17. Gemma
SEVENTEEN
GEMMA
“There was lots of sex in it.”
“The heroine was wearing a corset.”
“The guy on the cover had his shirt ripped open.”
“They shared one bed.”
I thought my knowledge of romance books was pretty decent, but let me tell you: it has been tested since my initiative to get a group for romance readers going here at the library.
Somehow, the idea has gotten some traction, both on our social media presence and at the branch itself, with the cheesy signs I whipped up using my (almost adequate) design skills. Apparently it’s given me a bit of a reputation as a romance whiz and made me the go-to gal for questions, recommendations, and more. The campaign has pulled spicy readers out of the woodworks, with women of all ages approaching me at the desk to inquire about the meetings, activities we do, and even ask for my help to track down that one book they loved so much once upon a time.
Do you know how many romance books have a girl with a corset on the cover? I’m starting to think that’s the only thing cover artists designed for a couple decades there. Regardless, I’ve become very familiar with the genre, beyond my own classic faves and what BookTok and Bookstagram have introduced me to.
Turns out, Brenda was a bit of an avid reader of romance back in the 80s and 90s, so she’s been able to help a lot of patrons whom I wasn’t able to. Luckily, my recommendations have been a stronger suit for me, going over like two-for-one pitchers of margaritas at ladies’ night almost every single time I’ve steered readers in a certain direction.
A pat on the back might be in order, but who’s to say for sure? Okay, it’s me. I say it.
At our second meeting, just last week, one of the girls who’d simply been devouring my recs since I introduced her to something beyond YA around a month ago gave me a heartfelt thank you for all of my suggestions and input, as well as for forming this budding group of avid readers. Since so many of us are introverts by nature, it gave us a place we feel comfortable to connect with other ladies who share similar passions and interests to our own, and allowed for connection and interaction when, as introverts, that’s something that can be quite hard to come by. I might have gotten teary eyed.
All in all, the test run has been going better than expected and Brenda is thrilled with my initiative on it. She’s mentioned getting a few different volunteers to do similar groups for other genres, like a non-fiction group, and Ken offered to lead a sci-fi and fantasy group aimed at male readers. (Side note: I’d love to be a fly on the wall in that group.) She’s asked me to help with setting up the logistics and doing some marketing for each of them, just like I did on the romance one, and my insides felt a little sparkly when I got a little vision of the friendships and bonds we could help create in the community through a mutual love of books.
“You can go now, I got the front covered, darlin’.” Brenda’s kind voice breaks through my thoughts and I turn to face her where she stands above me, my hands still resting on the keyboard and mouse of the computer I’ve been working on at the front desk.
“Oooh, is that the design for the next poster?” She sounds genuinely impressed with my mediocre skills on a free design site, and it makes me smile. That smile and my nod are enough of a response for her and she tsks proudly. “I’ll never know how you manage to do that. It looks so good!”
There are so many people from older generations who just don’t know what is possible with the technology most of us take for granted, and how easy it really is, so it kinda feels like cheating to impress them with so little effort. Brenda is definitely one of these folks.
“It’s easier than you’d think, I promise,” I tell her, deflecting her praise.
She waves me off with a “Pish posh, you’ve got real talent, darlin’,” which makes me blush, and she sends me on my way to my lunch break.
Saturdays are our longest day, being open from ten to seven, so she gives me an extra long lunch break while we have the help of several volunteers, just in case she can’t let me go home at five or six if we’re slammed. I’m taking the chance to sneak in a lunch with my parents, who I feel guilty for not spending more time with despite my lighter schedule of late. I almost laugh that six days a week is lighter for me, but it is. And still, I’ve only managed to see them a handful of times this whole summer.
The drive to their house—my childhood home—takes just ten minutes from work, which makes me feel even worse for not fitting in visits with them more often. As always, the front door is open and I let myself in, tossing my crossbody bag down on the small table inside the foyer, keeping my cell phone in my back pocket as I wander through the house looking for them.
My mother is in the kitchen, slaving away over the stove, making it look a lot harder than it probably is to make a stew and some biscuits. There’s a lot of things she’s great at in life, but no one would ever accuse her of being a housewife. She’s more the kick ass in her career, hire help around the house kind of lady, so I appreciate that she’s taking the effort to make a home-cooked meal for us today.
She turns around when she hears me approach, putting the metal spoon down on a ceramic spoon rest and lifting her arms to greet me. “Jellybean!” Her enthusiastic greeting drives the knife of guilt farther into my gut.
