some time now, because his eyes, his hands—his whole manner really—have avoided mine for the last few months. Especially with his smoking, we had become like ships passing in a mood-altered murk. He regarded me through the lens of pharmacology, and I through increasing skepticism. Bantering Ben, on the other hand, is looking at me square in the pupils.
“I’m terribly sorry, Ms. Layne, but that’s not going to happen. And besides, I don’t have the authority to do that kind of thing anyway.”
“Your name is on it, and you can’t just take it down?”
Again the peanut gallery erupts with laughter. I look at Ben, then around the crowd of snarky bloggers, and know I have to come up with something. Images of the video, of Maryann, of JR, of going home to Connecticut in shame all flash through my brain in rapid succession and I know I have to come up with something else.
“What if we play Ping-Pong for it?”
The frat party behind him just won’t let up, so he has to shout over them. “Let’s hear her out,” Bantering Ben says, putting an end to the chaos.
He turns from crowd control to attentive listener so fast you’d think he’s a high school guidance counselor, instead of a blogger of smut. Something about the way he looks at me makes me think he wants me to prove them wrong, like he wants me to shut them up. He wants me to stand up for myself. I haven’t gotten that much encouragement from one look in a long time, and it throws me for a loop. I grab one of the Ping-Pong paddles that’s been abandoned on the table and reposition my sunglasses to push back even more of my hair. Everyone’s looking at me but I’ve got my eyes trained on Bantering Ben.
“One game to twenty-one. If you win, post stays up. When I win, post comes down.” I’m looking at him dead in the eye.
“You’re on, traffic girl.” Bantering Ben picks up a paddle from the other side of the table. “Just know that when I make you look worse than the George Washington Bridge at rush hour, I’m still gonna have to run this gamble by the big boss-man, Jake.”
I go over all the rules up front to make sure no loopholes crop up—I’m pretty sure all these guys play “Brooklyn rules” or some hipster shit like that. He agrees to my terms: We’ll volley for serve, then rotate every five points. Winner’s got to take the game by two. Despite my hangover, I’m confident. JR and I used to play all the time at UCLA, and though I haven’t played in years, I was killer back in the day. JR would always challenge couples at the bar to doubles for drinks. He’d try to game them, saying things like, “Oh, don’t worry, she’s not that good, just look at her.” He really was awfully good at making mean sound funny.
“You ready?” Ben’s confident smile melts into competitive glare.
Back and forth. I’m up.
Three to one.
Back and forth.
Seven to three.
The guys form a barricade around the table. I get up to a fast nine-to-four lead. But even faster are the one-liners these guys are throwing at me: “New York Lose Now,” “Expressway to Playboy,” “Put it in her Lincoln Tunnel.” I’m still up, eighteen-thirteen now, when I bend down for a ball that Ben somehow aced past me. A searing hot pain replaces my confidence and shoots from my lower back, right up my spine to the middle of my back. I cover my mouth so I don’t scream, but that does little to hide my agony. I grab the ball with one hand and move my other from my mouth to my back.
“You okay?” Ben looks concerned.
He should—I’m standing there like an old grandmother, crouched over like she needs a hip replacement. I’m too embarrassed to make eye contact—not like he hasn’t seen me in my bra already—but still, I can’t bear being the weak one anymore. I give him a plastered-on smile. The familiar inner dialogue that I used to recite when JR would do something to upset me but I didn’t want him to know, sputters up in my head: Don’t let him see you sweat.
“Are you sure, Guils?” I shoot Ben a withering look and he’s savvy enough to decode its meaning.
“Sorry, Guiliana. It’s just, well, I hear Eric call you that on air sometimes, and I think it’s …”
I