Chapter 31
I leave for Seapoint at the first hint of dawn. Bailey got home last night, and I need her.
The miles pass in a blur, and I’m startled when I stop for gas and realize I’m already past Baltimore.
Inside, I fill a giant cup with Diet Coke to fuel me and like a few posts about my live class.
When I check my messages, the one at the top turns my stomach to a block of ice: Is it true that your family got rich off Jolee?
That shit was SUCH a scam. Are you a scammer?
I might be.
Tracy brushing off my concerns after directing me to channel more girl power. Summer telling the woman with cancer that everything happens for a reason. Me, not pushing back hard enough on any of it.
CycleLove doesn’t give a shit about actual empowerment. They want to sell the illusion of empowerment. And that is a scam.
“Excuse me?” The cashier raps his knuckles against the counter. “Are you ready to pay?”
I look up. There are four people waiting behind me, and I’m here in my own world, stress-chugging Diet Coke as I worry about the con I’m a part of. God, I really am becoming my mother.
Work is never just about work, is it? For my mom, it was about identity. For me it’s about security. But other things matter too, and it’s time to get them back.
Driving into Seapoint has always felt like slipping my feet into a pair of broken-in shoes.
My stomach knows the spot on the bridge over the inlet where my tires are going to rumble before it happens.
I don’t have to think in order to look left at the exact moment necessary to catch the brilliant, straight-shot view down Sixth Avenue, of the place where the continent ends.
I should drive the three blocks to the beach to make the whole coast-to-coast thing official.
Instead, I follow the road that hugs the marina.
Today, the bay reflects the gray of the foggy sky like a tarnished mirror, and the wind whips viciously through my hair when I roll down the window.
There’s a fishy note in the air, which I welcome into my lungs because it means I’m here.
Bailey rents a cute little house on the west side of town, and I almost miss the turn onto her street.
I stop short and hang the left too sharply, which means that despite my best maternal effort to throw my arm out as protection, my plant tumbles from its spot on the passenger seat to the floor.
The pot splinters. The dirt spills. If this was meant to test our friendship the same way an egg is meant to test a high school student’s readiness for parenthood, I just failed at the last possible second.
I’m laughing, but I think I’m also crying.
My eyes are definitely watering, at least, when I pull into Bailey’s driveway and turn off the ignition.
She must have been waiting by the bay window, because within milliseconds she steps outside, pads through the grass in bare feet, and squints to assess me through my window.
The contorted face, the collapsed shoulders, the cackling sobs.
She takes it all in and, to her credit, does not back away in terror.
Instead, she opens the door and smooths my hair. “I was afraid it might be something like this.”
Over the last few days, I’ve realized that I have to tell Bailey everything. Our friendship deserves honesty, and I know now that I need to acknowledge the things that turn me red inside instead of burying them.
My plan wasn’t to vomit out the truth like I was possessed by emotional salmonella, but I can’t help it.
The CycleLove saga comes out while I untie my shoes.
By the time I beeline for the bathroom to pee out the thirty-two ounces of soda I drank in the car, I’ve already covered the broad strokes of every gripe I have against Tracy and Caleb, so I move on to enumerating the disasters that took place on the road trip.
Bailey stands outside the door, listening, and when I open it and we come face to face again, I say, “Also, I’m in love with Nate. ”
Her eyebrows ascend to the heavens. “That’s—”
“Horrible. It’s horrible.”
“Oh my god. I wondered whether something would happen between you two after you moved to L.A., but you’re both so damn secretive. When did it start?” she asks.
I cover my face with my hands. “Your nineteenth-birthday party.”
“Quinn!” she admonishes, and steers me out the door and into the backyard, guiding me to the patio table. She sets the cracked pot and the succulent down in front of us. “Start at the beginning.”
So I do, wringing my hands the whole time but also feeling a cord unwrap itself from around my chest with each confession.
