Chapter 7 #2
“That’s a weird challenge.”
Whatever point he’s trying to make is making me itch. Looking on the bright side has always come naturally to me. In some ways, I absorbed it from my mom, the same way my body probably absorbed the lead in the Jolee lipstick when she used me for party demos.
“You attract what you put out there,” she’d tell the ten friends of whichever neighbor or mom from my high school was hosting that night’s wine and freezer-section-appetizer-fueled gathering.
“I’m a full-time mom too. But I took a leap and now I have my own business and the kind of life I once dreamed of.
All because I believed it would work out. ”
Her problem wasn’t believing. It was what she believed in.
So what if I like to stay positive? It got me through the aftermath of Jolee’s collapse. It’s what people enjoy about my classes, and that makes me feel good. Most of my friends like that I’m bubbly. But Nate’s always treated this facet of my personality like a puzzle he can’t figure out.
I take a cautious step toward him. “What do you want me to complain about?”
“Whatever comes to your mind. Go full stream-of-consciousness.” With the nozzle in the gas tank, he leans against the car. “You better start.”
I throw up my hands. “I don’t have anything to complain about! Probably ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the people on this planet have more to complain about than me.”
“Not a complaint, but you do sound a little huffy, so I’ll count it. Keep going.”
“You’re being annoying.”
He fights a smile. “That definitely counts.”
“Caleb and I broke up,” I blurt out, and Nate’s expression levels out into seriousness. “There was, um, a video. Did you see it?”
“I heard about it,” he admits.
My skin feels transparent, and I have to hug myself to keep going.
“It hurt, and it was embarrassing, and everything felt like too much. I didn’t handle it well, so Tracy told me to take a vacation.
That’s why I’m doing this trip. Well, not this trip, specifically, because what I imagined was driving cross-country alone and looking at mountains until my head clears.
Not that I don’t want to help you find Logan—” He raises his eyebrows, a reminder that I’m veering into noncomplaint territory.
“I just hope we find him quickly in whatever hellhole club he visits tonight, so I can get back on track. I need to get back on track, because I need to keep my job, and I need to be myself again.”
The gas pump clicks. Weirdly, I feel lighter.
Nate removes the nozzle, and by the time I realize I’m standing between him and the pump, he’s already touching his fingertips to my hip, nudging me to the side so he can hang it up.
When he’s done, he doesn’t remove his hand.
He just tilts his head and scans my face, and my breath stutters.
“You seem like yourself to me,” he says.
“Falling in love at first sight with a clown. Whipping me in the face with your ponytail every time you think you see a lizard. Looking out for your friends. Are you sure the problem’s you, and not something else? ”
The problem can’t be something else. I can’t control something else, only my own mindset. My lip threatens to tremble, so I bite the inside of my cheek.
“Come on.” I step away. “Let’s go find the least terrible burgers this town has to offer.”
After a greasy lunch and a quick selfie with Jolly (me cheesing hard, Nate grimacing in mock—I think—terror), we get back on the road.
“How are your parents?” Nate asks.
“Good, I think.” My mom calls every Tuesday night while she’s wearing her red-light therapy mask, and Dad says hello without getting on the phone.
But I haven’t had the energy for them the past couple weeks.
“Last month was seven years since the bankruptcy, so it’s officially off their credit reports. Like nothing ever happened.”
That’s right, my mom girlbossed her way straight into chapter 7. Maybe Equifax can forget, but I never will.
That’s harsh, I know. My mom made mistakes, and she paid for them. But I’m still paying for them. There’s the loan my parents took out in my name when everything started going south, and the regular requests for money that started when I entered a higher tax bracket.
Last year, I tried to put a stop to it. I have my own financial mess to clean up. When she asked me to pay for thousands of dollars of dental work, I said no, figuring it was cosmetic. She ended up needing an emergency root canal. I’ve paid for everything she’s asked for since.
It’s always been easier not to talk about Jolee, but I spilled the whole story to Nate the weekend I met him, when we were sitting on Bailey’s porch after the party. All thanks to the girls.
