Chapter Thirty-One Jo
Chapter Thirty-One
Jo
T wo sessions per week. Two weeks. Roughly fourteen doses of anti-anxiety meds.
That’s how long it takes for Sonya and me to devise a plan. Sitting between shelves laden with medical textbooks and self-help books, the walls a creamy, neutral white, our sessions in her office feel less like therapy and more like wartime council meetings. I’m not crying anymore. The pain has hardened into something stiff and brittle. It falls off me in jagged fragments. Each time I shed a piece, I feel a little lighter and less afraid.
With Sonya’s help, I find the confidence to tell Z about the hammer that’s about to fall. Sonya also helps me to understand that I do not have to read this article until I’m ready. So with all this in mind, I’m grateful that panic doesn’t flare when Z texts on a rainy, humid afternoon. I’m ready.
The text is for a group chat with Mike:
Can you two come to my office in 30 min?
I reply back with a thumbs-up emoji. I know that Mike is teaching right now, but he’ll see the text after class.
I make my way upstairs to the floor of the corporate office early, where I find a conference room full of people in suits. The glass doors are shut, so I can’t hear anything, but it’s clear that this is about the acquisition. The corporate team at Haven is notoriously casual with their dress code; as a company, we are more jeans and spandex and less Italian wool and silk. But more than half of the people in that room are dressed for Wall Street, not NoHo.
Z is in the middle, heading up the conference room table, looking uncharacteristically professional in a chic black blazer. I stop and watch as she bends over to sign a document, the rest of the room eerily still around her. It’s only when she lifts her head and shakes the hand of the man sitting next to her that I release the breath I’ve been holding. The room explodes in applause and audible cheers.
I don’t need Mike’s business brain to know the deal is done.
Behind me, the corporate employees start whispering. I don’t stick around long enough to listen. I beeline straight for Z’s office and start to pace.
In here, tucked at the far end of the hall, with corner views of a gloomy New York afternoon, it’s quiet. I station myself in front of a floor-to-ceiling window and watch as dark gray clouds swirl around the neighboring buildings. A few minutes later, the glass door of Z’s office swings open behind me and I turn, startled.
Z looks equally surprised, her face flushed as she stares at me. “Oh, Jo! I wasn’t expecting you yet.”
“I know,” I reply. “There’s something I need to talk to you about. In private, if you have a few minutes.”
Her eyes shift from startled to cautious with a simple furrow of her perfectly arched brows. She’s had time for a haircut and dye job recently, her dark pixie back in classic form, but her eyes are still rimmed with deep blue circles. She’s tired. Exhausted.
She steps fully into her office, closing the door behind her, as she asks, “What’s up?”
In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
“Remember how I told you about that journalist that wanted to interview me?” When she gives me a short nod, I continue. “Well, he did, and I happened to see part of the article, and it’s… it’s not pretty, Z.”
Her eyes narrow into tight little slits. “How ‘not pretty’ are we talking here?”
“If this were a Law that’s a conversation for another time, another place, one where there isn’t a conference room full of executives and lawyers waiting for their champagne. Instead, I summon my most honest, enthusiastic smile, and embrace my boss with all I’ve got.
Her petite frame softens against mine as she returns the hug. When she pulls back, she keeps her bejeweled fingers wrapped around my upper arms. “This is going to change your life, you know,” she says. “The money, the exposure—all of it. There’s an internal announcement going out to all employees in”—she looks at the Rolex on her wrist—“ten minutes, and then Tracey is sending out the press packet to all the major news outlets. Are you ready for this, Jo?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Mike appears in the doorway then, his body slick with sweat from the class he just finished teaching. His black shirt clings to the swells of muscles underneath, his chest heaving as he takes in the scene: Z and I partially embraced, a row of champagne bottles lined up next to us. He closes the door behind him and says, “You incredible son of a bitch, you did it.”
Z drops her hands from my arms to pull a champagne bottle off the credenza. “Get over here. We have about five minutes to ourselves before all hell breaks loose.” With experienced fingers, Z is quick to discard the foil wrapping and muselet of the bottle while I snag three crystal tumblers off the shelf. There’s a resounding pop as the cork releases from the opening.
