“Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other” begins with a televised disaster

"Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other" is the 2024 Colorado Book Award winner for Romance.

In less than two seconds of awkward dead-air time, Colton whisper-yelled at Carl and Carl shoved New Guy out of the way, leaving camera two unmanned so he could take over at the teleprompter, while I heard an urgent "Brynn! Get us to break!" in my earpiece.

And yet, no one seemed to have any concerns about the fact that our cagey veteran, the senior man on the morning news-entertainment team at the highest-rated network in the country, was sitting there speechless and shuffling next to me, completely undone by the lack of a script and a hiccup in production.

Before we'd hit the three-second mark on any of those clocks, I smiled at the red light on camera four. "Dynamic duos besides us, you mean?" Camera four was awkward at the angle we were sitting, but Orly at camera one was geared up and ready to go to Maria at the news desk, and everyone else was caught up in the complete meltdown of broadcasting professionals in the middle of the room. Seriously, how many people did it take to make sure Mark Irvine knew how to say goodbye? The world's oldest-living triplets were probably still in the building after our interview with them. Maybe we could call them in too.

"That other dynamic duo, Elena and Hayley, are making their way to their couch, so it's almost time for us to hop back in the Sunupmobile and head back to the Sunupcave." I patted Mark on the shoulder and nudged him to turn to our right and focus on camera four with me. "But we'll see everyone again soon, right, Mark? Same Sunup time . . ."

Mark nodded at the camera and grinned. "Too right. We'll be back to wrap up right after this from your local station."

Same Sunup channel. Same Sunup channel! How much more perfectly could I have possibly lobbed that pitch to him?

The light on camera four went off, and I exhaled and relaxed against the back of the couch. "Yikes," I muttered to Mark. "Who needs coffee with adrenaline bursts like that?"

He stood up in a huff and shouted to the ever-growing huddle. "Colton!"

I glanced at Colton, who responded to Mark's bellowing with a forced smile for his star. "I know, Mark. Sorry about that. We're working on it."

Greta hurried over to me with powder for my nose. I felt the trickles of sweat running down my back, undoubtedly ruining a perfectly-gorgeous-five-minutes-ago Jason Wu silk blouse, and I had no doubt my face was showing the perspiration just as much.

"Eddie had the bad luck of antiquated equipment taking its last breath in one of the first moments he had actual responsibility," Greta informed me quietly with a pained expression on her face.

"Who's Eddie?" Mark asked as Deb touched up his face. Without makeup, the man had the complexion of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.

"Eddie," I stated calmly. "The new production assistant."

No, I hadn't known New Guy's name either, but if you weren't even capable of using context clues, you deserved to be shown up in front of the crew, at least a little bit.

Not that Mark was only shown up a little bit today.

Greta fluffed my hair and winked at me before backing away. I smiled back at her, as humbly as I could, straightened my skirt, and prepared for one final sign-off segment.

"So I bet you're actually from Philadelphia or somewhere, aren't you?"

I did a double take toward Mark. "I'm sorry?"

He looked down at the lapel of his suit jacket and picked off a minuscule piece of lint. "You're always talking about your small town, rural roots—"

"I do seem to do that a lot, don't I?" I grimaced.

"I get it. It works. I just think you could stand to tone it down a bit. It was cute when you were third hour, but we cover serious news here." He looked over at me and grinned, and I resisted the temptation to remind him we'd built a snowman with the Biebers on Tuesday.

"You know as well as I do, Mark, that Colton decides what the audience should know about me. If the down-home thing is what viewers respond to, that's what they're going to have me talk about."

He tsked and tightened the knot of his tie. "Rookie mistake. Yes, you read the lines they give you, but when the camera stops rolling, you must lay down the law. If they want you to be 'down- home' and you refuse, they'll change tack."

He made it sound so simple, but I knew it wasn't. If they wanted me to be "down-home" and I refused, what was to stop them from hiring one of the million other women who wanted my job and didn't mind saying "Aww, shucks" on occasion?

