Fucking Reed Luca. Ruining my goddamn life.
The one guy I was devoted to avoiding had made himself unavoidable.
Fine. If he wanted to mess with the bull, he was going to get the motherfucking horns. I turned my phone back on and typed out an email.
To: Reed Luca
From: Lola Sexton
Reed,
Congratulations on the new job.
You’re an asshole.
Sincerely,
Lola Sexton
As I sat there, on a park bench, on a day that should have felt like sunshine and goddamn unicorns, I was cursing Reed’s name with every creative epithet I could think of. I had only reached the dickface variety when my phone vibrated in my hands.
And there sat an email.
From the dickface himself.
To: Lola Sexton
From: Reed Luca
Dearest Lola,
Passionate words reveal a passionate soul.
Maybe try using some of that passion for your advice column?
And thank you so much. I’m looking forward to giving our readers much-needed perspective. What are we writing about this week?
Love,
Reed
What are we writing about this week? I fought the urge to toss my phone toward the Golden Gate Bridge and focused my energy on a response.
To: Reed Luca
From: Lola Sexton
Dear ASSHOLE,
We are writing about men who think they know everything and how their holier-than-thou personalities can be detrimental to a relationship.
Sincerely,
Lola
Suck. On. That.
The sucking didn’t last long, though; he fired back a response a few minutes later.
To: Lola Sexton
From: Reed Luca
Dear beautiful and intelligent Lola,
Interesting topic. May I suggest looking at the wisdom and knowledge that can be gained from a man like that?
Sincerely,
Reed
God, why couldn’t he respond like I expected or wanted?
That’d be too easy, an annoying voice in my head taunted. It sounded like him.
No. He had to do the complete opposite of normal human beings. Defensive and pissed off over being called an asshole? Not him.
As far as I could tell, he was never self-justifying. Never angry.
Just…Reed.
That was the only way I knew how to describe him. He was on a completely different wavelength. If everyone else was tuned in to FM radio, listening to the latest pop and hip-hop songs, Reed Luca wasn’t even listening to the radio. He had some weird device that allowed him to listen to podcasts about the space-time continuum broadcasted by existential aliens.
I needed to end this conversation before it resulted in me doing something crazy, like showing up at his apartment and strangling him.
To: Reed Luca
From: Lola Sexton
May I suggest you stop emailing me before I come to your office and shove my stiletto up your ass?
I swear, I’m not generally a violent person.
I’m honestly a really nice girl.
Holy hell, this guy made me feel crazy, like I was one interaction away from ending up on Dateline: Behind Bars.
To: Lola Sexton
From: Reed Luca
Hmmm…stiletto? I’d gotten the impression you were more a Converse and Doc Martens kind of girl. Color me intrigued.
And my office? I work from home now. I’m shocked the SF Times doesn’t let you do the same.
I glanced down at my bare legs and Converse-clad feet and huffed out a breath of frustration.
To: Reed Luca
From: Lola Sexton
I do work from home. I just figured the Journal would want to babysit your ridiculous ass for the first few months. You’re a bit of a loose cannon.
And what are you trying to say, Reed? You got a problem with girls who wear Converse and Doc Martens?
To: Lola Sexton
From: Reed Luca
I was merely saying that I thought my new friend Lola was the type of woman who didn’t let social expectations pressure her into wearing shoes that hurt her delicate little feet.
My new friend Lola?
Not only was Reed Luca an asshole, he was seriously deranged. We were about as far away from the term friends as two people could get. I legitimately hated him.
“Friends? Pfffffft. We are not friends,” I reiterated to myself.
To: Reed Luca
From: Lola Sexton
First of all, stilettos don’t hurt my feet.
Secondly, you might think you know everything, but I can tell you with absolute certainty you don’t know anything about me.
Thirdly, stop talking about my feet.
And finally, WE AREN’T FRIENDS.
Boom. Suck on that, asshole.
I hit send and smiled proudly to myself.
He could take his idea of friendship and shove it straight up his ass. I sure as hell didn’t want a friend who created viral YouTube videos to ruin my career, and now, agreed to write a column for a rival newspaper that’s sole purpose was to contradict everything I told my readers.
Reed Fucking Luca wasn’t my friend.
He was my enemy.
A really, really hot enemy, I thought to myself and then sighed in frustration.