“I’d like to propose a toast,” Z declares as I hand a glass to each of them. She pours us a healthy serving of bubbles before setting the half-empty bottle back on the credenza. “I know this journey hasn’t always been easy, but we never would have made it this far if it wasn’t for you two.”
“Just like the old days,” Mike says, his eyes alive with that competitive spark he’s known for. “We’re the OGs.”
I know what moment he’s referring to: the night before our first studio’s grand opening, on the ground floor of this very same building. The four walls we painted a deep gray on our own. Thirty-five of the finest stationary bikes that a high-end sports equipment company could offer us. Those two glass front doors bearing the old window clings that said HAVEN: WELCOME HOME. Just Mike, Z, me, and a bottle of some nondescript champagne—not Dom Pérignon, but something cheaper. One decade and several hundred million dollars ago.
Z offers us both a dazed smile, as if she can’t believe this is actually happening. “To the OGs.”
“To the OGs,” Mike and I reply in unison.
The three of us clink our glasses together for what will be the final time.
They say that money can’t buy happiness, blah blah blah, but it can buy you and your best friend first-class upgrades to Vegas.
When that acquisition payout hit my bank account a few days later, I nearly fainted. I’d never seen that many zeroes attached to anything money related before. As it turns out, Mike was right—there is a price when you sell your soul, and when you’re finally paid, it comes with interest.
The press storm following the acquisition announcement is relentless. Thankfully, most of it is focused on Z and the rest of the executive team. This is a story about business, not talent, so Mike and I serve as mere background mentions during the news segments and press blurbs.
Vegas is a blur of sunshine, pool cabanas, dark nightclubs, and frozen cocktails in plastic cups. Serena meets us there, looking impossibly put together as always despite having spent roughly thirteen hours on a plane. Amber’s cousins, Candace and Lauren, fly in from Georgia to join us too. Together, the five of us spend the long weekend celebrating the bride in tried-and-true tradition: day drinking, gambling, and general debauchery.
Surrounded by my friends, I can forget the shitstorm waiting for me in New York. It’s only in the quiet moments that I remember the article, and Silas, and the ass kicking I’m about to get from the public conversation. One such happens after a lengthy spa session, during which the five us were obliterated by the hands of our masseuses. Serena and I are curled up on a couch in the women’s resting area flipping through coffee table books about fashion, nestled in our Egyptian cotton robes, when it hits me.
I’m about to be a public laughingstock. I may never get another job after this.
When I start to quietly cry, Serena holds me close and strokes my hair. “It’ll be okay,” she whispers. “Give it to me, babe. Let me carry some of this for you.” So I rest my head on her shoulder and cry until it’s time for us to get dressed.
Aside from my deep tissue massage–induced mini meltdown, the trip is full of joy. Most of our time is spent laughing, drinking, eating, spending money, or a combination of all four. During a lazy morning at the pool, before the temperature reaches homicidal heights, I ask a cabana boy to take our picture with my phone. We all look so good—sun-kissed, giggly, a tiny bit silly after a round of mimosas—that I want to share it with the world. Miraculously, all five of us are happy with the way we look in the picture. For the first time in weeks, I log into Instagram, ignoring all the alerts that flood my screen when I do, and post the photo with a simple but honest caption: my people.
By the time we’re waiting at the airport for our return flight, I’m doing my best to hold it together while my hangover does its best to brutalize me. My outfit can only be described as Adam Sandler chic: a pair of sweats, an old Haven tank top, slide sandals with socks, complete with a pair of sunglasses worn indoors. It serves as a reflection of how I feel inside.
Amber is worse off than me. Dressed in legitimate pajamas, she takes tiny sips from her water bottle, as if too much might make her puke. Serena and the others are already gone, their flights having left a few hours before Amber and I take off for New York.
My eyes are closed, my head in my hands, when I moan, “Why did we think we could party like we were twenty-two again?”
“I don’t understand it. No one blacked out. No one got too rowdy. Why do I feel like I’m ready for the coffin?” Amber asks before slumping over to rest her head on my shoulder.