More than anything I wanted to ask Mark what he had refused to be that had caused them to change tack toward Snoozeville. Hip? Cool? Had Mark Irvine stood up in front of the network honchos and blatantly refused to let them exploit him as interesting?

But he wasn't trying to be unkind, so I didn't need to be either. He was patronizing, sure, but I perfectly understood the expression on his face and the sentiment behind it. I'd experienced it countless times throughout my career. He was helping me. Imparting wisdom. Taking me under his wing. I would never receive any kudos or straight-out gratitude for saving his butt on-air—today or in any of the inevitable days to come—but in his chauvinistic, out-of-date, out-of-touch way, this was him saying "Thank you."

And I was expected to say "Thank you" in return.

Colton came running over to us, huffing and puffing like a man wearing Ferragamo loafers and sporting a pocket square was never supposed to. "Great work, you two."

Two?

"I was just telling Brynn she's been going a little over the top with the country-girl routine, but for her first week . . . not too bad. I'll work with her to—"

I accidentally scoffed, interrupting him. I attempted to turn it into a clearing of my throat, but their eyes were already on me.

I patted my chest and coughed as believably as I could without producing phlegm. "Pardon me." I looked over my shoulder and called out, "Greta, could you please get me a lozenge?"

Colton eyed me with concern. "We're back from affiliates in ninety, and then you hand it over to Elena. Can you tough it out for a little longer?"

Oh, forget that. Greta reached into our midst with a tin of lozenges, but I ignored her hand. "I'm fine." My lips tightened into an expression that I hoped could be described as easygoing—but really, I would have settled for anything this side of homicidal. "Do we have a prompter or—"

"Just wing it," the dummy next to me answered before I could offer to break out my amateur ventriloquism skills. "Which camera?" A voice from the control room boomed over the speakers. "Colton, we've almost got the feed back to the eastern affiliates. Should we key up the other—"

"No!" Colton threw his hands up in the air and spun on his heel. "When did we lose the feed?!" He turned back to us but began backing away toward the increasingly urgent chorus of his name being cried out from every corner of the room. He put the index finger of one hand to his ear and gave us a thumbs-up with the other hand. "Stick with four."

I readjusted my position toward camera four. At least this time I had a little bit of warning and I wouldn't have to twist around into a television broadcasting pose best described as the Linda Blair Exorcist Maneuver.

"That was a perfect example. You should have stood up for yourself." Mark was bestowing wisdom upon me once more. "I took your credit. You should have taken it back."

I tilted my head and studied him. What do you know? Maybe Mark Irvine wasn't as clueless as he seemed.

"Yeah, well . . ." I tucked my ankles and knees together and folded my legs into the ladylike position Kate Middleton had taught me when I first met her at Wimbledon. (In return, I had taught her how to use apple cider vinegar as deodorant in a pinch.) "You catch more flies with honey . . . That sort of thing."

He snickered. "Not anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"Honey works—sometimes—when you're climbing. I'll give you that. But you've reached the top. You're not climbing anymore. Now it's your job to fight off everyone else who's climbing and clawing for your spot." He adjusted the knot of his tie and then lowered his hands back into their precise position of staged nonchalance. "Viewers might love the farm girl, but people in the business will walk all over her."

He was right, of course. Mostly. Except that I wasn't done climbing. I hadn't even reached the top of the Sunup couch yet . . . although it wasn't surprising that in his eyes I had gone as high as I possibly could. But nothing in me would ever be content peaking as Mark Irvine's happy little sidekick.

I wasn't Robin in our dynamic duo. Someday that would click for him. But not yet. Not today.

"Why are they so obsessed with making sure I'm beloved in the heartland?" I asked, meeting him halfway in the mentor/mentee partnership he needed to believe in. "Seriously, they act like I'm from a two-cow town in Oklahoma where Pa tilled the soil and Ma baked apple pie, all day every day."

