Chapter 18 #2
Food, right. Focus on the task at hand. “Maharaja Kitchen? I’m in the mood for Indian,” I sputtered out. Words. What were words?
“Okay,” Caroline gave me a sidelong glance. “Are you good?”
“Yeah, I got distracted,” I waved my phone around casually.
“Finished!” Andrea shouted from the kitchen.
Caroline and I whipped our heads over at her. My fingers twitched to open the message and see if Evan said anything or if I killed our conversation on arrival.
“And?” I asked apprehensively.
“I’m starving,” she replied. “What’s this about Indian food?”
“Babe I already got your order in,” Caroline called to her.
My entire apartment had descended into chaos, myself included.
Caroline and Andrea were calling back and forth about getting a side of samosas to split.
I had my last message to Evan burning a hole into my phone.
I anxiously crossed over to the kitchen and drummed my fingers on the tabletop. “What did you think? Is it—”
“It’s good,” Andrea said assuredly. “Really fucking good.”
“And your boss?”
“I want to tell you it’s a surefire thing, but she gets thousands of these a year. I might have some pull if you manage a really solid submission letter but—”
“It really doesn’t suck?” I interjected.
“It’s amazing, honestly. I’m not saying this as your best friend, I’m saying this as a person who reads a lot of shit manuscript snippets.
This would make anyone with a pulse stop and want to devour the whole thing.
If my boss passes on it I don’t doubt that you’ll find someone else who wants to snatch it up. ”
“Okay, okay,” I said, nodding distractedly. “So what the fuck do I do now?”
“Well I left you a few suggestions that might make certain scenes pop a little more. But now you prepare for a shit ton of rejection and hope that someone picks you.”
“Thrilling,” I said absentmindedly.
“Forty five minutes until food is here,” Caroline shouted from the couch.
“Dani,” Andrea said softly. “You have a real talent. What you wrote here is genuine gold, and it feels like you. Not someone else’s story repackaged into a new narrative.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly and sunk down into the chair. The easy part was done. I let my ideas possess me and I spat out a hundred thousand words that were somehow a coherent story. I could let it end here, but that wasn’t what I wanted.
It was a strange feeling to know exactly what my dreams were. I could visualize it all so clearly now, and I’d have to keep working my ass off to get there.
@eomc195
I didn’t react appropriately, and I’m genuinely so sorry for how I did.
I was…I don’t know, surprised?
All I could think of was that woman from years ago and the wires in my brain crossed and I couldn’t see you anymore, only her.
@dani_kg
I know nothing I can say will undo the damage I caused.
I’m still really sorry you found out the way you did.
I shouldn’t have kept it from you, but there wasn’t exactly an easy way to broach the subject.
To be honest it was a weird thing to do in the first place.
@eomc195
I know.
That you’re sorry I mean.
Not that it was weird.
Maybe a little.
;)
Seen 6:19 p.m.
@dani_kg
Liked: “That you’re sorry I mean.”
I tossed my phone aside and walked over to join Andrea and Caroline at the kitchen table. The steaming pieces of naan Andrea was tossing onto plates was a nice temporary distraction from what lurked on my phone.
No Teen Vogue article from my teenage years prepared me for a situation like this.
“So you hooked up with a celebrity, then he found out you wrote fan fiction about his character mid sex, and after making you sob about it for twenty four hours straight he’s DMing you on Instagram three months later. ”
“Evan messaged me,” I blurted out as we all sat down to eat.
“What? How? Why?” Andrea and Caroline asked simultaneously. Andrea dropped her fork onto the table, flailing her hands about.
“I don’t know, I mean it literally just happened—”
“Get your phone. Now,” Caroline commanded.
I opened Instagram again and saw he sent two new messages in the thirty seconds I had abandoned my phone. I clicked on them like they were a bomb I had to detonate.
@eomc195
I am serious btw. About needing a Boston guide.
I’m coming up in two weeks.
