Chapter 19 Cecily
When I get back on land, my phone buzzes with a voicemail.
There was no cell service at sea.
I parked my car in long-term parking at the Point Judith ferry terminal. I schlep my bags off the ship, and by the time I get inside my vehicle, my hands are numb from the cold. I put the key in the ignition and let the car rattle, self-soothing its way to being warmed up.
As I wait, I put the phone on speaker and play the message.
“Hey,” Nate says. “I’m just calling to let you know that I’m okay, and I’m sorry if I worried you. I was just trying to give you some space, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that effectively if I stayed on the island. Anyway, I’m home. I imagine you’re on your way home now too. I guess, um, call me whenever you feel like you want to.”
Seriously?
After everything we’ve been through, that message sounds…about as cold as this car. Just trying to give you some space. More like just trying to use my words against me to justify dipping out in the middle of the night. Well, fine, early in the night. But still.
To clarify, when I said, I need some space, I just meant, For like an hour. I didn’t think Nate would leave the state.
The drive home is long and kind of slippery, thanks to New England weather being a nightmare and I-95 being an endless sea of brake lights. Without Nate to chat with in my passenger seat, I’m left to my own headspace. Not good for business.
My life is falling apart.
I have been expelled from graduate school; how’s that for an accolade?
My stats this morning included 112 new Instagram followers, but then, out of nowhere, my account got restricted and I couldn’t use it. I must have tried to follow too many people. Somehow, I am now officially failing at social media too.
Other pertinent stats included three new rejections and, yes, zero full manuscript requests.
Zero.
My mentor hates me. This man who represented all hope and possibility of hard work paying off, who treated me like the hardworking student I am (well, was), who invested his personal time reading all of my extra pages, who told me that I had real, honest-to-God talent and that my scribblings were actually worthy of agency representation—well, I screwed the pooch with him also. By coming up with an elaborate lie so that I could get what I wanted.
And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, I went ahead and fell for Nate.
Like a fool.
The worst part is, I know better. The whole point of going for my MFA in the first place was so that I could become something that wasn’t defined by having a boyfriend or a soul mate or a husband or life partner or any of that crap. I was supposed to have a book. The book would complete me.
Because people will only let you down.
I could call Nate back, but it’s pretty clear he only called in response to my pathetic-sounding voicemail message. Instead, I spend five hours in sporadic traffic trying to get out of my head by blasting my music and hard-tapping on my steering wheel. I grab two Boston cream doughnuts and a chocolate milk from a Connecticut rest-stop Dunkin’ because about three hours into the drive, my blood sugar is lower than a gopher hole. So naturally, it spikes back up, getting me back to Queens, and then dips down again the second I walk in the door.
I’m exhausted. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. I don’t have the energy to do anything. I need to grocery shop, do the laundry, make a plan, maybe write a new query letter.
First though? I need a nap.
After three well-deserved hours curled up in my bed, I wake up feeling worse.
I can’t run from life though, and the clothes won’t wash themselves, so I hit the laundromat and put in a load of laundry. While it runs, I head over to Stop Shop. Then back to the laundromat to switch the clothes into the dryer, home to put away the groceries, and back out to get my clothes. It’s as efficient as I can be in my current state. By the time my clothes are folded neatly in the laundry basket, the sun has set. I swing by the Chinese restaurant and grab takeout for dinner. Back at my place, after unpacking all my groceries, I curl up on the couch with my laptop, eating chicken lo mein directly out of the carton.
I check my email first.
One new rejection. Dear Author, it begins. I don’t even read the rest. Just the fact that they won’t use my name tells me everything I need to know. I put a strikethrough mark over the agent’s name in my spreadsheet, crossing my chances of representation off like an Advent calendar leading up to my inevitable demise.
I’m going to end up a single, unfulfilled, old children’s librarian.
And I can’t stop thinking about Nate.
Shut up, Cecily. Stop being an idiot. He’s obviously not into it anymore, now that his job is kaput.
