Page 1 of I Saw You First

ONE

“WATERLOO” BY ABBA, 1974

ABBEY

Everything’s always working out for me.

That’s what I tell myself, anyway, in every situation, including now. I push open the front door to the TC Weekly office and find Punk-Rock Darci at the reception desk, Darci who’s always up for a live show in the deepest, grungiest corners of the Twin Cities and who won’t rat me out for being six minutes late and not using the employee entrance.

Today, I really need things to work out, and so far, between waking up late, hitting traffic on 394, and a weird rattle coming from the dash of my Pontiac Sunbird, it’s not looking good.

“Kim just called to ask if I’d seen you.” Darci tucks a maroon curl behind her ear, which must have at least a dozen piercings, all silver and black hoops and studs. “I told her that you got stuck talking to Petra from advertising.”

“Thanks for covering for me,” I say. “We’ve got that meeting with Ryan in a few minutes.”

“Good luck!” She snaps her gum. The switchboard buzzes. “TC Weekly. How may I direct your call?”

I take the long way to my cubicle to circumvent Kim’s office. When I was first hired, TC Weekly was headquartered in a cool renovated warehouse in downtown Minneapolis with an open newsroom. Two years ago, for some reason, the owner, Richard “Slick Dick” Bradford, moved us to a nondescript brick building in a sea of nondescript brick buildings in a nondescript suburb, which both added twenty minutes to my commute and lowered the coolness factor.

But it’s TC Weekly, the trendiest newspaper in the Twin Cities, and I landed this job right out of college, so that makes up for it. And after today, I’ll be one step closer to my dream job, writing for Rolling Stone or SPIN. I’ve worked my way up from intern to administrative assistant to lifestyles assistant, and now there’s a good chance I’ll be promoted to associate music and entertainment writer. It’s the reason I applied at TC Weekly in the first place—to someday write for entertainment. When the position became available, I jumped on it.

“I’d never hold you back, Abbey,” Kim said after she reviewed my application materials. She stubbed out her cigarette—smoked down to the filter—in an ashtray next to her mouse pad. “What is it you’re always saying? Everything’s always working out for you? There’s no way you won’t get this.”

“You think?” As much as I love working with the lifestyles team, my boss has always known that entertainment is my dream.

“Lifestyles’ loss is Ryan’s gain,” she muttered.

Around the same time as the move to the suburbs, the previous entertainment editor left for a magazine job in Chicago. Now the department’s headed up by Slick Dick’s smarmy nephew, Ryan, who drives a smarmy forest-green Jaguar. He’s got a sharp eye, I’ll give him that, and he knows every promoter and venue owner, but rumor has it—and there are plenty of rumors—that he can get a little handsy. Whenever I’m around him, which I try to avoid, a pit opens in my stomach like the sandy chasm on Tatooine in Return of the Jedi, a snarling, drooling, many-tentacled, spiky-toothed beast.

If I were to make a list of the pros and cons of taking this promotion, Ryan Bradford would be the only con. In all caps. Bold. And today, I won’t be able to avoid him.

Tamsa, the classifieds assistant and my Best Friend at Work, sits cross-legged at her desk in the cubicle we share, marking up a document with a red pen. Her computer’s already on.

“Hey.” I set my purse on the desk. “How was your date last night?”

“Godawful,” she says. “He only talked about sports except for when he expounded on his extensive knowledge of craft beer.” She rolls her eyes, a deep, warm brown accented by perfect cat-eye eyeliner and gold glitter eyeshadow that pops against her brown skin.

“Well,” I say, “going to Williams Pub might have been your first clue, with, like, fifty beers on tap.”

“I think it’s more like seventy? And he’s an expert on every single one.” Tamsa yawns. “He’s also a self-proclaimed expert in bedroom arts, if you get my drift, but I only give him a B-minus, and that’s being generous. Grading on the curve, if you will.”

I snort. “There’s a curve? Are you going to see him again?”

Tamsa laughs. “Hell no. B-minus! I’d probably have to suffer through another boring lesson in India Pale Ale, which, by the way, he was quick to point out played an important role in my people’s history.”

“He did not!”

“He did, and then shrugged when I told him my ‘people’ are from Bangladesh, not India, and said, ‘What’s the difference?’”

“What an asshole! It’s 1996! Why are people still like this?”

“Sadly, I’m used to it. You’ve got that meeting with Kim and Ryan this morning, right?”

I cringe. “Yeah, in two minutes.” I grab a file folder with my resume and portfolio.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me for entertainment,” Tam says. “What will I do without you?”

“It’s not like I’m quitting. Wish me luck!” I blow her a kiss and speed-walk to the opposite side of the building.