“That’s showbiz, baby.”
I know why I was drinking like my life depended on it. While we celebrated the end of Amber’s singledom, I was also vastly aware of the clock ticking into August. My issue with Metropolitan will be dropping any day now. Thankfully, Vegas is the perfect place to drown your sorrows and distract yourself from the reality of life. After I posted that pool photo on Instagram, I let my phone die. It’s somewhere at the bottom of my bag, cold and untouched.
The smell of fast food wafts over to me, churning my empty stomach, and my eyes fly open to find the culprit—a man in the row across from us with a bag of something greasy. Behind my sunglasses, I glare at him. The presence of such a smell is a personal affront to my delicate sensibility.
I can feel the moment Amber smells it too. Her whole body goes rigid. She’s gone in a flash, hand clamped over her mouth, purse flailing behind her as she bolts for the nearest restroom.
As he goes to town on a handful of fries, he pulls a book out of his backpack. My heart drops when I see the title. It’s Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk.
Is the universe playing a joke on me? A knot forms in my throat, so big, so present, I can’t even swallow, but that might be acute dehydration’s fault. Despite all the progress I’ve made with Sonya’s help, I still miss Silas. I miss the way he made me laugh. I miss the way I felt around him, like I could be my real self. My full self. I miss the way his first inclination was to help, to comfort, to wait if necessary.
Despite everything—all the anger and pain and heartache—I miss him so much it hurts. My chest feels like the inside of a pressure cooker from the love I never got to share with him. Part of me wishes that I’d told him, just so he’d know that it had been real on my end. Sonya has reminded me, time and time again, that it’s okay to love someone who hurt you. That the love doesn’t stop the minute the chasm forms in your heart. It takes time to untangle those emotions.
I know I have to sit with these feelings, no matter how much it sucks.
I also know that I can’t sit here and smell this man’s lunch while that book title haunts me. I’m on my feet in a flash, tote bag slung over my shoulder as I march purposefully toward nowhere in particular.
This is how I find myself in the airport equivalent of a bodega, meandering through tightly packed displays of pretzels and candy that have no business costing that much money until—
I do a double take when I see it.
Among the magazines and periodicals sits a cover featuring a woman in a strappy black dress. Her dark hair is blown out, the waves full and luscious as they cascade down her shoulders. Her red lips are a pop of color against her tan skin and the white, nondescript background behind her.
The sell line reads: BEYOND THE BIKE.
Beneath that, another line of text: Up close and personal with Haven star Johanna De La Cruz.
“Fuck.”
The young guy next to me jumps at my sudden outburst.
I really can’t believe the woman on the cover is me. How can my style pendulum swing from that to today’s outfit of Swamp Creature? Maybe it’s a good thing I look like shit today—there’s no way anyone will recognize me. Still, I pull a hoodie out of my bag and zip it up over the Haven logo on my chest. It’s too hot in the desert to justify this extra layer, but this is a sacrifice worth making.
After weeks of dreading this very moment, I can’t believe it’s happening. In the Vegas airport, while I shake with the effort not to cry and/or hurl, I’m confronted by the very thing that scares me most: all of me, out on display.
If I want to, I can wait. When I choose to read this article—if at all—is my prerogative. Sonya has all but hammered this into my brain. It’s the same message that I’ve been reiterating to my clients in my angry, unsubtle rides recently. All we have control over in this wild, sometimes ugly world is ourselves and our actions. Who we are is made up of the choices we make, the actions we take—I believe that, deep in my bones.
At the same time, I know that nothing good ever comes from staying in your comfort zone. It might have taken me a while to learn this lesson, but it’s one I’ll never forget.
So with that in mind, I grab a copy off the shelf, and with some indignation—really, do you have to pay for a magazine if you’re on it?—fork over the full sticker price at the cash register.
I hobble back to the gate waiting area and plop down into a crumb-covered chair. With my sunglasses still on, I flip through the magazine until I find what I’m looking for—another picture of me, looking fly as hell in that Tom Ford dress—and start to read.