“I can’t believe you took us seriously when we told you not to hook up with any of the guys.” She pokes her head into a tiny garden shed. “I probably said that because Giana had an unrequited crush on Logan and I didn’t want to listen to her drunk-crying over him again.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “You and I had just become friends. It could’ve changed the dynamic, and I couldn’t risk that. You have no idea how lonely I was when I got to college. It was actually a really hard time for me.”
She carries a stack of planters to the table, her forehead wrinkled.
Bailey knows all about Jolee, of course, but I’ve always talked about the facts, not about the way it made me feel.
Which is why it comes as a surprise when she gently says, “I know that.” My mouth must fall open, because she pats my knee before going on.
“You really thought I didn’t? Reading you has always been easy for me.
Our brains are on the same wavelength, I guess.
Back then, you kind of…radiated sadness. ”
My shoulders stiffen, and my voice turns indignant. “I have never radiated sadness in my life. ”
She laughs. “Okay, slight exaggeration. Slight. Because you kind of did, at least to me, even though on the outside you were happy-go-lucky. Singing in the shower, dragging me outside on sunny days to study in the grass. Befriending the lady at the dining hall omelet station. Jumping at the chance to help plan my birthday party in my hometown when you barely knew me.”
“Was it annoying?” She sits next to me, and we sort through the pots to find one that looks like the right size. “That I was one way on the surface but seemed…different underneath?”
“No. Because the way you were on the surface was still you. That part was real too. You were truly and sincerely both.”
I tip my head against her shoulder and close my eyes against the wave of gratitude that comes over me.
I have someone in my life who sees me, sometimes even better than I see myself.
“I accused Nate of only liking me when I’m sad.
Of not understanding the part of me that enjoys waking up at the crack of dawn to cheerlead people through a spin class. ”
“Do you really think that’s true?”
“I don’t know.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “It’s harder from a distance, you know. Getting a read on you. It’s easier for me to tell how you’re feeling in person.”
I gather my courage. “You probably got tired of trying to figure out what was really going on. I owe you an apology, Bail. Not just for being an emotional shit show, but for not pulling my weight. I could’ve made time to visit.
I could’ve been the one who picked up the phone sometimes.
But I was in denial about how much I was struggling.
It was hard to think about everything I walked away from here, the good and the bad.
And whether it seems like it or not, it is hard for me to hide things from you.
The only two people I have trouble bullshitting are you and—well. ”
Each of my regrets pricks at my chest at once, like pushpins on a map stretching from the West Coast to the East. The apartment building in Philadelphia where I abandoned my best friend.
All the places in L.A. where I lied to her.
The CycleLove studio, where I lied to myself.
A bright red pin in the southeast, the place where I let fear break my heart and Nate’s.
“I’m sorry I let you down,” I continue, rubbing my stinging throat. “I understand why you started to distance yourself.”
“I felt like you were moving on, and it was time for me to let that happen.”
I shake my head vehemently. “No. That’s why I had to come out here and make this party perfect, because I want to do better.
I’m at, like, a seventy percent costume rate, by the way.
All I have to do is stay the course and keep following up with people in a mildly annoying way, and I’ll hit ninety, at least. I promise. ”
She laughs in surprise. “Quinn. I don’t care about the costumes, or the big dramatic gesture of you coming to my party. I love you, and all I want is for us to talk regularly and be real with each other when we do. If you can try to do that, we’re good.”
“I will,” I say. “You’re my favorite person, and I promise I’ll do better. I’ll even watch The Traitors so you have someone to talk about it with.”
“Favorite person? What about the guy you just boned across the country?” She chooses a planter that looks about the right size.
“Half the country.” I gently extract the succulent from the cracked pot, and she guides it into the new one. “And he’s my other favorite person. I can have two, you know.”
“As long as I’m always your ‘favorite person,’ and he’s always your ‘ other favorite person.’?”
I smile, but then I remember that I lost Nate, and the corners of my mouth wobble. “I’m sad,” I whisper. “And scared. That I gave up something irreplaceable, and I’m going to regret it.”
She wraps an arm around me. “Do you have to give him up? I know CycleLove is a big job, and I’m proud of you for getting there and how hard you’ve worked. But is it worth it?”