There were three of them walking past the house, led by a brunette in a bodycon minidress.
Talking about a guy who was supposed to show up at the bar but didn’t, eating floppy slices of pizza off paper plates.
The brunette stopped when she reached my car, which I’d reluctantly parked out front after a trip to the party supply store.
“Not this bullshit,” she hollered, and my stomach dropped. “Fuck Jolee!” She kicked the tire.
“What the hell?” Nate whipped his head around. “Isn’t that your car?”
I tucked up my knees and pressed myself into the back of the chair.
A queasy sense of shame rolled over me in a wave, the same feeling I’d lived with all year while Jolee was falling apart, until I left for college.
Mom had aggressively recruited people—including my friends’ mothers—to join her downline, and they all lost big chunks of money.
By the end, my parents couldn’t afford the McMansion, Mom’s Louis Vuitton bags, or the cold, dirty looks anymore, so we moved to a smaller house in a new town.
My old friends were relieved they could stop hanging out with me, and I spent the summer helping Mom offload inventory until it was time to leave for school, where I could start fresh, weighed down only by a metric ton of student loans.
The girl leaned over the hood of the car and slapped her pizza on the windshield, cheese side down. “I spent five thousand dollars on this crappy makeup and sold nothing!”
“You’re not going to say anything?” Nate stood. “Hey!”
“Shh.” I lunged out of my chair and pulled him back by the hand. “Don’t.”
Something in my voice must have convinced him to let the rest of this bizarre situation play out, because he sat back down.
We watched her rub the cheesy, saucy mess back and forth, and then lift her leg as if she were going to pee on the driver’s-side door like a dog, before her laughing friends dragged her away.
Nate stood and walked into the house without saying a word. I buried my face in my hands until I heard the door again. He was back with a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle. After cleaning off the windshield, he leaned against the porch railing. “Tell me about it.”
“It’s my mom’s car.” My voice shook. “That purple, and the metal emblem on the back—you have to make it to a high level in Jolee to get one.”
“Jolee?”
“It’s a pyramid scheme,” I said. Out loud. For the first time ever. The rest of the story poured out of me, and Nate just listened. His eyes were impossibly soft, for a guy who otherwise carried himself like he was made of barbed wire. “You probably think my family is horrible.”
He snorted. “No judgment. We’ve all got shit to deal with. And this sounds like it’s your mom’s shit, not yours.” He plucked a leaf from the potted plant next to him. Twirled it between his fingers. “Hey, do you want to go for a swim?”
I couldn’t have guessed where that swim would lead. In the end, it took me here, to the passenger seat of this Hyundai, thirty minutes outside Vegas.
The tip we need finally comes in when one of my three surveillance targets invites fan questions on Instagram. What are you doing tonight and can I come? someone asks.
Putting my swimmies on, Logan’s friend responds, over a photo of the Bellagio fountains taken from a balcony at a neighboring hotel.
His outstretched feet are visible at the bottom of the frame.
At first I think it’s a joke about jumping into the fountains, but then I notice there’s an account tagged in the corner, a “@DJCOLLIDEascope.” It doesn’t take long to confirm that DJ COLLIDEascope is playing the Cosmopolitan’s nighttime pool party.
Looks like we’ve got plans.
“How do we get in?” Nate asks after I tell him.
“Do we have to wait in line, or do…bottle service?” He lists both options like they’re words in a foreign language.
He is so not a Vegas person. Nate barely tolerated the beach bars in Seapoint, hanging back against the wall with a beer while the rest of us zoomed around like out-of-control bumper cars.
I don’t consider myself a Vegas person either, but I’ve been a couple times, once for a bachelorette party and once with—
“Caleb,” I say. “He’ll know.”
Nate shoots me a horrified look. “You don’t have to ask him. We’ll figure it out ourselves.”
I’m already typing out a request for help.
Caleb owes me one, after everything. “It’s fine,” I say, but my voice is feeble.
Our last text exchange is on my screen, from the afternoon before our breakup.
The me who wrote these messages about lentil soup didn’t have a clue she was about to be blindsided.
