Chapter 5
B y the time I hit the Grapevine, whatever magic Benny seemed to possess had started to rub off on me, because the music was hitting and the snacks were giving me a dopamine rush I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
It was so silly and simple, but crunching on Chex Mix while avoiding the pretzels, sipping on an ice-cold Diet Coke, and blasting pop songs I somehow knew the lyrics to without ever consciously listening to them—I was admittedly having.
.. a little tiny bit of fun. Like I was a kid again.
Like that incessant pressure I usually felt was lifted for a stretch of an hour.
There wasn’t a militant-style voice in my head saying I needed to work harder, be more productive, never stop, keep going, never give up, go, go, go .
I hadn’t realized my internal chatter was so punishing until it stopped for sixty minutes.
Without my defenses up, another scene played in my mind—again, the movie of someone else’s life. The scene before it all changes, before the main character becomes irreparable.
what a cliffhanger. why do you think you’re unlovable?
The Facebook message pinged in on her laptop later that night while she was studying, aglow in the soft light of a desk lamp.
Hours earlier, he’d requested to be her friend and she’d stared at the Accept button for ten minutes, smiling like an idiot, debating if she should just deny it, because she was not the type of person to smile like this at just a person’s name on a computer screen.
But she had accepted it and spent the whole night pretending like she didn’t care if he acted on her acquiescence into her digital space.
Charlie had been out to dinner with friends and had some homework to finish before classes the next day.
Her life at Stanford had been the most understood she’d ever felt.
Other high-achieving students who worked hard and didn’t think she was strange for being competitive and put-together.
The past four years had been a reprieve and though she often saw Benny and her mom, she was better able to appreciate them now that she had her own life that existed outside of them.
who is this? she typed back, knowing exactly who he was, smiling despite herself. She was not a romantic by any stretch and never found herself giddy, waiting for the typing bubble to produce a response, but that’s exactly how she felt.
ha. ha. ha. is what he wrote back and that smile she was trying to conceal spread across her face like honey on the tongue. i demand answers with that wry and unexpected honesty of yours.
are you consulting a thesaurus right now?
i’ll have you know I have a robust vocabulary. and don’t change the subject.
She laughed and then threw a hand over her mouth, looking to make sure she hadn’t woken her roommate up.
okay, maybe i’m not exactly “unlovable”...
okay. i am intrigued, enthralled, and riveted by the use of ellipsis. you do know how to leave a guy hanging.
close the thesaurus!
i can’t. i’m trying to impress this really smart girl who believes she is unlovable. it’s confounding to me.
you’re impossible.
impossibly lovable?
i’m shaking my head right now.
i bet you look ADORABLE doing that.
i don’t.
well, beauty is really in the eye of the beholder. and i have beholded you so...
beholded is not a word.
unlovable? back to subject at hand? god, she’s brutally honest but changes a subject like a pro.
rolling my eyes , she typed, rolling her eyes through a smile.
your eyes are very pretty. i beheld them.
now who’s changing the subject? hmmm?
proceed...
i think I’m hard to love. and i don’t love love. or romance. it’s distracting. i’m cynical. not a hopeless romantic.
jeez. who hurt you?
She wasn’t quite sure why she decided to tell the truth, but she typed it without thinking and then sent it; something about Noah made her want to spill out her guts and reveal them to him.
a dad that left without saying goodbye and a mom that doesn’t live in reality. take your pick. i’ve been an adult since i was ten. not a big fan of risk and hope. i like to know how things end. safer that way.
this honesty is extremely hot, charlie, just so you know. so, you’re maybe more emotionally avoidant than repressed?
She shivered at the “hot” comment and her body alighted like a match thrown onto gasoline.
i’m an overachiever so i’d say both.
well, you may need to change your stance. a life without risk isn’t much of a life at all.
sounds like something my mom would have stitched on a pillow.
i like her already. btw, i’m a big hit with moms.
i bet you are.
not like that!
lol anyway, why do you care?
i already told you. i find you intriguing, enthralling, and riveting.
All the air in her small dorm room seemed to shrink down to right in front of her. She should have logged off. She thought about that turning point for years afterward. If only she would have blocked him and not risked anything...
But she couldn’t. For some reason, against all her better judgments and everything she thought she knew about herself, she typed back and said, well if that’s true, then you have great taste .
