Chapter Eighteen Silas
Chapter Eighteen
Silas
Y ou good, Silas?”
Colin’s question settles around my shoulders, heavy and insistent. I look at him from across the glass conference room table. The laptop in front of me is dark. I stopped paying attention to it a while ago.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I lie.
I’m screwed. I know that. I crossed so many lines last night, and I’m scared there’s no going back.
It didn’t help that half my day was spent in meetings to prepare for tomorrow’s shoot. With Lucas Russo’s involvement, both Colin and Gary have gone extra hard to ensure every detail is taken care of, every possibility considered. For them, it’s an opportunity to ensure Russo wants to work with Metropolitan again. For me, it’s all about making sure we take care of Jo.
The very same woman I spent the night with. The same woman who confided in me about her very real, very personal struggles. That I’m supposed to write 3,000 to 5,000 words about for public consumption.
Colin has no idea. I couldn’t—can’t—bring myself to tell him. Technically, nothing happened; I helped a friend in a moment of need. Still, I’m sure my editorial director would have things to say about the fact that I slept next to a subject all night, or that I spent an hour massaging her back, trying and failing to ignore the erratic beat of my heart and that effervescent zinging all over my body.
Friend. That’s all she is. A friend.
“Okay, but—” Colin starts, then pauses to sigh. “You’re going to be normal tomorrow for the shoot, right? Because you’ve been uncharacteristically quiet all day.”
“I’m just tired. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
He narrows his eyes as he leans forward. “Do you need me to be there tomorrow to help?”
Panic flares up inside of me. The last thing I need is Colin observing me with Jo. “No, I’ve got it covered. Russo’s bringing like, twenty of his own people. We don’t want a ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ situation.”
Colin considers this for a moment. “All right. I’m always a text or call away if you need anything.”
“I know. I appreciate that.”
I seize the opportunity to leave the conversation in a good place, so I shut my laptop and rise to stand. Halfway to the conference room door, I’m already dreaming of how I’ll spend my night. A not insignificant part of me is tempted to drink away my problems, but I can’t show up to the shoot looking and feeling like shit. Plus, any more than three drinks mixed with my antidepressants always turns me into a zombie.
“Hey, Silas, one more thing.”
Fingers outstretched to the door, I take a deep breath and let my hand drop. “What’s up?”
“I can tell this article is stressing you out,” Colin says. “This is the biggest feature of your career, and the magazine’s sunk a lot of money into doing this right.”
I look at him. The firm set of his jaw and the line between his brows tells me that he’s being serious. These little quirks have always been his tell.
“I just want to say that I trust you,” he adds. “I know you’ll pull this off.”
“Thanks, man,” I choke out before walking out of the conference room.
I didn’t think it was possible, but I leave work feeling worse than I did when I arrived this morning.
When I was ten, maybe eleven years old, my parents sat me down and told me I had to pick a sport. We sat at the oval dining room table while my brothers ran around outside hitting each other with sticks. Any sport, they’d said, but I had to do something when I started middle school.
Naturally, I’d argued. I already did my duty as the eldest child and helped my dad around the farm, which was plenty of outside activity for me, but they held firm. They said I spent all my free time holed up in the attic, alone, which was no example to set for my brothers. It didn’t matter that I was usually reading up there—the only place I could find some peace and quiet—or that I was a straight A student.
We settled on a compromise: I would do one season of any sport of my choosing. If I wanted to quit after I’d seen a full season through, then they would let me. All they asked was that I show my four little brothers how to be a part of a team.
I picked the most solitary sport I could. That spring, I started track.
In retrospect, there was some weird, patriarchal stereotype going on with my parents when they made me commit to an activity I had no interest in, but their little plan worked. By the time summer break rolled around, I’d started to like running. I wasn’t the fastest, but I also wasn’t the slowest. I liked pushing myself. I liked seeing how far I could go as we ran around the one track in town, over and over and over again.
In high school, I hit my stride, both literally and metaphorically. I learned how to run year-round with the help of Coach Johnson, learned what gear I’d need to manage the slippery conditions of Iowa’s cold, desolate winters. So long as I was filling most of my time with running, my parents didn’t bother me when I retreated to the attic. One of my little brothers even followed in my footsteps and signed up for track once he hit middle school.
Now, I’m grateful to my parents for dragging me to Walmart for running shoes all those years ago.
Five miles into my Tuesday evening run, my body feels good. My joints are light, my muscles relaxed, my breathing even as I navigate Central Park’s upper loop. It’s the beginning of a gorgeous night, so the paths are packed, but I’m grateful for the distraction. Anything to keep me from thinking about Jo. About yesterday.
I hadn’t meant to run all the way to the park. After I’d gotten home from work, I knew I needed to do something other than rot in my apartment and overthink all night. A quick run had been my own compromise to address the storm of feelings raging inside of me. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now here I am, struggling less than I expected through the hilly terrain, my feet keeping an easy rhythm. Another runner approaches me wearing a Haven tank top. We make space for each other as I realize the cross training I’ve been doing with those Haven rides is helping me. My pace and my stamina are improving despite a lack of sleep.
There’s another thing Jo had been right about.
Last night, she drifted off not long after I started rubbing her back. Once I was sure she was out, I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, asking myself how the hell I’d ended up there. How an unwelcome assignment for work somehow led me to a subject’s bed. How I wound up brushing the hair out of her face while she slept and tiptoeing around her apartment in search of a blanket. How I climbed in next to her again even though I had every opportunity to leave.
I push myself harder, faster—for punishment or absolution, I don’t know. My running app lights up my phone.
New personal record for pace! Good job!
I’d been right to trust my gut on this story; Jo was hiding something. But digging for her secrets online feels different now that she’s opened up to me. Knowing that I was assuming the worst about her—and that I was willing to poke around in the bottom of the Internet barrel just for an angle without considering that she is a complicated human being—is the reason I’ve barely been able to eat today.
Worse still, her telling me about her very real, very personal struggles with mental health—off the record—puts me in the place no journalist ever wants to be. I have the knowledge and history for the story, but I can’t do anything with it ethically. It’s Jo’s decision if she wants to invite hundreds of thousands of strangers into her private life. She, of all people, knows how far reaching those consequences can be. But now, because I care about her, I can’t push her to share this.
I won’t push her to share this.
My one small piece of solace is knowing I won’t destroy my friendship with Derek since the article will not be a certified hit piece. I don’t have to worry about him feeling compelled to pick sides once it publishes. My original zero draft is now little more than a Lesson Learned taking up space on my hard drive.
I hit a downhill slope. My rhythm picks up. The playlist blasting through my ear transitions to another song I heard in Jo’s class recently.
I still need more from Jo—at least two more sessions on the record, sharing whatever she will give me. But now that I’ve been in her home, slept next to her, felt the warmth radiating off her body as I drifted into a restless sleep, there’s more that I want from her too.
I want more of her laugh, her touch, her full attention as she tells me a story. Just for me.
My thoughts carry me all the way to the south end of the park. As I wait for the light to change at Columbus Circle, my phone dings from my arm band, congratulating me on a half marathon. I blink down, surprised.
I went on this run looking for clarity. But all I have to show is an accidental athletic milestone and a metric ton of sweat soaking through my shirt and shorts. Sure, there are endorphins bouncing around in my brain, but they’re no match for the reality I’m facing.
Because these feelings coursing through me are the kind that could bring me to my knees.