“Hi, Mom.”
She stops coming in for a hug as she realizes something about me is different. A lot of somethings, actually. This is the first time she’s seen me all done up since Alex and I developed my new look. Last time, I came clean-faced, hair thrown back as usual. But now, her bare arms come out to her side, fists resting on her hips as she assesses me.
Those honey eyes rake me up and down, taking in the new hair, the pop of makeup that gives my face just a little more life, highlighter accentuating my round eyes, button nose, and full upper lip. She makes a noise of approval as she sees the outfit: an oversized cream sweater that hangs down to my upper thighs, tight jeans that show there’s some shape under the bulk, and little suede booties that complete the ensemble. My new wardrobe is pretty sweater-heavy for a southern gal, but I’m cold so much of the time that I’ve been able to get away with it all summer long so far, and it’s already the end of August.
“Well don’t you look lovely, Jellybean! Your daddy is gonna lose his mind to see you all gorgeous like this when it’s not even a special occasion.”
My head falls down in embarrassment, my newly shorter hair hanging forward to cover my face. The difference between my parents and Aaron’s is so evident in situations like this. While we both come from loving families, both only children with our parents still happily married (what are the odds?), mine had me pretty late in life (okay, I’m more of a miracle baby if we’re being honest), whereas his parents had him as teenagers. Our parents are almost three decades apart in age, and it shows.
Most of our taste in nerd culture, music and video games came from his parents, while mine were the stricter influence, the “realistic” ones who pushed for my college education, and thought he’d never make it in film. His parents moved their family to Atlanta from Alabama (where he was born) right after his thirteenth birthday to help him follow his dream. No need to tell you how that worked out.
Most of our teenage years were split evenly between our two homes, but there’s a significant difference in the environment of each. His mom, Carrie, will probably wink at me and give me a huge hug next time she sees me, without embarrassing me. I should’ve known my parents would make a big deal out of me not dressing like a street urchin anymore.
Mom doesn’t let me hide from her, pulling me and rocking me side to side briefly in a maternal embrace.
“Aaron still out of town?” she asks, as that’s the answer I gave her when, at my birthday dinner last week, she wondered why he hadn’t been around with me lately. She obviously knows I’m not working for him anymore, but I haven’t gone any further than I had to into that story. Unease curdles my insides at the thought of having to come clean on our falling out.
Before I can even answer, she curses suddenly and pulls back rapidly at the unmistakable sounds of the stove bubbling over.
“I’m gonna need another five or ten minutes on this, sweetheart. The table is already set and your father is probably still in the shower after he mowed the lawn all morning, so you just keep yourself busy for a few minutes, okay?”
“No worries, Ma, I’m gonna check out the treehouse.” Not sure why those words left my mouth, but my feet are headed in that direction now, so to the treehouse I go, I guess.
Dad had it built for my eighth birthday—sixteen years ago as of last week—and while time has left its mark on the exterior of the structure, it’s still as solid and sound as ever. The ladder is a little trickier to climb in booties than Canvas slip-ons, but I make it work, plopping down on the platform that overlooks my parents’ property and letting the memories from this place overtake me.
This is the place we’d come to celebrate when things were good, to commiserate when they weren’t, or where we’d analyze when we weren’t sure whether they sucked or were about to be fantastic.
This is where we digested the news he’d landed his second major role. We’d celebrated the first one, of course, but the second one is what really hit home for him. He finally accepted it might not be a fluke. That his charm, his innate likeability, that natural talent combined with all his hard work of learning his craft might be paying off, making him a dependable addition to any set, a fast favorite of every director he’d worked with to date.
“I have you to thank for this,” he says quietly, much more serious than his usual demeanor.
“What do you mean?”
“Fishing for compliments?” His easy grin tells me he didn’t really mean it as a dig, but I blush all the same.
“Nevermind. Don’t answer that.”
“Not to get all cheesy on you, but I hope you know how much your friendship has meant to me since we moved here. It would have been a shitty few years without you, ya know.”
The smile diffusing my face could probably light up all of the Georgia Aquarium if I let it keep going, so I tamp it down. His friendship is absolutely everything to me, too. But if I open up about that to him, more than the words of a friend would probably leave my lips. So I tamp those down, too, settling for zipped lips and a contented smile.
“I mean it, you know. The more I get my roots in the industry here, the more thankful I am to have this between us.”
