“You see the new girl yet?”

I lean back in my chair and eye Greg as he gives me a big, stupid grin. “Not yet,” I say. “Some of us have to work, you know.”

“Oh, come off it. You field producers always act like you’re better than the rest of us.”

Greg is older, in his mid-fifties, and he’s been doing this reporting thing since before I was born. Still, we’ve been working together now for five years, and he trusts me. He’s balding, getting a little heavier, but he still knows what he’s doing. The old beat reporter is still buried in there, behind the lazy desk jockey he’s become. He’s my mentor, in a lot of ways, but I’d never fucking tell him that.

I grin right back. “That’s because we are.”

He sighs, shaking his head. “You know, Henry, if you weren’t so damn good at what you do, I would have fired your ass a while ago.”

“I know,” I say and laugh. “But who else are you going to get to travel all to all the shit parts of the world?”

“Nobody,” he admits.

“See, we’re beautiful together. You sit on your lazy ass and edit my stories while I go out and risk my damn life to find them.”

He groans and rolls his eyes. “Were you ever in danger in Indonesia?”

“No,” I admit. “Nice place, actually.”

“And what about Berlin, before that?”

“No,” I admit again. “Although those Neo-Nazis were pretty rough guys.”

“Quit pretending like your life is always in danger.”

I shrug and lean back in my chair. “Maybe not those last two assignments, but you remember Afghanistan. You remember the Ukraine, Colombian terrorists, Spanish separatists, gang violence in Detroit.”

“Had to pay you overtime for Detroit,” he grumbles. “Fine, okay, I get your point. Still don’t know why you can’t let me talk about the new reporter girl without giving me shit.”

“Fine, okay,” I say, laughing. I feel a little bad for being a dick. “Go ahead. What about her?”

He looks at me for a second. “She’s smoking hot.”

I groan and laugh again. “That’s why I give you shit.”

He grins and shrugs a little, looking sheepish, but I know he can’t help himself.

Greg is the Editor-in-Chief at World Beats News. We’re a gritty little online outfit specializing in short-film style news reporting all over the world. I’m a field producer, which means I go out with teams to produce and report on whatever story gets assigned to me. More often than not, they’re pretty fucking dangerous, since Greg knows I can handle my shit.

But lately, I’ve been restless. I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’ve spent the majority of my twenties traveling all over the world. My apartment is practically empty, since I live out of hotels, and my love life is just as empty. I sleep with plenty of beautiful and exotic women, but that only keeps you satisfied for so long.

I see the old, grizzled producers, still traveling the world after all these years, and I wonder. What would my life be like if I didn’t be come like them? They’re all heavy smokers, unhealthy as fuck, addicted to the thrill, and completely alone in this world.

I have ambitions, dreams, goals, but I also want something more than endless hotel rooms and near-misses.

“What’s her name, anyway?” I ask him.

“Vivian. She’s a Harvard girl, been around the block a bit. Wrote for the Times, did a couple years at Vice, and now she’s here.”

I frown at him. That name sounds familiar, but there are a million girls named Vivian in the world, though probably not that many that also went to Harvard.

“What do you have her doing?” I ask him.

He frowns and opens a folder. “Let’s see. Nothing you’d be interested in.” He leafs through it and pulls out a sheet. “Here we go. Opioid epidemic. We’re sending her to a town in Alabama that was practically destroyed by it.”

“Sounds fun,” I say.

He raises an eyebrow. “The chances of her getting shot are pretty slim. So I doubt you’d be interested.”

I shake my head. “Don’t assume. Who’s producing for her?”

“Nobody right now.”

I glance down at the floor, my mind racing. I can’t imagine it’s actually her, actually Vivian from my past, but what if? I know she wanted to be a journalist, and she definitely went to Harvard, but I haven’t been following her all these years.

I haven’t wanted to follow her. I haven’t let myself. Because I know that if I let myself look her up and find out what kind of happy, amazing life she’s living, I know I’ll only be fucking hurting myself. So I’ve ignored her, pretended like she wasn’t out there somewhere, although I’ve had her in the back of my mind, even after all this time.

The one that got away. The girl who’s heart I broke and trampled over. The one thing I partially regret, although I did it for the right reasons. At least I think so.

“What’s her full name?” I ask him.

He grins at me. “Got a crush on her, Hank?”

“Don’t call me that,” I grunt at him.

“Whatever. Her full name’s Vivian Cross, from Michigan originally, it seems. At least according to her bio.” He hesitates a second. “Say, aren’t you from Michigan too?”

“Yeah,” I say as I’m suddenly transported back in time. I can see her all over again, that perfect smile, those full lips, that thick blonde hair, that perfect body, the way I felt around her, driving in my piece of shit truck, and now she’s back.

It’s her, it has to be her. Vivian Cross, the one that got away.

“I’m going to produce for her,” I say, standing.

“Wait, hold on. I was going to assign her Jeff.”

I stare at him. “No. I’m doing it.”

He hesitates. “You sure?”

“Yes,” I say. “You owe me and you know it.”

He sighs. “There something I should know here?”

“No,” I say, leaving his office.

Greg will make it happen. I’ve done a lot for WBN and he knows it. He owes me a million favors at this point. I’m sure there’s going to be some gossip about this, since I’m not normally the type to take a job like this, but I don’t fucking care.

Vivian is back. And I can’t help myself. As I head back through the halls to my little temporary cubicle, practically empty since I never spend any time in it, I can’t stop thinking about her.

I don’t know what I’m going to feel when I finally see her again. And we’re going to be working very, very closely together. I have to produce the show while she does the on-camera reporting, plus a lot of the writing. We build this segment together.

I don’t know how she’s going to react when she sees me again. I’m afraid she’s going to be angry, and frankly I wouldn’t blame her, not after what I did. I made her life hell back then, not really because I wanted to, but because I had to. She doesn’t understand because I was too stupid back then to try and explain.

No excuses now, though. We’re grown and we’re adults, so we’ll work together and get this done. Maybe this is a mistake. I can already see a million different ways this can go wrong.

But I can’t help myself. I have a chance to see Vivian again, and I’m going to take it.