“Hey, girls!” I wave and smile at them, trying to act normal.
“Hey, Eden!” they chime back together. “Happy Monday!” they say.
“Happy Monday,” I say back.
Now I get it. I totally get why people hate it when I say that.
When they disappear onto fifty-one I go back to the phone. “How… when… Zoey! I think I might’ve stolen this idea from Pierce!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I was there when you came up with it. Remember? It was Valentine’s Day two years ago and I was pregnant, and sad, and poor because business was bad and you said, ‘We should be strippers.’ And then I said, ‘I can’t be a stripper because I’m fat.’ And you said, ‘You’re not fat, you’re beautiful.’ And then I said, ‘We need a stupid YouTube series like that dumbass seventeen-year-old who got famous on Ellen! after she made stop-motion movies of Barbie and Ken having sex.’ And you said, ‘We should totally make a ridiculous sex advice channel and we should call ourselves the Sexperts!’ Remember all that?”
That was how it went down. “I was drunk though, remember? That asshole Matthew dumped me after I put out and I was pissed off. So maybe I accidentally heard Pierce say something about the Sexpert and then I only thought it was my idea?”
“That’s stupid. Don’t be stupid, Eden. You’re not stupid. You came up with the name! I was there!”
“Yeah, but we’ve been using Voice Lift to disguise my voice and the goddamned Voice Lift inventor is the cute freeway guy and now Myrtle says he’s on the case and he’s gonna figure out who I am!”
“Ridiculous!” Zoey yells. “No one is gonna find out who you are, Eden. We don’t even show your face.”
True.
I take a deep breath. Maybe I’m just overreacting?
“Besides, this was our idea so fuck-face Pierce can just fuck off. We’re viral, I’ve got the next video ready to post for tomorrow. We’re gonna ride this wave, baby! All the fucking way into shore and all the hard work we’ve put into it over the last year will finally pay off.”
“How many hits do we have now? Like sixty thousand?”
“Sixty!” She laughs. “Bitch, we’re at almost one hundred thirty thousand hits. And that’s just for How to Play With Her Donut! Licking His Sour Apple Pucker is a close second with almost a hundred thousand. All of them, Eden. All of them are going crazy right now. I just got an invitation from YouTube to monetize. We hit the threshold like ten minutes ago! So we’re gonna start getting paid!”
“Really?” I say. “For real?”
“Yes! We’re in, Eden. We paid our dues. We created this content. We put in all the sweat equity and now we’re going to get paid. We did not steal this idea. We invented this idea! OK? So just calm down and relax. I know it’s a lot to take in. I mean, just yesterday we were nobodies and today everyone in Denver is talking about us. But we can lose it all if we make the wrong moves. So don’t say anything to anyone about what you just told me, got it?”
I nod. “Yeah, OK. Got it.”
“We did this,” she repeats. “We. Did this. Pierce needs to just fuck off.”
“OK,” I say. “OK.”
“So… tell me about the cute freeway guy.”
“Later,” I say. “I have to pull together a campaign to fight the Sexpert first.” And then I end the call and force myself to walk down to my floor, open the door, and pretend I’m not the real reason why Pierce Chevalier is having a very bad Monday.
When I get back to my desk I get back to work trying to calm myself down. I make a list of all the sex advice articles we’ve run over the past two years, rank them in order of popularity, then send the entire list up to the art department so they can come up with new graphics. Then I email my intern and tell him we need a meeting today to come up with hashtag ideas.
When all that’s done, it’s lunchtime. And while usually I just go sit outside in the Towne Centre and eat something from one of the many lunch trucks, today I actually have an appointment to sign my rental agreement in the hottest residential building in the entire TDH neighborhood.
The place is called Sunset Towers. It’s not as tall as the TDH building, but it’s got thirty-seven floors. My place is on the second floor, and there’s no view of the sunset. Or the mountains. But I did manage to get a view of the Towne Centre from my small terrace. So all summer I’ll have a front-row seat for the free concerts in the square. And I can walk to work, and walk to the dry cleaners, and walk to bars… it’s fabulous. And even though I have to pay an extra two hundred bucks a month for these privileges, it’s worth it.