Nate shakes his head, apparently skeptical. “It’s easier to get over someone if you cut off all communication.”
My stomach clenches. “Were you seeing someone?”
“Uh.” He blinks in surprise. “Not recently. Nothing serious.”
This is one topic we’ve never discussed.
We were both single when we moved to L.A.
, and before that, I was never with anyone important enough to invite to Seapoint.
Sometimes I heard bits and pieces about his relationship status from Bailey.
Once, in our early twenties, she told me he was bringing someone to her birthday party, and my palms went clammy.
But he came alone, and when Bailey asked about it, his eyes flicked to mine before he said, “Oh, yeah. We’re not hanging out anymore. ”
To me, at least, it’s always felt like a loaded subject. As evidenced by the fact that I’m fighting an impulse to ask him to expand on every nuance of the phrase “nothing serious.”
My phone vibrates with Caleb’s response, saving me from myself. Hey. Trip is good. Hope you’re well too. Yeah, I know someone who can help. As clinical as it is, I can’t bear to look at his message any longer than I have to.
“He’s got a guy,” I announce. “If I text this number, we’re in.”
“That doesn’t sound shady at all.”
To my surprise, another message from Caleb pops up on my screen. You need to do something about what’s happening on your socials. People are being really hard on me and Paige. Can you please like my last post? It’ll show that there are no hard feelings.
Really, Caleb? No hard feelings? My feelings are extremely hard. And if he thought his popularity would protect him from backlash, that’s on him. He probably figured I’d do what I usually do and act like everything was fine. He didn’t count on my breakdown.
It still stings, but this exchange makes one thing clear: I don’t miss him.
Not like I missed Nate after what happened between us.
Spending time with him again has thrown the contrast into sharp relief.
There’s a difference between feeling the loss of a person and feeling the loss of the comforts and amenities of a relationship.
With Nate, I was wrecked because I no longer had him. His sly jokes and steady ease.
With Caleb, I felt betrayed. Gut-punched. My ego took a blow. I was stressed about whether Tracy and our riders would be disappointed.
I don’t know if the difference is because Nate was special, or because I’ve changed. Hardened. Gone cold, like Caleb said. I’m not sure which possibility is worse.
Caleb’s last post is a montage of clips of Paige and him in Hawaii.
My finger refuses to tap the Like button, so I navigate to Paige’s profile instead.
She’s posted something similar. I watch him kiss her shoulder while they watch a sunset, and I know he probably filmed six different versions of it, and I am so glad he’s not my boyfriend anymore.
I like her post instead of his. Good luck, I think, and pressing the heart on the screen feels like pressing my hand to my own.
Ahead, the outskirts of the city rise out of the desert: big developments with identical houses, highway lights, overpasses and signs indicating a web of roads instead of just one that goes on for hundreds of miles.
I loved this part of my drive west when I moved to L.A.
, when after hours of interstate I could feel that something different was coming.
A notification pops up on my phone. An email from Tracy. I gather my nerve and open it.
Quinn—do you have service in Tahoe? Haven’t seen any more activity on your socials.
You’re a star right now, but these things fade fast if you don’t take advantage.
If you do, it will help propel the brand to the next level.
I know you want that for yourself and your colleagues.
You’ve always been a team player. Summer is still available to jump on a call today.
It feels like she’s right behind me, breathing down my neck. What happens if I can’t take advantage? Or if I’m uncomfortable using my life as a tool to propel the brand forward?
I shouldn’t have to brace myself to read an email from my boss.
But more pressure and higher standards are an inherent part of reaching the next level.
I want to be one of the chosen favorites.
Caleb has been one since the beginning, and he gets the best time slots for rides and an incredible bonus every year.
That could be me. If I can turn this situation into higher pay, I’ll be able to chip away at my debt at a faster rate. I have a number in mind. When I reach it, I’ll be able to breathe easier, not so worried that the cushion this job provides will be torn out from under me.
No need , I reply. Fun posts incoming tonight!
I hope this city works its magic, because I need to follow through.