Chapter 4
G irl, you look wrung out,” Kadijah said as Renee pulled herself an espresso and dumped it into an iced coffee at Prince’s. Today called for a red eye. “What happened last night?”
“Someone got her back cracked,” Zane, one of Kadijah’s partners, said from his regular table. His iced oat milk matcha sat atop the stack of poetry chapbooks he lugged to the coffee shop every day.
“Must we?” Renee snapped. “This is a place of business, not Page Six.”
Zane clicked his tongue. “Goes to one celebrity wedding, and she’s name-checking Page Six.”
“Did you at least talk to her ?” Kadijah hopped up to sit on the counter.
“To who?”
Kadijah glared at Renee.
“Yes, I talked to Lola. Other than the bride, she was the one person I knew under the age of fifty.” As she said it, Renee tried really, really hard not to think of the way Lola’s eyes had traveled down her body at the wedding. What sounds really good right now is getting into bed.
“Does Lola Gray party? She comes off like such a good girl,” Zane said.
Thankfully he didn’t notice Renee inhaling her coffee.
Memories flashed through her mind: Lola’s body hovering over her, that divot of concentration in her brow as she ground the heel of her hand against Renee’s clit at precisely the right moment.
Lola’s face slick and her breathing heavy as she looked up from between Renee’s legs.
“I want to know if Nash was there!” Kadijah said.
“Who?” Renee asked.
“Nash Walker, Lola’s boyfriend ?” Zane sputtered.
Renee’s stomach lurched. Lola hadn’t acted like someone with a boyfriend last night, not that Lola’s infidelity was Renee’s business. Maybe it was casual with this Nash Whoever, or they had one of those misogynistic rules where women didn’t count as cheating.
Though the way Lola had asked, Do you know how rarely I get to be with a woman? made Renee think that wasn’t the case.
“She didn’t have a boyfriend with her,” Renee said.
“What about Ava Andreesen?” Kadijah asked.
To Renee’s horror, Zane and Kadijah, with perfect coordination, flung their right hands in the air, the left over their hearts, and cried, “ LavaTruther Till I Die! ”
Renee’s nose scrunched in annoyance. “This is one of those moments when our age gap feels really significant.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not a LavaTruther!” Kadijah cried. “LavaTrutherism is the theory—backed by highly convincing evidence collected by a dedicated online community—that Lola Gray and Ava Andreesen were secretly involved .”
“Like, romantically?” Renee hoped they didn’t catch the hitch in her voice. Not that her voice had any reason to hitch.
Kadijah rolled their eyes. “Yes, Renee. Romantically—and sexually .”
“Okay,” Renee said.
“As girlfriends.”
“Right.”
“Lesbian girlfriends.”
“I get it.”
Kadijah spun their braids into a work-ready bun. “Just spelling it out, since you’re the last queer woman on the planet who didn’t know about this.”
Ava Andreesen was a Swedish socialite who’d parlayed a stint on a short-lived reality show about Upper East Side rich kids into a career of hosting red carpets, playing herself in movies, occasionally modeling, occasionally DJing in Ibiza, and doing whatever else the nonworking wealthy did to fill their days.
Normally such a person would not be on Renee’s radar, but Ava Andreesen was also famously bisexual.
With her blonde bombshell looks and a stylish gap between her front teeth, she radiated a reckless girl’s girl energy.
She was a divisive figure in the queer community.
Some people loved that Ava seemed like the kind of chick who’d take you out for margaritas then talk you into a threesome.
For the same reason, others felt Ava embodied a straight man’s fantasy of a bisexual woman.
Renee didn’t know if the feeling in her gut was jealousy, or if she was kind of turned on.
She had wondered where Lola had learned such an expert way around a woman.
It was hot that Lola might have practiced on Ava what she’d used on Renee.
“No way Ava was there,” Zane said. “She and Lola don’t even talk anymore. Which is the best evidence ever that #Lava was real.”
Renee took a long pull of her red eye. “Thank you for this fascinating info, but neither of those people were there.”
“One more question,” Kadijah said. “Was Lola giving off queer vibes?”
“Seriously?” Renee tried not to blush. “I’m not going to gossip about her with you.”
“It should be illegal to be this un-fun,” Zane whined.
“Hold up, we’ve got to suspend judgment,” Kadijah said. “Did you actually get some last night?”
Renee made a face that hopefully approximated her regular scowl.
“You got me.” Renee’s voice was thick. “I connected with one of Claudia’s friends, and we totally fucked all night.”
Zane frowned. “You can just say no.”
But Kadijah narrowed their eyes. “Renee’s sarcasm is the lie that helps us understand the truth. You did go home with someone.”
Renee’s cheeks heated as she cursed herself for having friends who understood her.
“Ooh, who?” Zane cried. “Are you going to see her again?”
“Of course not.” Kadijah laughed. “Walk Away Renee doesn’t do relationships.”
“I hate it when you call me that,” Renee said, maneuvering past Kadijah to walk away. “I’m going to make the schedule for next week, so I hope you’re happy with this exchange.”
