Chapter 12
TWELVE
LENNON
The content is genuinely good.
I’ve been staring at the screen for twenty minutes telling myself this objectively, the way I’d tell a client.
I think because it’s true and not just because I want it to be true. I’m sitting cross-legged on my bunk in Raven’s RV with my laptop on my knees and the twinkle lights overhead making all the pictures I’m editing seem that much more magical.
With most of my clients I’m working with pics they snapped themselves. I rarely get to be so involved in the process from set-up to taking the pictures myself.
August’s grid is going to be devastating.
I’ve got a hundred and forty-seven photos sorted into a first batch—the portraits from last night in black and white, along with action shots from this morning.
Close-ups on August’s hands holding the needle, the jaw-angle shot where the light catches the neck tattoo just so, and the picture he took of my finished Medusa last night.
I’ve written captions that are professional but also make you feel like you’re being let into something private.
That’s the whole trick of good content. Capturing authenticity without being cheesy, or losing it in the attempt of the capture.
It’s a fine line to walk, but when you get it right… magic.
Of course it helps when the content itself is so amazing. And August’s work is just… I can’t stop looking at my forearm in awe when I think no one’s watching.
I’m not thinking about him.
I’m thinking about his brand.
“Okay so.” Raven drops onto the bunk across from me with a bowl of cereal and the energy of someone who has been waiting patiently for as long as possible before grilling me. “Tell me everything.”
Raven has an ink-black faux hawk, bright, colorful ear plugs, and multiple face piercings, and is wearing a baggy T-shirt and baggy shorts that hang down to their knees.
“About what?” I say, eyes still on my laptop.
“About what.” Raven repeats this back to me in a tone of profound disbelief. “Lennon. You just spent the entire day at August’s tattoo shop. You came home with fresh ink and a million photos of the park’s resident hottie on your phone—”
“For his brand—”
“— and you’ve been staring at your screen with that face for twenty minutes.”
I look up. “What face?”
Raven points their spoon at me. “That face.”
“I don’t have a face.”
“You have so much face right now.” They eat a spoonful of cereal. “The whole park is going to want to know. Linda’s already asked me twice.”
I groan. “My mother needs a hobby.”
“Your mother has seventeen hobbies, that’s not her problem.” Raven tucks their feet underneath them. “Now, spill. August.”
They say his name like it’s a complete sentence, which in the context of this small community, apparently it is. “Do you understand that man is basically the resident sexy cryptid of this place? He’s been here two years and we’ve collectively gathered approximately four facts about him.”
“What are the four facts?”
Raven counts on their fingers. “Extremely tall. Extensively tattooed. Swims in the cold pool at night like some kind of feral merman. And—” They pause for effect— “will occasionally appear in the plaza to fix things for people without being asked and then disappear without accepting thanks.”
I look up from my laptop.
“He fixed Marta’s generator,” Raven says. “In October. She came out one morning and it was just—fixed. Nobody saw him do it. He left a note that said I had the right part. Five words. That was the whole note.”
I look back at my laptop.
I am not thinking about him. I’m thinking about his brand.
“I’m just doing his marketing,” I say.
Raven gives me a look that suggests they find this claim charming.
“The Instagram girlies,” I add, “are going to absolutely lose their minds.”
“The Instagram girlies and also literally everyone in this park.” Raven tilts their head. “Okay but the tattoo. Can I see it?”
I hold out my arm.
Raven leans forward and looks at it for a long moment, then lets out a low whistle. “Damn. That’s stunning.”
“Right?”
I look at Medusa’s face, feeling stronger just by having her on my skin.
“Want me to read your cards?” Raven asks, excited and already reaching for their tarot deck.
But right as they hand the cards to me to shuffle, we’re interrupted by knocking at the RV door.
“Expecting someone?” I ask Raven. They haven’t had company over since I’ve been staying here, and I guess we should talk about how I can make myself scarce if—
“Lennon?” Jake’s loud voice comes through the door. “I know you’re in there. Your car’s in the lot and your phone location says you’re here.”
Dammit. I’ve really got to turn that thing off.
“I just want to talk.”
Raven looks at me. They shake their head like I shouldn’t answer.
But this is embarrassing enough. Plus, maybe Jake will be reasonable about unfreezing the accounts if we can just talk?
Yes I have an appointment booked with a lawyer, but this is going to get crazy expensive if he makes this hard on us, and if I can just get him to be reasonable—
I get up and open the door.
Jake looks terrible. There are dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t been sleeping and he hasn’t shaved. Jake is generally handsome in the unremarkable way of someone who takes care of himself without thinking too much about it.
Right now, though, he’s clearly not taking care of himself. Some deeply conditioned part of me wants to fix that immediately.
I stand in the doorway and brace myself.
It’s not your job to fix it anymore.
“You could have called,” I say.
He has the grace to look down. “I deleted your number. That was— I panicked. I’m sorry.”