Instead of checking my other pertinent stats, including my follow-to-follow-back ratio on social media, I decide to google “marriage annulment in New York.” I remember reading about this back at Thanksgiving, when I first came up with the idea of marrying Nate. I didn’t want to have to worry about legal fees later on for a divorce, so I wanted to see if an annulment might be possible.
Of course, the way I read it then seems different from the way I’m reading it now. Google brought me to a website for a law firm called D’Aleo and Strauss—some fancy place in the city, no doubt—and to an article written by one of the partners about marital annulments. Essentially, it said that New York has specific laws about what type of marriage qualifies for an annulment. If you’re married to more than one person (like you got married a second time, but your first marriage hadn’t been dissolved yet), you qualify. If one of the two partners is not physically able to have sex, you qualify. If someone was forced into the marriage, you qualify. If one of the parties was underage at the time of the marriage, you qualify.
And then there’s the bit about fraud. It says, If the marriage was fraudulent, you may qualify for an annulment. Okay, so back when I read that at Thanksgiving, I thought we’d be able to simply file for an annulment when I was done with school. I didn’t think about, oh, I don’t know, reading the remainder of the paragraph at that time.
But now I do.
And I realize that we’re probably fucked.
It goes on to say, An action to annul a marriage whereby the consent of one of the parties involved was obtained by fraud will be granted provided it is within the time frame for enforcing a civil remedy of the civil practice law and rules. However, if the spouses voluntarily cohabitated as husband and wife, and both gave consent to the fraudulent marriage, an annulment will more than likely no longer remain an option.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, consider this a book-length PSA about the importance of reading the fine print.
The fact that I won’t even be able to annul my own fake marriage is sadly on-brand for me at the moment.
I navigate away from the D’Aleo and Strauss website and open up another window in Google. There, I open QueryTracker.net, because I’m going to need to figure out a new query letter and begin to develop a new list of agents to send it out to.
Because I am a glutton for punishment, I spend the next six hours on the sofa, attempting and reattempting to pull together a reasonable-sounding letter. It takes several tries before I land on this:
Dear Agent>,
Art imitates life imitates art. No one knows this better than me.
I’m sure I’m not the only girl who has ever had to watch her first love marry her sister, but I’m definitely the only one who’s ever written a full-length manuscript about it. My novel,Hard Pass, is ironically about what can happen to someone after they come face-to-face with deeply personal rejection.
Read this carefully, Agent>, since you are a rejection- master, aren’t you?
Natalie Green is the perfect high schooler. She’s polite, has good grades, respects her family, serves her community, and is exactly the opposite of the kind of girl you’d want to read about in a coming-of-age story. You’re looking for redemption: the troubled girl who finds her way, the orphaned girl who finds a family, the ugly duckling who becomes the swan. Well, my story turns those tropes upside down, because Natalie Green is none of those things. She’s likable and easygoing, in love with her first real boyfriend, heading off to college, about to spread her wings and fly.
But Natalie is about to become a human game of Jenga. Knocked down, built back up, knocked down again. Just like me.
I’m Cecily Jane Allerton. I just got kicked out of Matthias University’s MFA program for defrauding its director, my former mentor. I married a professor after kissing him on national television just to try and save his job. I wrote this manuscript in my first semester at Matthias and won the Rising Star Award for Best New Fiction. Of course, I can’t put that on a résumé anymore. It’s too dramatic.
That’s attempt number five, and I don’t need to be a Matthias University graduate to know that it’s a trash safari.
It’s late now, and my computer battery is dying.
I can’t believe Nate hasn’t called me. I realize he did call me last and that technically, it’s my turn to call him back, but I’m a stubborn asshat.
So forgive me for being a little bit surprised when my phone lights up with his name on the screen.
I brace myself. I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but my stomach contracts quickly, tying itself up like a garlic knot.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hey. I’m glad you answered.”
I relax a little, even though he sounds kind of weird. Maybe he’s been drinking. I could understand that. A little social lubricant might be a nice assist to help me work through my current state of mental constipation. “How are you?” I ask.
“Good, fine. I need you to do me a favor.”
Excuse me? You’re good? You’re fine? I’m over her, miserable, and you’re just totally copacetic, living your best life in your city apartment with—
“You still there?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m here. What’s the favor?”
