Chapter 55 Exile
It’s been an hour since I landed and sent that message to Reed. I haven’t heard back.
As I’m walking, Micah appears, grabs a box of the shit, and moves it into their apartment. Once I’m closer, I confirm that yes, it’s my shit.
Framed art and photos are just propped up against the walls. Clothes thrown into untaped boxes. Drawers’ worth of my things tossed haphazardly on top of them. Books in piles on the floor.
Jordyn appears out of nowhere and pulls me into a hug.
I start crying again.
By 11:30 we’ve managed to get everything out of the hallway and into Micah and Jordyn’s apartment.
They’ve started nesting, but they pushed their baby things to one side of the second room and blew up one of those nifty tall air mattresses for me.
My mattress and bedroom furniture are in storage from when I moved into my dad’s place.
His apartment was already furnished and had no room for big-ticket items.
The three of us collapse onto their sectional with fresh cups of tea.
“Can I ask you guys something?” I open.
“Obviously you can always ask us anything,” Jordyn says.
“Do you think I’m a liar?”
“With me, never,” she says.
I take a sip of my tea. “What do you mean, with you?”
“Sometimes you lie to people because you’re a private person and you don’t want to share your real life. But most of the time you just don’t volunteer information when said people are around.”
“What people?”
“Like book club Adrienne . . . she opened up a couple weeks ago about how she was going through a hard time financially, and you didn’t share anything about being in your dad’s apartment.”
“Why would I? I barely know her.”
Jordyn levels her gaze at me. “Come on, Rikki, you have a master’s in psychology. Sharing your shit with people is how you would become better friends.”
“With men, would you say I’m a liar?”
“Yes,” Micah says. “You hate them.”
I widen my eyes. “I do not hate them.”
He cocks his head. “Rick, it took me an entire year to win you over.”
I smile. “Yeah, but you did.”
“Yeah, but for a long time when I was around, you only looked at Jordyn when you talked, even when we were having a group conversation.”
I frown as the statement drops like a rock through my subconscious.
“You would rarely ever look me in the eye, and you wouldn’t talk about anything personal when I was in the room.”
Snapshots from that era of our lives flash through me. He’s . . . right. “Wow, Micah. I’m so . . . sorry.”
Jordyn reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. “It’s okay. You needed time to get to know him so you wouldn’t be afraid of him.”
I flinch.
“Afraid of him?” I repeat it quietly, but the truth of her words clangs through me.
“Rick, you’re afraid of most men. You’ve been the same around everyone I’ve ever dated.”
My chin wobbles as I crash backward through hundreds of different moments that verify her claim. “Oh my god.”
Micah raises his mug. “We’ve met your dad. We get it.”
“You two . . . have just known this about me and never told me?” I whisper.
Jordyn’s forehead scrunches in disbelief. “Rikki, we thought it was obvious.”
I put down the mug and shove my palms up into my eyes, because that somehow makes this all so much worse. It is obvious. It’s all so fucking obvious.
“That’s why we jumped in with Reed and told him what you do,” Micah says pointedly.
Jordyn straightens on the couch. “Oh yeah! That was fun. We were helping you out.”
I de-palm my eyeballs to look at them. “What?”
“We just thought if Reed knew what you really did from the beginning, you two would have better odds. We know you’re trying to protect yourself, but if you don’t tell a dude real things about yourself on a first date, how are they supposed to build a real relationship with you?
You can’t build a sturdy foundation around a lie. ”
My ears start to ring. “You knew me not telling guys about my real job was messing up my dating escapades and didn’t tell me?”
“We didn’t know for sure. We were just going off what you would tell us about your first dates and theorizing,” Jordyn says.
“Theorizing behind my back?”
“We weren’t being malicious about it, Rick,” Micah adds.
We sit in painful silence for thirty seconds.
“I wrote the pilot,” I mumble.
“What! That’s amazing! Can I read it?” Jordyn asks.
I nod, sucking in gasps of air as I try to quell my fucking parade of unending tears. “I’m not even going to get to pitch it, though, because Maya let me go today.”
Jordyn slams down her mug. “What the fuck? Because of what happened with your dad? Whitney did not tell me that part! Micah, are they allowed to do that?”
Micah frowns, staring into his teacup. “They can suspend you temporarily, pending an eval, but they can’t just fire you.” He looks up at me. “Definitely keep prepping the pitch.”
I huff a sopping breath and stare into my own teacup. “They”—inhale—“set the eval date for end of September, and Netflix is September 16. We’re only a week out.”
“Rikki,” he says calmly.
I’m drowning.
“Rikki, look at me,” Micah says.
I raise my head, swiping my sweatshirt arm across my face to remove some of the wreckage.
“You’re forgetting that I’m your lawyer. Work on the pitch.”