There was a long pause before she saw him typing again and she thought she’d lost him.
It made her stomach plummet. She already liked the idea of him being in her life a little too much.
She’d spent her entire collegiate experience at Stanford single.
Of course, she’d hooked up casually, but she was not some wide-eyed romantic looking for Prince Charming, that’s for sure.
She had a career to begin, and she’d only ever felt strongly about one guy back in high school who’d left her feeling rejected, so what was the point?
Best to avoid love altogether was her philosophy.
(No surprise, her mom’s philosophy was to throw oneself into love, life, and anything else, with as much abandon as possible. Charlie was... not a fan of that.)
But, damn it, when the typing dots appeared, she audibly sighed with relief. Her heart was a traitor.
:) I understand you believe you are hard to love and do not possess any romantic inclinations but you do eat, yes? have dinner with me tomorrow night?
By that point, there was no other answer possible except yes.
Anger rose within me like a volcanic eruption and I slammed the music off, pushed the junk food away, and felt nausea creeping in.
This was why I never let go of myself. Whatever Benny thought she was going to achieve when I got to LA, it wouldn’t work.
I had to keep myself in control. Why was I driving all this way?
I should be in San Francisco lining up job interviews.
Once I was over the Grapevine and only thirty minutes out from the house, I pulled over, and called the headhunter who had secured me the job I’d just lost.
She answered quickly. Georgia Wallace was one of the best headhunters and most people in Silicon Valley swore by her.
“Hi, Georgia,” I said. “It’s Charlotte Quinn.”
“Oh, hi, Charlotte,” she said, clipped and efficient. “Don’t tell me you got laid off.”
“Well,” I said. “Yeah, that’s why I’m calling.”
“Damn it. I’m sorry to hear that. The layoffs lately have been vicious.”
“Yeah. Gave my whole life to this company only for them to lay me off like I was nothing.”
“Awful,” she said. “You want me to put some feelers out there for you?”
That volcanic anger noticeably dissipated, like water thrown on a fire, hissing out to ash. Finally, someone that didn’t make me feel bad for actually wanting to work.
“You read my mind,” I said.
“I’m on it.”
“Also, wouldn’t hurt to throw in some tech options. I’m open.”
“What kind of work are you interested in? Any new passions?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I just need to stay busy. Good pay, stable, long hours, I’ll take it.”
“I’ll see what I can put together. The landscape has changed a lot, though, just a heads-up.
Since the price of everything has increased, lots of places are having hiring freezes.
There are more layoffs than open positions right now.
Just wanted you to be aware. If it were me, I’d manage my expectations. The pandemic changed everything.”
The nausea roiled back in.
“Easier said than done,” I said. “Thank you for the heads-up.”
“I’ll still see what I can find out for you.”
“Thanks, Georgia.”
“Of course. Call me anytime.”
Back on the 5, car silent, I inched forward in mind-numbing LA traffic.
It wasn’t even rush hour, but that didn’t matter here.
I remembered getting my first car at sixteen years old, the feeling of buying it in cash that I’d made from working random jobs for years.
It was a dingy little light blue Honda Accord, but it was mine, and it was freedom.
All around me, kids were gifted brand new luxury cars on their sixteenth birthday, paid for by rich parents.
LA was not a great place to grow up without money, especially when everyone around you had so much of it.
But, I had put my nose to the ground and worked, saving up every dollar I could, until I put a stack of bills into the hand of the used car salesman on my sixteenth birthday.
I bought it alone, paid for it on my own, and drove it off the lot, my hair whipping behind me by the open window.
It was a moment I never forgot—what it felt like to sustain and rely entirely on myself.
But now, a hundred thousand dollars of student loans paid off to one of the best colleges in the country and I was out on my ass with nothing else lined up.
I had done every single thing right to avoid this anxious sense of being untethered.
Just yesterday morning, my life was exactly how I wanted it to be.
Now, it seemed like I had nothing to show for two decades of ceaseless focus. What a joke.
I turned the playlist up to blaring. My car screen told me it was an Olivia Rodrigo song called “brutal” with a refrain that started “All I did was try my best // This the kind of thanks I get.” It was angry and intense and I liked it immediately.