“Can you turn on the TV, please? Put it on NBC.”
“Um, okay.” Why the cryptic request? What’s going on here? Still, I grab the remote and hit the button for channel four. “What am I—” My voice drops off. I’m looking at the flat screen of my modest thirty-two-inch LG HDTV, and I can’t process the picture looking back at me.
“Just watch, please,” Nate says.
It’s Questlove.
“So I had a very strange and special request today,” he begins. He’s sitting on the couch next to Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show desk. “Y’all know my Kazoo Karaoke Bomb bit that I do, right?” The Roots Crew rattles off the jingle that marks the bit. Quest smiles. “Thanks, guys,” he laughs.
Even his laugh is smooth like butter. How can someone always be so chill? I wonder.
“So anyway, a few months ago, we did an epic Kazoo Karaoke Bomb at Sing Sing in Alphabet City. Let’s run a quick clip.”
He cuts to the viral worst moment of my life. I’m belting it all out while Questlove kills it on his red and yellow kazoo, and then I swirl around and plant a huge kiss right on Nate’s lips.
The beginning of the end.
The video clip pauses there, and a digital marker draws a circle around me kissing Nate. Right there on the screen, like a meteorologist marking up a map with weather pattern predictions or a child playing with a painting app on an iPad.
“See that? Well, we didn’t know it at the time, but this was the beginning of a real big scandal for these two. The guy in the picture is Nate Ellis, the famous writer who everyone was calling the ‘Literary Nostradamus’ after his book, Work, took off and became an overnight sensation. And the girl, well, that was a student in the master’s program where he was teaching. Scan-duh-luss.” A knowing smile from Quest.
No big deal, huh, Ahmir? Just the end of my life, on full display for the late-night-viewing world. It’s very apropos for The Tonight Show to feast on the humiliation of poor souls like me to later turn it into fuel for America’s viewing pleasure. But I thought Questlove and I had something special, so I’m a little peeved to see him reminding the world of my alcohol-induced transgressions.
“Now, now, let’s just clarify—these are two almost-same-age consenting adults here. But because they kissed on TV, he could have lost his job. So here’s a real fairy tale for you—she cares so much about him that she marries him, just to save his job. Only, because he’s a man, somehow he finds a way to mess it up.” Questlove shakes his head. “Shameful. I mean, right?”
“Just like a man,” Black Thought sings.
A crowd of voices cheer and laugh.
“Anyway, he contacted my agent today and relayed this extremely sad tale to me—you know, boy meets girl, boy fake-marries girl, boy becomes unemployed, boy loses girl—just your typical romance story, right? I could write up this stuff—maybe for my next book. Yo, you guys know how it ends, right?” The camera cuts to The Roots crew, and Black Thought nods his head affably, running his hand along his beard. “Boy gets girl back, am I right?”
The audience cheers.
“So—I’ll have y’all know Jimmy had to move the whole schedule around for this, but without further ado, I present to you The Tonight Show’s first installment of Defusing the Kazoo Karaoke Bomb!”
The crowd applauds again, and the camera cuts to a dark stage. “Here goes nothing,” Nate says to me through the phone, which I am still holding up to my now-slack jawline.
The lights fade on, and Kamal Gray from The Roots plays a slow, sad yet familiar piano melody in the background. Captain Kirk Douglas joins in on an acoustic guitar. Questlove emerges from behind them all and takes a seat at the drum set. I recognize the tune, but it’s slower and softer than I recall, so I can’t immediately place it.
Then the camera cuts to a spotlight shining on Nate Ellis, in the middle of the stage, holding a microphone.
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
He takes a deep breath and puts the mic to his lips, his soulful eyes looking down at his feet, then up into the camera. “Ooh it’s somethin’ about, just somethin’ about the way she moves,” he sings.
Tears spring to my eyes. It’s a totally different rendition.
“I can’t figure it out, it’s somethin’ about her,” he sings. His voice drips like honey, thick and sweet into the microphone. “Said, ooh, it’s somethin’ about the kind of woman that want you but don’t need you,” he croons. “I can’t figure it out; it’s somethin’ about her.”