“He’s coming to Boston in two weeks,” I said quietly, staring at the message.
“To see you?” Andrea squeaked.
“No,” I insisted. “He wouldn’t want to…”
I started typing out a reply. Something that could end this conversation as quickly as it started because nothing good could come out of seeing Evan again.
@dani_kg
I can send a few recs.
Might not be high end enough for you.
lol.
@eomc195
lmao. I think I’ll live.
I could also just have you take me to them.
He replied so fast I couldn’t put my phone down between sending my message and his answer.
I sat and stared at his reply. No, I couldn’t take him to my favorite local spots. We couldn’t sit across from each other in awkward silence, play that weird game of “who’s gonna pay?” when the check comes, and then awkwardly hug before parting ways forever. I couldn’t let that happen.
I groaned and dropped my head into my hands. “He’s trying to get me to take him out.”
“I swear to god if you don’t say yes—” Andrea started.
Caroline shooed off her fiancée. “Why do you think he wants to meet?”
“I don’t know, to serve me with lawsuit papers? To publicly humiliate me?”
“Maybe he wants to talk things through?” she posed the question while mopping up the last bits of her channa masala with a piece of naan.
I shook my head, trying to get that hypothetical out of my head. “Somehow that feels worse. I’ve spent three months pretending that week didn’t happen.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Caroline insisted. “Maybe awkward, but no one in the public eye like him will freak out on you in public. He has a reputation to protect.”
“Really helping the situation there,” I replied. I didn’t care about his reputation. Or his motives. I cared about that gnawing feeling in my sternum that told me I wanted to see him again. It was barely noticeable, but it scratched at my insides to the tune of “what if, what if, what if.”
“Tell him yes!” Andrea interjected.
I sighed and looked at the message again, waiting there like an unpopped bubble.
@dani_kg
Can do.
Message me when you’re in town and we can coordinate something.
@eomc195
I can also get your number and text you my itinerary.
If that’s cool?
“He wants my number,” I said, still mildly dumbfounded by the prospect.
“Do you think he’s going to text you himself or have his assistant do it for him?” Caroline mused.
How funny that six months ago Evan McLeod asking for my number would have sent me into full body shock—maybe even killed me—and now it felt like an awkward exchange between two random strangers. Who happened to sleep with each other. Two and a half times.
The prospect was a little funny. His name nestled between my gynecologist office and a former coworker.
“I don’t know,” I was distracted, hesitantly typing my number into our message thread.
If I had given my number to him at camp I know I would’ve always been talking to him directly.
If this was a legal ordeal, wouldn’t he have had someone else reach out initially?
I was silently panicking, thinking of the hundreds of outcomes.
I tossed my phone to the other side of the couch and didn’t touch it again until Andrea and Caroline left hours later.
Andrea reviewed her notes on my manuscript and we spent the better part of an hour writing a query letter that I scheduled to go out to her boss the following morning.
I thanked Andrea well over a dozen times.
I still managed to avoid my phone as I tidied up, showered, and slathered my face in the various serums and creams I bought because someone on the internet told me to. As a face mask marinated on my pores, I finally checked my phone.
Maybe: Evan
Hey.
It’s Evan.
I fly in the 10th and leave the 15th early in the a.m. I have meetings in the mornings but would love to get dinner. Are you free then?
More importantly, do you want to see me?
He’d love to get dinner.
Love.
My hands hovered over my phone keyboard. I wanted to see him, there was no question about that. Despite the possibility that he could be using this as a chance to tell me off more thoroughly or sue for emotional damages, I needed the closure.
I’m free that Friday.
The truth was I was free basically every night, but he didn’t have to know that. A handful of variants of a message that indicated that I did, in fact, want to see him sat in the text box. None of them felt right. None of them could convey these bizarre conflicting emotions I was feeling.
I had two weeks to figure out what I’d say to him when I saw him again. He clearly wanted to talk to me, I still wasn’t sure about what. I decided not to save his contact to avoid any permanence to this situation.