Chapter 6 #2
Turning, I give my back to the mirror and mentally give the middle finger to the word slimming.
After digging around in my laundry until I find my favorite stuff, I pull it all on with a relieved sigh.
Nothing feels quite as good as getting into your most comfy clothes, and in my case, my most comfortable pair of cotton leggings that have grown with me over the years, and my favorite “Capture the Moment” crewneck sweater.
Putting my hair into a very messy and careless bun, I drag a freezer meal out and pop it into the microwave, then head back to my couch to load my SD card into my laptop.
The microwave dings, Ross finds out that Rachel left with Chip, outside one of my neighbors’ food deliveries arrives, but all of it seems to fall into the periphery.
I sink back into the couch, blinking, eyes burning.
These are office photos for brochures meant to serve as the filler images.
People will be overlaid, shaking hands and smiling, pretending they’re so happy to do whatever business deal it is that they are doing.
They will be the focus for anyone who opens the pamphlet.
Not the office in the background, or the skyline captured through the mug handle at the table in the conference room. No one will pay attention to my work.
But still.
“Fuck, these are great,” I say quietly to myself. While I was working, I liked the concepts that were coming to me, but seeing them now on my computer, I’m impressed that the vision truly came to life.
A commercial comes on. The microwave stops dinging. The noise outside quiets. And the picture that took my breath and filled me with pride only a millisecond ago now brings a burst of panic in my diaphragm. My eyes sting, and an angry knot appears in my throat, holding back the onset of tears.
These are great photos. But this is not the direction I want to head. And as great of a job as I did on these photos, they feel like a metaphor for my life right now.
I am twenty-six years old. Dating a man who wishes I were more successful, and thinner, a person who may not even believe in me. At this rate, I don’t know anymore.
I live alone. I don’t even have a cat to hold while I cry, or to eat my remains if I die alone.
Some of these things should be resolved by now.
I should have a fledgling career–everyone else my age that I know already does.
And those that don’t are at least in stable relationships with long term commitment on the line.
I can’t even get Harry to book a hotel room because it’s too much pressure.
My cry starts quiet, just in my chest, rattling my bones and shaking my thoughts around. But it grows as my mind works overtime to punish myself, and a moment later, tears are soaking my leggings, my cheeks are wet, and Monica and Rachel are just a big blur of hair and tanned skin.
I hold my tiny couch pillow to my chest, my hair sticking to my wet face as I rock and sob, more upset by the fact that I don’t know how to fix any of these problems than the problems themselves.
I fall into my couch and close my eyes, searching for a deep breath and a moment of calm. A memory flashes through my mind, one I haven’t thought of in years. Maybe even since it happened.
Fifteen-year-old me and Kat, sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, tears in my eyes as we try to figure out how to tell my parents that I took their car out–and damaged it.
I remember how scared I was to tell them, and how I thought running away from home was a good option to avoid the truth.
Kat had convinced me not to run, which in hindsight makes me giggle because where would I have gone?
And then she did something that perhaps solidified my feelings for her father.
She told me she was going to get me a glass of water, and when she came back to the room, dragging Ford Mercer inside by the hand, I felt so betrayed.
This was my secret–now our secret–and she promised to help me figure it out.
How could she tell an adult? My stomach turned sour, but as Ford got down on the floor next to me, sitting cross-legged as best as he could as a man over six feet tall, I realized she didn’t betray me.
His smile was soft, and knowing, and wrapped around me like the assurance I needed. He rested his hand on the top of my shoulder for just a moment before taking it away, saying, “don’t worry, Juliette. I’ll help you tell your parents. They’ll just be happy you’re okay, trust me.”
I didn’t know if that was true. And I remember wanting to argue that he didn’t know my dad, that the version of my dad that lived at my house was not the same man that waves to Ford from the front porch when he drops me off.
But at that moment, sitting on the floor with Kat’s father, I really felt safe.
I really believed that everything would be okay because he said so.
He always spoke to Kat and I like adults, and treated us with respect that my own parents seemed to think wasn’t mine to have just yet.
There was always something about the way he spoke to me that drew me to him, but on that particular night, easing my deepest distress with care and kindness–I didn’t just fall for Ford, because I’d already fallen.
Instead, that fall was solidified. The ladder was kicked away with no way out of the hole of loving a man I could never have, loving a person who would never love me, loving a person that is not meant for me.
He drove me home that night, and Kat stayed behind.
On the drive over, he explained where my parents will be coming from when they inevitably lecture me.
He explained that I’ve created stress for them.
That the damaged car now requires logistics–taking time off work to get it to the shop, dealing with insurance, finding a vehicle or ride while the car is in the shop and not just a ride for themselves but to pick me up from school and do errands and everything else.
Not only did I create work and now an expense, but that work and money equates to stress.
Most adults, he told me, just want to live peacefully and hiccups like these usually throw a wrench into that daily easiness.
When they yell, they’re just frustrated, but ultimately, they will more than anything else be glad that I’m okay.
That talk shaped and defined me. It changed the way I spoke to my parents that night, when we got to my house.
Ford offered to talk to them, but I told him I could, but he stayed two steps behind me on the porch, and when we went inside, he stayed in the foyer, listening as I came clean in the kitchen.