Nate is swaying with the melody, and absent the synthesizer, the song sounds completely different, like a ballad, an epic composition of love and adoration for the object of the singer’s desire. He works it, pouring himself into the lyrics in a way that seems almost surreal, and I can’t be sure if I’m dreaming. I have to consciously work to hold the phone up to my face, as my jaw is slack with disbelief at the scene unfolding on my television.
As the chords build up the crescendo of the chorus, Nate’s voice stays light, a huge contrast to the screaming and yelling we did at Sing Sing not six weeks ago.
“She’s got her own thing,” he goes on. “That’s why I love her. Miss Independent, won’t you come and spend a little time?”
As The Roots add more people and instruments for the second verse, Nate says into the phone, “Please let me in, CJ.”
I can barely answer, as my eyes are transfixed on the TV screen. “What do you mean?” I manage to ask.
There’s a knock at my door.
“Wait—you’re here?” I hop to my feet, almost dropping my dead laptop on the floor, and slide across the vinyl sticky tile floor to open it. I don’t let my gaze leave the screen. The second verse begins. I take Nate by the hand and drag him back to the couch. “Isn’t this live? What did you do?” I ask him, feeling his fingers lace into mine. I squeeze them tight.
“Ow,” he whispers.
“Sorry.” I smile. Tears stream down my face, but I don’t wipe them away.
“We filmed it this afternoon,” he explains.
I can’t speak. This is indescribable.
“Ooh, there’s somethin’ about the kind of woman that can do for herself,” TV Nate sings. “I look at her and it makes me proud; there’s somethin’ about her.”
The camera cuts to Questlove on the drums, notably absent his plastic kazoo, looking classy-casual in his black sweater with a matching pick in his hair. He raps on the drums as his upper body rocks with the slow sexy beat.
“There’s somethin’ oh-so-sexy about the kind of woman that don’t even need my help…”
I shake my head, my grin swallowing my whole face. I can’t stop staring at the screen. I know he’s sitting right next to me, but since this version of the song is laced in minor chords, it’s haunting. Nate’s voice isn’t singing-contest-winner status, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still the best sound I’ve ever heard.
I will never love someone as much as I love this man.
“She’s got her own thing; that’s why I love her,” he sings in stereo with himself—next to me live and prerecorded on the television.
I don’t even want to join him. I want to remember this moment forever as a spectator of the world’s best private—or hugely public (depending on how you look at it)—serenade.
“Ooh, the way we shine,” he whispers in my ear, pulling me close to him. He smells like Nate, like clean sheets and spearmint and cedar.
Like home.
When the song is over, the audience goes crazy. TV Nate smiles and blushes, and Questlove emerges from behind his drum set and heads up to the front of the stage.
“CJ, I’m sorry for everything,” TV Nate says. “But nothing else matters as long as I have you. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“C’mon, CJ! You have to forgive him. I mean, it takes a real special kind of dude to go all out like this,” Quest says.
The audience cheers.
“Well, you’ll have to call me and let me know what happens, man,” Questlove says to Nate.
“I will,” Nate promises. They shake hands.
“Okay, folks, we’ll find out on tomorrow’s show if the karaoke bomb was defused!”
The segment ends, and the show cuts to commercial. I hit mute on the remote.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and sets it up for a video recording. Then he holds it out like as if we’re going to take a selfie.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“We need to tell Questlove if you forgive me,” he says. The video’s rolling. He raises his eyebrows. “So do you?”
I laugh. “I do,” I say, nodding.
“And do you love me?”
“I do. I love you, Nate Ellis.”
“Good. That’s all I need. Well, that, and this.” He cups my face with his free hand and pulls my face in to his. He drops the cell phone. It records the ceiling as his tongue slips into my mouth, erasing all the mistakes we made.
When we stop to take a breath, he reaches for the ground and stops the video. Then he texts it to someone.
“You have Questlove’s number?” I ask.
He shrugs.
“Stop it. You do not.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He reaches up and takes off my glasses. I close my eyes, and he wipes my tears away with his thumbs. “Hey,” he whispers.
“Hm?”
“I love you more.”