Morning Glory by Diana Peterfreund Page B

“Great.”
    “Okay, great,” said Perfect Girl. She turned to me. “Nice to meet you.”
    She hadn’t. I almost said this aloud.
    “Sorry,” she went on, her tone blithe, “I was just so glad to see Adam again—”
    “No, it’s fine,” I said. “Fine, fine, fine.” Oh, God, Becky, shut up. You sound inane . But my heart was racing, and my palms were damp. What in the world was I doing here next to this Amazonian goddess?
    As soon as she was gone, Adam sat down again. “Sorry about that.”
    “So that’s why I came by tonight,” I blurted. “Because I don’t know that many people who know Mike and I really needed your. … professional feedback.”
    “My … feedback?” Adam asked.
    “Yeah.” I searched around desperately for my scattered vocabulary. “Well, I’m new in town, and I don’t have that many … work contacts.”
    I knew I should also try to find the pieces of my shredded dignity. I needed to get out of there. Quickly.
    “Great,” Adam said slowly. “So we’ll be … work contacts.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Can’t have enough of those,” he said, his tone flat.
    He probably couldn’t have enough girlfriends, either. I was at a complete loss as to what to do. This whole evening had just imploded around me. I was going to kill Lenny. I never even would have been thinking in terms of dates if it hadn’t been for him and his stupid model wife. He’d made me actually think, for a moment, that it made some kind of strange sense for someone like me to go out with someone like Adam. But of course not. Stupid. Stupid.
    The need to bolt became overwhelming.
    “Well.” I stuck out my hand. “I’ll be seeing you around, then. Definitely.”
    He looked down at my hand, brow furrowed, then shook it. “Okay.”
    I grabbed my jacket and ran, unable to catch my breath until I hit the street. I stood there for a moment in the fading light, asking myself and God how in the world it was that I could track down gun-toting maniac reporters in the wilds of New Jersey, but couldn’t manage to make small talk with a cute guy in a trendy Manhattan bar. Was it some kind of weird brain damage? Had I been dropped on my romance lobe as a child? Did I need behavioral therapy? Most important, could we build a segment around this kind of pathological boy-girl ineptitude? Gah.
    I sneaked a peek inside the window of the pub. Adam was still sitting at our booth, staring down into his beer. He looked as baffled as I felt. And then I saw him reach across the table and pick something up from my side of the table.
    My IBS badge. Oh no. Should I go in there and get it? Did I dare show my face in front of him again?
    He ran his thumb lightly over my picture on the plastic, and I shivered as if the caress had touched my face. He looked at it one moment more, gave a slight shake of his head, then stuck it in his shirt pocket.
    Shit . I’d totally screwed up back there.

 10 
    M y IBS badge was waiting for me at the security desk when I arrived the next morning.
    “You should really keep more careful track of these,” the guard said as I signed the necessary paperwork to retrieve it.
    “Yeah,” I said, though I wanted to curl up and die. Of course Adam wouldn’t have called me to tell me he had it, or even where he was going to put it. I’d just run out the door on him. He probably never wanted to speak to me again. Leaving it here was the low-impact way to return it. It was either that or interoffice mail.
    God, how humiliating.
    I headed down to the Daybreak studios to face the gauntlet of our final rehearsal before Mike’s first broadcast. Lenny met me at the office.
    “So how was it?” he asked.
    “Nuclear disaster,” I said, breezing by him to the coffee machine. “I am never listening to you again.”
    “Really?” Lenny raised his eyebrows. “I’d always heard Adam was a mensch.”
    “Adam is fine,” I said. “I’m Chernobyl.”
    “I see.”
    We headed off to rehearsal. I saw the