My eyes lift to find his, and he’s looking at me so deeply, I swear it’s my soul he’s seeing, not my eyes.
“There’s a lot of shady people, some shifty shit. Some people have a circle they’ve spent decades cultivating. And some people seem to have no one, which might be the saddest part. But I’ve already seen what happens when you let the wrong person in, and I’m just thankful I have you. You helped me get here in the first place, and you keep me grounded, Gem. I’m not wandering lost in my new life. You keep me focused, and give me something to look forward to coming back to. Not losing myself in the lifestyle, or the bullshit that comes with it.”
His words soothe something deep inside me. Some fear, some worry that he could lose sight of the wonderful person that’s come to mean more to me than anything or anyone else.
No words are coming to me that would do justice to what he just said to me, so I just drop my head sideways until it’s resting on his shoulder and revel in being in his company.
The fact that he thinks it’s me keeping him from falling into the fame, an ego, the vices that are so easily available in Hollywood, that’s not something I’ll take for granted.
I’ll continue protecting the best parts of this kid until my dying breath.
Cheese wasn’t something we partook in very often, but that night meant more to me than I can put into words.
Another night comes back to me, about a year later than the last one. Senior year. It was a much less fun night, one of the last times Aaron saw me cry, but I still keep that memory on a mental pedestal right next to the other one.
There was this guy Jeremy I’d been talking to for a few weeks, leading up to prom season. It was right before Aaron dropped out, his school schedule was conflicting with when he was needed on set, and his career was all but assured at that time. He had work constantly rolling in by that point, so when he turned eighteen, he dropped out. His parents weren’t excited , but they were supportive of him getting his GED. And it was hard to argue with the trajectory he was on. He was already out-earning them by that point.
Anyway, Jeremy and I had been on an assignment together for science class, and we ended up texting even after it was over. Things seemed to be going well between us, which was why when I heard that he’d asked Jenny DiSantinello to prom and not me, as I’d been expecting, it hit me pretty hard. She was a junior, sweet, but much curvier than me, and it sent my self-doubts spiraling to new levels. Aaron helped walk me back from that dark place that night.
He knew just where to find me, skipping steps of the ladder, jumping when he was close enough to pull himself up onto the platform and dropping down next to me heavily.
I’d left my phone inside that night, not wanting any reminders of how little activity was on it, those texts from Jeremy pretty much the only ones not from either Aaron or my parents. Those texts that gave me hope for a future that didn’t rely on Aaron and only Aaron, when he’d started dating around not long before that, and it was clear I wasn’t on his mind in the way he’d always been on mine.
It was less the fact that Jeremy hadn’t asked me to prom that had broken me, as it was the fact that I’d been reminded I’m not what guys like him, or Aaron, are looking for, and I never will be.
“Fuck him.” Aaron’s voice sounds angrier than I’d expect on my behalf, so I assume my parents told him what had driven me to mope out here tonight.
A small half smile breaks out on one side of my face as I turn my head to face his. “Nah.”
“I can cancel on Shannon and take you?” he offers.
He’s mostly landed roles here in the Atlanta area, and been able to stay around more often than he has to go out to LA, which has been nice. It means he can still do things like be a plus-one to prom after his shots for the day are over.
Something of a surprised squeak comes out of my mouth, and I shake my head rapidly, dropping it, causing my ponytail to fall forward over my shoulder and tickle my arms, resting in my lap.
“This isn’t seventh grade, Aaron. You don’t have to take your best friend to save her the embarrassment of going solo. I’ll just go alone since my parents won’t let me skip it.”
“You sure?”
I nod, looking back up at him, and hoping I was convincing.
“It’s not prom so much as…” My voice trails off, unsure of how to share that particular insecurity with him. I know he wouldn’t want me to feel bad about my body, my shape, but that’s not really a can of worms I want to open with him. No need to make this more awkward by forcing him to find things to compliment me on when I’m clearly not what he finds attractive in a girl.
He sways into me with his body weight, nudging me with his shoulder so I’m gently shoved to the side. “What is it then, Gem?”
I let out a deep sigh and wordsmith an answer that’s honest enough, without putting him on the spot, or worse, risking exposing my feelings for him.
“I’m just starting to accept that I’m not the kind of girl guys go after. There’s always going to be someone curvier, or more experienced,” my face flushes at the admission, “or more fun .”