They thought he was there to make sure I told them the truth, but he and I knew that he was there to support me, not to rat on me. Ford always trusted me to do the right thing, and I always trusted him to be the support I didn’t know I needed.
My parents were upset, but after I apologized to them for creating additional work and stress in their already busy lives, they weren’t as angry as I thought. My father even thanked me for taking the time to understand why what I did was wrong. My mother even said she was just glad I was okay.
He helped me so much so many times, but that time sticks out because it shaped the way I communicated issues going forward. I’ve always been one to see things from both sides, and I attribute that to Ford.
What would Ford tell me now, if he were here, and we were sitting cross-legged on my living room floor? He’d say turn off the old reruns, that much I do know. Ford Mercer does not watch TV.
Desire burns between my legs at the thought of his smile, the way he tips his head back and roars his laughter when something is funny. How his Adam’s apple bobs with every hearty burst of laughter, his ink dancing over flexed muscle. What would handsome, sweet, kind Ford Mercer tell me?
I close my eyes, letting the tears dry on my cheeks, making my skin tight and itchy.
Ignoring it, I focus on the image of Ford in my mind, and feel a smile curve my lips.
Do what you love, that’s what he’d say. I’ve heard him tell his own kids that time and time again.
When Cade was toying with a business degree, to follow in his father’s footsteps and potentially take over his father’s speakeasies, Ford knew that wasn’t what was right for Cade.
He told him to do what he loves. Even when Kat thought she wasn’t cut out for real estate, Ford urged her to continue on, because he saw how much she loved making those sales.
He’d tell me to do what I love. That’s what he’d say.
Right?
I’ve made the choice and am taking action before I can stop myself, before I can take a moment and text Kat, or call my mom, or even do a damn post anonymously on Reddit.
The phone is pressed to my ear and ringing, my heart racing, before I have a chance to ask myself if this is appropriate.
After all, I’m not a fifteen-year-old girl anymore.
I’m twenty-six. I need to have this shit figured out, and calling my best friend’s dad for advice is not at all appropriate but–
“Juliette?” Ford answers, and the way he says my name makes my eyes sting, and my stomach collapses in on itself, sending a rush of prickly heat through my legs and arms. I cling to the phone and chew my lip.
“Yeah, hey Mr. Mercer, it’s me. Juliette.”
His laugh is smooth and raspy all at once, like velvet wrapping a dagger, piercing my chest and filling it with ethereal softness, leaving me floaty and warm. “I know it’s you. You’re programmed in my phone, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
It must’ve slipped. Or–no. It didn’t slip. It’s an agamic term to him, and therefore was intentional but not meant to make my nipples hard, despite the fact that it did.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, further sending me.
There’s laughter on the line, from somewhere in the background, and deep bass from a band, chatter and chaos.
He’s at one of his bars, that much is clear.
I bring my legs together to feed the pulsing in my groin, and swallow against the breathlessness that hits me when I envision Ford’s brows pinched, waiting to know if I’m okay.
“Oh,” I reply, “yeah, I’m okay. Sorry–I don’t want to alarm you, I know I like, never call you.”
A beat. A blip of a moment. Nothing more than a second passes and Ford’s voice drops into a private timbre, something I’d imagine Elle gets in her ear at dinner over a crowded bar.
Lucky fucking Elle. My secret enemy because of her proximity and access to Ford.
They’ve shared hotel rooms. They drive places together.
They eat together. I’ve seen her pass him a drink to try, and watch her place her lips on the glass right after him, where his lips were.
She’s given me reasons to quietly dislike her, despite the fact that she’s always been sweet to me.
And I hate myself for disliking her out of petty jealousy.
The truth is, there’s no reason for me to be jealous.
Even if I weren’t Kat’s best friend, Ford Mercer does not date women like me. Nor does he date.
He takes women out. A new one every week. It’s not deep. It’s physical only, I’m assuming, and if that’s the case–which, it must be because why else is he taking a new girl out every week if not for scratching sexual urges–it doesn’t matter who I am to him because I am not his type.
Thin. Long legs. Tanned skin. Women who, when they take off their clothing, surely aren’t marked by wavy lines indicating they’ve been many sizes, whose tits bounce because they’re the perfect little handfuls, who sit on the edge of the bed while he undresses and have zero rolls or dimples.
I am a wonderful, beautiful, gorgeous type, but I am not his type.
I remind myself of this every time he leans into Elle and whispers something in her ear at events and jealousy rears its head and makes my eyes narrow into daggers and my throat constrict.
Though it shouldn’t matter or hurt, it does.
“Juliette?” he floats my name through the line after an extended moment of silence. I notice now that the noise has fallen away, and my name is isolated in silence.
“Oh,” I stumble, smacking my hand across my forehead, feeling foolish for making this call then sitting here silently like an idiot while lost in my own head. “I’m so sorry for calling.”
“What do you need?” he interrupts, his voice a pillar of calm and strength, and in those four words, I’m compelled to tell him why I called, and not beg off.
I chew at the inside of my cheek, already feeling less anxious just from the sound of his voice. Kat flashes in my mind, and in a millisecond I justify the call–after all, my own parents are in Europe on vacation–I couldn’t possibly lean on them tonight.
I clear my throat. Another nervous swipe of my tongue over my lips to wet them. “Advice.”