He looks back up, and his eyes have a sheen of tears again like when I told him I wanted a divorce.
It looks so real, even now after I’ve felt the effects of his financial manipulation, it threatens to make me emotional on his behalf. Just like it did every time he called on this particular tactic for nine years. “Can we talk? Just talk. Five minutes.”
I step outside and pull the door most of the way closed behind me. If only because Raven does not need to be part of whatever this is.
We stand in the evening air, and I cross my arms tight over my stomach.
The plaza is quiet. The café is closed, and there’s the particular hush of an RV park at the hour after dinner when everyone is inside but still awake.
“I’m not coming back home,” I say. “If that’s what this is.”
“It’s not.” Jake puts his hands in his pockets. “I know. I’m— I’ve accepted that. I just—” He exhales. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Okay.”
“The money, Lennon.”
I breathe out in relief. “You’re ready to open up the accounts again?”
“What?” he looks confused. “No. I mean the money from the sock drawer.”
I just stare at him.
“I’m not accusing you,” he says quickly, palms up. “I want to be clear about that. I’m not accusing you of anything. I just—when I went to the drawer, there was only one sock, and I need to understand—”
“I took half,” I say. “My half, Jake.”
“Right, but—” He tilts his head slightly. “The thing is, that money was household money. It wasn’t specifically either of ours, it was—”
“It was both of ours. I took half.”
“I understand that’s how you see it—”
“That’s how it is.”
“Okay.” He nods slowly. Carefully. Like I’ve said something that requires processing. “Okay. I hear you. I just want to make sure we’re both being honest about what happened. Because from where I’m standing it looks a little like—”
“Like what?” I say, baffled as I even try to wrap my head around what he’s implying.
He looks pained. “It looks like you took money that wasn’t yours to take, Lennon. I don’t think you meant to do anything wrong. I think you were upset and just not thinking clearly—”
“I was thinking completely clearly.” I can feel the familiar frustration rising as he tries to get me scrambled up in my head.
“Lennon.” His voice drops. Patient. The voice he uses when I’m being difficult. “You left in a crisis state. You’d just had a huge emotional event and you weren’t in a position to make financial decisions. I think you probably—”
“I am not doing this,” I say, taking a step back from him.
“I’m just trying to understand—”
“You know exactly what you’re doing.” My voice has an edge in it.
“You’ve locked me out of every bank account, including my business.
What am I supposed to live on?” My voice goes up at the end, incredulous.
“And now you’re standing here telling me the thousand dollars I took—half the money in that drawer—was theft? ”
“I didn’t use that word—”
“You implied it.”
“I’m trying to have a calm conversation—”
“We are having a calm conversation.”
“You’re raising your voice,” he says.
I stop.
I am not raising my voice. I am standing in an RV park speaking at a completely normal volume and he has just made that move I’ve watched him make so many times I could choreograph it.
He says something designed to set me off. He just says it in a super quiet voice.
Then pulls the: you’re raising your voice. You’re getting emotional. This is what I mean about you not being well.
I breathe.
“I’m not raising my voice,” I say, very, very quietly.
“Okay.” He holds his hands up. “Okay, if that’s how you feel.”
If that’s how you feel.
Not: you’re right, I was mistaken.
If that’s how you feel, like my perception of my own volume is a feeling I’m entitled to have rather than a fact.
“Jake.” I keep my voice low.
This is the game he’s forcing me to play even though all my hairs stand up on end at participating. “I want you to unfreeze my accounts. All of them. The personal ones and the business ones. And I want you to do it today. My lawyer will be in touch this week.”
Something shifts in his face. “You got a lawyer.”
“I did.”
He’s quiet for a moment. And then the reasonable, affable-guy-expression goes cold.
“I think this has gone far enough, Lennon. I came here to talk and you’re threatening me with lawyers. You’re clearly still not in a stable place—”
“I’m extremely stable—”
“—and frankly I’m worried about you. Being here, in this environment around people we don’t know, around him—” and there it is, the word landing like the whole conversation was a path to this specific word— “I think it’s affecting your judgment—”
“Do not,” I say.
“I’m concerned—”
“Do not make this about August.”
“I’m not making it about August, I’m making it about you. I’m worried about—”
“You don’t get to be worried about me anymore.” My voice has risen again.
I hear it and I can’t fully stop it because I have been standing here for ten minutes being methodically turned inside out by a man who has had ten years of practice doing just that.
“You froze my accounts and you blocked my number and now you’re standing here calling me unstable and saying me getting a lawyer is a threat when it’s clearly the only recourse you’ve left me. Then you have the gall to tell me I’m shouting when I’m not shouting—”
“You’re shouting right now—”
“I am not—” I’m just speaking intensely at regular volume.
“Lennon.” His voice goes very quiet. Very sad. “Listen to yourself.”
The door to August’s RV opens and his head pops out. I see the moment his eyes zero in on Jake.
Oh no.