Everything from the dusty-rose eyeshadow that had tested well with mid-America viewers to the baby animal videos they made me pretend to be obsessed with to the way they made me talk in the early years of Sunup3 (because seventeen years in the Rocky Mountains followed by four years at the University of Southern California will totally lend themselves to developing a southern lilt) had been about making me into who they—they, they, they— wanted me to be.

Mark laughed. "Was I right? Philadelphia?"

"Thirty seconds!" a voice called out, and Mark and I focused on camera four.

I shook my head gently, careful not to mess up the cascading waves Greta had perfectly sculpted over my shoulders. "I'm from a little mountain town in Colorado called Adelaide Springs."

"I've never heard of it."

"No one has. It's a tiny, insignificant blip on the map, made up of a few hundred people with about twelve brain cells and forty-two bucks among them."

"Ouch!"

"I'm sorry, but it's true!" I giggled but didn't move my face out of the camera-ready smile. "They're obsessed with colonial times—" I felt his eyes snap to me for just a second before looking back to camera four, and the corner of my mouth twitched in satisfaction. Mark Irvine was interested in me, even if just for the length of a story about my crazy hometown. It was only week one, but I was pretty sure he already found me more interesting than he'd ever found Shauna Magwell-Moray. "Yes. American colonial times. In Colorado. It's so stupid." I rolled my eyes. "My hometown's the worst. I got out the very first chance I had, and I've never looked back. So let the viewers believe I'm from Iowa or Philadelphia or whatever. Anywhere except that pathetic little town with its pathetic little people. As long as it's all being sold by America's freaking Ray of Sunshine, I'm sure they'll keep buying it."

"Cut the feed! Cut the feed!" Colton yelled from the back of the room, but his voice got closer quickly. "Go straight to the Sunup3 buffer and tell Elena she'll need to cover the seven extra seconds."

I didn't want to pull my eyes away from camera four, but I also instinctively knew the red light wasn't going to come on.

"Colton, what's—"

He pointed at me to silence me. It worked like a charm. "Don't talk," he muttered, and then he yelled, "No one talk!" We all stared at him, not breathing, I'm pretty sure, as he raised his finger to his ear and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, and then another, and then said softly, "Nicely done, Elena. I owe you one." His eyes rose slowly until they met mine. "Some people owe you more than that."

"Um . . . Colton?" the previously booming voice from the control room whimpered. "Bob wants to see you in his office."

Colton sighed in response to his summons from the network president. "Yeah. On my way."

Everything was moving in slow motion as the pieces finally began clicking into place. Cut the feed? There had been a feed? We had been . . . live?

The breath I had been holding released in a gust of words and angst and trembling. "But the light never came on. You told us to stick with four, and we were looking at four the whole time. You . . . someone . . . said thirty seconds, and there's no way that was—"

Colton's head was hanging, and then it began shaking from side to side in that horrible "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" way that is so much worse than being yelled at. "The whole day was a wreck. I told the control room to stick with four. As in the New York affiliate link—NY4. And thirty seconds was for Elena and Hayley. That's when we went live. It wasn't . . ." He sighed again. "That part wasn't your fault. The day was a wreck."

He turned away from us and faced the crew. "That's on me, everyone. We'll, um . . ." He cleared his throat. "We'll sort it out. The wreck's on me." He began walking toward the door but stopped just short of it. He spun on the heels of those Ferragamos one more time, but his entire demeanor had changed. Now he just looked like a dejected teenaged boy trying to fit into his dad's fancy suit for prom. "Brynn?"

"Yeah?"

"I need you to wait for me in my office."

I nodded. "Okay."

My eyes followed Colton until the studio doors closed behind him, and then I turned to seek a little bit of consolation from the other half of the dynamic duo, but he was already off the stage and heading toward his dressing room. And there wasn't a single set of eyes in the room that would meet mine.

Wham, bam, thanks for nothing, fam.