His features tighten, drawing together, like he’s rejecting what I’m saying.
“Gem, you’re the most fun I’ve ever had with someone. Guy, girl, whatever.” The sincerity in his tone is hard to poke holes in, and it’s doing things to my insides. “Plus, you’re more than just fun. You’re brilliant, and so strong, and loyal. You’re, like, the checklist of what a guy should be looking for in a girl. If he can’t see it, or is just looking at you for sex, that’s his fucking loss.”
He wraps his arm around my shoulders, his body surprisingly warm for the chilly spring evening, and comfort spreads through my veins at his touch, his words.
That’s when I realize that trying to build a life outside of him was silly.
This kid is all I’ll ever need.
A smile graces my face at those two memories, and all the countless other weekend days and summer nights we spent up here. Between us, we’d dreamt a thousand dreams in this spot right here, pretty much every one of those dreams centering on Aaron landing the roles he’d always wanted to and becoming a household name. Most of those dreams are well on their way to coming true now, but I can think of a few more I’d throw out there if I saw a shooting star tonight.
Unconsciously, I pull my phone out of my back pocket, unlock it and pull up our text thread, thumbing through our most recent interactions.
Call me a sucker, but after that thoughtful post he did about the period croissant a couple weeks back, I finally answered one of his texts. He’d asked me to save the most recent episode of “our show” to watch with him when he gets back. He didn’t have anything to worry about. I haven’t watched a single one without him. But I told him I’d save it, regardless. And we’ve been texting here and there ever since.
There’s too much good between us to let one or two bad things ruin it all, but there is some learning and growth that needs to happen, that’s for sure. Funny enough, I’m starting to think that it is happening. It’s just a feeling I’ve gotten over the last month or so, but even in the texts he’s sent me in that time, something feels different. Self-awareness? Regret?
My eyes take in the last exchange, from just a few mornings ago. Of course he started it with a New York Ave lyric.
The Kid
For as far as we’ve come
And since he’s in Europe, seven hours ahead of me, I was asleep when he sent it, so he kept the lyric going by himself, until he finished the verse.
I’ll never forget what I left
How can reaching the top make you feel so alone and glum
The world’s at your fingers but you’re lonely and bored to death
I didn’t wake up and answer for hours.
Me
I thought you weren’t supposed to listen to emo while filming? Remember the Lone Tear of 21?
That wasn’t a tear. My eye was rejecting the humidity level in the desert.
They had to reshoot the entire scene, Aaron. Your director wanted to murder you for crying during your big fucking action sequence.
I’m in Europe. Everyone is emo.
Plus, my role is an underappreciated genius of an artist. I could argue this is just me getting into character.
Your new assistant better get a handle on this listening sesh before it gets out of hand. They’re slacking.
She’s no you.
There was a solid ten minutes between that text and the next one, as I had absolutely no idea how to respond, and planned on leaving it at that. But his next message landed a blow to my gut that’s had me reeling for the three days since.
Miss you, Gem.
As easy as it would’ve been, as truthful as it would’ve been to tell him how I’ve missed him too, a part of me will never be complete without him in my life, I’ve drawn a line in the sand, and I intend to stick to the side of that line clearly labeled friend . Anything that entertains deeper feelings stays over there. So I deflected. My worry at his sentimental words still peered through, and his response didn’t help much.
You good kid?
Mostly.
Oof. I can only hope—for his sake, purely—that him getting back home this weekend helps. Look, I can’t foresee a day where I don’t care about this kid’s wellbeing. I’ve just been balancing it, limiting it to what I’m pretty sure society would deem an acceptable level of care from one friend to another. Making sure to spend way more time with my boyfriend, texting him, talking to him, enjoying life with him, than I spend thinking about my friend .
In the name of balance , I make a point to end this trip down memory lane with a scroll through my texts with Spencer, and I light up at the last few he sent me.
Spence ??
Gonna miss you so much tonight, gorgeous. Don’t tell the boys, but guys night is nowhere near as much fun as our nights together. They’d revoke my membership card if they saw that text. Might delete this. ??
Have fun without me tonight? Maybe take a pic or video if it gets to be too much fun? ??
I promise I’ll make it up to you tomorrow. ??
Maybe I’ll come to your place to eat breakfast in bed.
(Your code name is breakfast.)
And with that promise on the horizon, I head back to the house for lunch with my parents; ready to deflect questions about one man in my life, wondering if it’s time to introduce them to the other.