7 Days and 7 Nights by Wendy Wax

doing?”
    â€œWho, me?” He pointed a finger at his chest and checked the room as if looking for another culprit.
    â€œOf course you. Why are you sitting there? I’m in the middle of a show.”
    â€œWhere else would I be, Olivia? I’ve had too much coffee to take a nap, and I’m not about to spend three hours in the bathroom.”
    â€œWell, you can’t just sit there and watch me.”
    â€œBecause?”
    â€œBecause I don’t like it.”
    â€œWe have 850 square feet of living space. My options are limited. You’re going to have to do better than that.”
    â€œOkay. You’re interfering with my concentration.”
    â€œThen concentrate harder.” He glanced up at the TV monitor and saw them squared off against each other. The Webcam might not broadcast their audio, but no one watching could miss the adversarial body language.
    Olivia took off her headphones and stood. “I’m not kidding, Matt. You cannot just sit there and stare at me while I’m working.”
    â€œFine. I’ll read.” He yanked his briefcase off the nearby chair and rifled through it, ultimately taking out a dogeared copy of the
Sports Illustrated
Swimsuit Issue that he’d brought along just to annoy her. He also pulled out his own headphones, the ones with the cord long enough to allow full range of the living area, plugged them into the control panel, and sat back down on the sofa, raising the magazine up in front of his face with a flourish. When the silence continued, he lowered the magazine and peered over it. Olivia still stood there, headphones in hand, her mouth open in surprise.
    She was very cute when she was stunned.
    â€œI believe I hear your cue.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI said, you’re on the air, Olivia.” He pointed to his headphones. “It’s time to talk to those people who call in and ask you questions. You know . . . your listeners?”
    He gave her a wink, the raunchiest one he could come up with. “If you don’t get back to work, you’re going to be trailing so far behind me by the end of the week that you’ll have to wear that thong.” Confident that he’d offered the perfect incentive, Matt raised the open magazine in front of his face once again.
    How he managed to stifle his laughter and feign interest in the magazine for the remainder of her shift, he didn’t know. Olivia pointedly ignored him, which he chose to interpret as an indication of her interest in him. But his musings were cut short by the tremulous tone of Olivia’s final caller.
    â€œDr. O? I did what you said.”
    â€œWhat’s that, JoBeth?”
    Matt’s ears perked up. JoBeth was the name of Dawg’s girlfriend.
    â€œI told Dawg that I wanted to get married,
again.
And he told me I was ruining a perfectly good relationship.”
    â€œThen what?” Olivia’s tone was calm and soothing, in stark contrast to JoBeth’s quiet distress.
    â€œThen he wanted some, um, milk, and I told him he’d have to find himself another cow.”
    â€œGood for you, JoBeth. You did the right thing.”
    â€œIt didn’t feel right, or good.”
    â€œWhat happened then?”
    â€œHe said he didn’t understand a word I was saying, and that if I didn’t want to be with him, no one was forcing me to stay.”
    Matt turned a page of the magazine, but his attention was riveted on the drama being played out on the air.
    Olivia waited out a long pause and then said, “What did you do?”
    â€œI moved out. I left him.” JoBeth’s voice vibrated with regret, and Matt took the opportunity to steal a glance over his magazine at Olivia. She sat very still, and the triumphant smile he’d expected to see on her face was absent.
    â€œI love him, Dr. O. I thought we’d be spending the rest of our lives together.”
    â€œI know, JoBeth. Sometimes doing the right