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I laughed. I’d forgotten what a good time Jane and I had on the air. It was pretty much a comedy show for the next forty-five minutes as we talked about Jane’s past relationships and the red flags she should have seen, but didn’t. After, she opened up the call-in line for questions, and the fun continued.
“Hi, Jane. Hi, Sarah. My name is Megan.”
“Hi, Meg!” we said in unison.
“Jane, I just wanted to call in and tell you that Tommy Finnegan breaking up with you a half hour after sex is not the worst breakup.Ihave the worst story. My ex, Jason, dumped me while he was stillinside me.”
My eyes widened. “Oh my.”
“That’s not the worst part,” the caller said. “He also told me he had cancer. He said he didn’t know how much time he had left and wanted to be free.”
I held my hand over my heart. “Holy crap. He really had cancer?”
“No! The bastard freaking lied.”
“Jesus,” Jane gasped. “That might be the worst breakup story I’ve ever heard.”
“Sadly, I’m still struggling to get over him. This just happened a month ago. So I wanted to ask Sarah if she has any advice on getting over a guy who doesn’t deserve you.”
Jane looked at me and smirked. “You go solo to Cabo and sleep with the hottest guy you find?”
I chuckled. “Not happening.”
The next few calls were women sharing their horrible breakup stories. One had been dumped at her father’s wake, and another said she went to work on a Tuesday morning and her boyfriend moved his stuff out of her house and into the next-door neighbor’s. Apparently he’d been sleeping with her for a while. Holy crap, by the time we took a sponsor break, there were more women waiting on hold to share their stories than time left on Jane’s show.
She took off her headphones for the short break. “I have a crazy idea…”
“Oh no—I’m not going to get locked out of a window on the thirty-second floor trying to spy on a guy you went on one date with again, am I?”
“No, this is better. Why don’t we run a contest on my show:worst dump story ever. The winner gets to go to Cabo with you!”
I shook my head. “I don’t know…sharing a hotel with a stranger?”
“We go out with men we meet on dating apps. Sharing the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel with a woman is a lot less scary. Plus, you said it had two bedrooms, right? So it’s not like you’d be sharing a mattress. I bet I could get one of my sponsors to cover the cost of the winner’s trip. It would be a win-win. You’d have a single woman to travel with and a big fat check from one of my sponsors!”
“I don’t think so…”
“Don’t say no until I hit up my sponsors and see what they’re willing to pay, okay? Let’s see what we’re talking about…”
In a matter of just a few minutes, Jane ended up getting more sponsorship for the contest than she knew what to do with. And now I was officially roped into this.
The podcast was also flooded with so many emails that the staff couldn’t keep up with sifting through them. The contest was dubbed “Christmas in Cabo,” since the winner and I would be leaving the morning after Christmas.
A week had passed, and today was the big day where we were going to announce the winner live on the air after reading the top three selections. The show had posted ten finalists previously on their website so that listeners could vote for the top three online.
I sat in my seat across from Jane in the studio, anxiously awaiting the results. Not like I was going to meet the winner today, but I was still nervous.
“Okay, folks…” Jane announced. “It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. After hundreds of astoundingly horrible—but oh so good—dump stories were submitted, we were able to narrow it down to three. Are you ready, Sarah?”
I pretended to be more excited than I was. “I’m super stoked, yeah. I can’t wait to see which one the listeners chose. I have to say, they all have my own dump story beat.”
“Okay, without further ado, let’s get to it. The second runner-up submission as chosen by our listeners is—drumroll, please!” The sound tech played a rolling drum sound effect as Jane said, “Kate from Irvine! Kate wrote in: ‘You could say I was indirectly dumped. My friend was on Tinder and matched with my boyfriend at the time. Not only was he on the dating app, actively cheating on me, but he’d used a photo of the two of us as his profile picture and cut most of me out of it.’”
I cringed and spoke into the mic. “Kate, you are so much better off without him.”
Jane continued, “Kate, while you were not the winning submission, wewillbe sending you a consolation package that will include aFun withDick and JaneT-shirt and matching beer koozie.”
“Oooh, I want a beer koozie!” I joked.
