Channel 20 Something Read Online Free PDF Page B

get one package and maybe two minutes of video out of her,” she’d said in a surly tone.
    “Anything,” I promised, well aware she was saving my bacon by filling so much time in tonight’s show. “You are a news goddess, and I will gladly worship you with offerings of Chardonnay and chocolate. Whatever you desire.”
    “How about double-dating with me and Mike? He’s got a cute friend.” This, delivered with raised brows, a mischievous grin, and an aren’t you tempted tone.
    I was not. “Maybe I could come over and scrub your toilet instead?”
    She laughed and headed out the door again. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
    Oh yes I did. Mara had an absolute knack for dating men with zero boyfriend potential. Himbos. Beautiful and brainless. For instance, Mike, whom I had met once and instantly diagnosed—dumb as a stump.
    “The best part is,” Mara had laughed, “he thinks he’s brilliant. He actually carries his transcript around with him and whips it out at any opportune moment.”
    “Well, his GPA might have been high, but in Common Sense 101, he gets a big fat F. In red marker,” I said. It could’ve been worse, though, and it had been. “Still, compared to some of your past ‘special friends,’ he is sort of brilliant.”
    I couldn’t figure it out—I knew Mara had been in love once, a high school sweetheart she refused to talk about—apparently it hadn’t ended well. But I didn’t know how she could stand the bubble-headed beefcakes she seemed to seek out now.
    “What can I say?” she’d said. “When it comes to boys and brains, I think like a zombie—any more than a mouthful is a waste.”
    Aric was gone all afternoon shooting sports. He rushed back in around eight o’clock to start editing and writing his segment in the sports office. Well, Dennis jokingly called it the “sports office”—none of us actually had offices except for Janet. We were all together in one large newsroom with cubicles. The sports guys had claimed a corner near the printer closet, tacking team banners and sports schedule posters to the walls over their two desks.
    Aric and I were too busy to even look at each other until around nine-thirty when I walked by his desk on my way to the printer room to do my hair and makeup.
    Yep, pretty glamorous. The anchors all used a mirror on the wall of the tiny printer room to get ourselves camera-ready. The lighting was actually way less shadowy there than in the ladies’ room.
    A lot of people assumed news anchors had makeup artists or stylists to fix them up. Not quite. Only those on the network or in the very top markets like New York and Los Angeles had that luxury. The rest of us had to make it work with whatever techniques we’d picked up from beauty magazines, from Mom, or from trial and error. Even the guys wore some foundation.
    “Hey,” Aric mumbled, never looking away from his monitor as I walked into the door-less printer room across from his desk. He was on his own, sweating it out, trying to get done by his deadline. Dennis had left an hour ago, apparently reluctant to keep his hot date waiting any longer.
    “Hi. You gonna make it?” I asked.
    “I guess I have to, don’t I? So, the answer is yes, something will make it on the air tonight. I can’t promise it’ll make any sense, though.” He looked up and gave me a frazzled grin.
    I pulled my hair back in a clip and unzipped my bag, carefully applying approximately three times more makeup than I’d ever wear in “real life.” After ten minutes or so, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Aric had turned his desk chair around and seemed to be watching me. I darted my eyes over at him. He was watching me.
    “You all done?” I asked.
    “Almost,” he said, his tone distracted. His legs were stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, his arms folded under his chest. He still had on the golf shirt, which was stretched tightly across some impressive biceps and