“You know I’m not!” Kadijah yelled, as Renee slammed the office door.
Squirreled away inside the office, Renee did not work on the schedule.
Instead, she spun slowly in the stained desk chair and let her mind drift to last night.
Well, letting her mind drift wasn’t exactly right.
Her mind had been solidly shipwrecked since she’d woken up to the sound of Lola showering and snuck out of the hotel room.
She should have said goodbye, thank you, something, anything instead of slinking away.
Renee had her fair share of experience with casual hookups and one-night stands—a little more than her fair share, actually.
She was perfectly capable of handling the morning after.
But Lola was different. Renee had realized whose bed she was in and panicked .
In the moment, it seemed right to spare them any awkward small talk about how the evidently closeted, Spotify-sweetheart Lola Gray had just spent the night absolutely railing her burnout ex-neighbor. They had the NDA, after all.
An early-morning drive home and hot shower later, Renee realized that maybe leaving hadn’t been especially kind. Lola had treated her to an amazing night, gotten her off so many times that Renee had lost track. Now Renee couldn’t even thank her, because they hadn’t exchanged numbers.
Renee was struck all over again that Lola liked to top.
Liked it a lot. Femmes could always surprise you, but most women Renee had been with took turns giving and receiving.
Maybe Lola needed time to feel comfortable enough to receive—or maybe she didn’t like to receive at all.
Renee’s skin warmed as she contemplated what made Lola moan, exploring with her fingers all the places Lola liked to be touched.
What her face looked like as she came. Next time—
Renee scrubbed a hand over her face. There was no next time . They hadn’t exchanged numbers because there was no need to. Anyway, Renee didn’t do next times , and Lola lived in a different world, practically on another planet.
Which was for the best. Lola’s career and their history aside, Renee wouldn’t have broken her no-second-dates streak for someone so romantic, so worried about what others thought. Kadijah and Zane might make fun of Renee for being single, but at least she didn’t waste her time.
Plus, how was she supposed to get her thesis project together if she let herself get hung up on girls?
Renee, a little dizzy now, stopped spinning.
When her shift ended, she’d get to work on her thesis.
She was not going to look up pictures of Lola, and definitely not masturbate to those pictures—not that she had had a specific plan to do that, but it wasn’t going to happen.
No, she was going to go through her meager list of shitty ideas and pick one to move forward with.
It was time to refocus. She wasn’t going to let Lola Gray be the only success story from Fellows High School’s class of 2015.
Thus resolved, she pulled up her email on her phone—and her stomach dropped straight to the floor.
Renee—
The registration deadline for the next semester is upon us, and with it, the official end of your leave.
To remain enrolled, you must register for next semester.
Your final graduation requirement is the thesis project, for which you must complete a two-semester independent study with a faculty mentor.
If you have not registered and paid tuition and fees by August 1, you will be terminated from the program.
Let’s avoid that. The paperwork will be a nightmare.
Be in touch if questions
- D
Dragan Kapi?
Professor of Documentary Filmmaking
Dean, Documentary Film Program, New York Institute of Film
Buzzy white noise flooded Renee’s ears—as if her hearing had paused to allow her body to focus on the prospect of throwing up.
Renee strongly felt that no email should be more powerful than her esophageal sphincter, but she barely managed to make it out of the office and to the trash can before yakking.
“Are you that hungover?” Kadijah thrust a roll of paper towels at Renee. “I can handle things here if you want to bounce.”
“It’s not a hangover,” Renee managed, although physically, she was hung over the trash can. “I got an email from the program. It’s my last chance to go back and … and that’s it. I can’t do it.”
“Come on,” Kadijah said. “If it’s the money, you’ll figure something out.”
Renee blew her nose and was rewarded with a coffee-flavored burning.
Kadijah was right to assume money was the problem.
The MFA was the most expensive gamble Renee had ever taken.
The first two years of tuition ran over $150,000—and that didn’t cover the cost of living in New York.
While other students had scholarships or trust funds, Renee had relied on loans that she’d probably never manage to repay and, in emergencies, her mother’s generosity.
Tuition in the final thesis year was significantly cheaper, but Renee was already in so much debt it barely mattered.
All that debt, just to discover that she couldn’t hack it.
Directing documentaries had been Renee’s dream.
She’d started in high school, filming on her phone, then scrimped and saved to buy her own camera.
She’d been the star of her small college’s film studies program.
A prestigious MFA program like the one at the New York Institute of Film was a long shot—especially after her first application was rejected—but she wanted to learn to make films from the best. When she got in, she’d been elated, but that joy had dimmed only a few hours into orientation.
Her cohort of seven students included a woman who’d already won an international prize for her short documentary on survivors of the Darfur conflict, and a guy whose grandmother was an Old Hollywood actress.
They’d gone to schools like USC and NYU, and kept asking her where Kalamazoo College was, even though Kalamazoo was in the name.
Renee tried to prove herself. The first year, they spent more time critiquing films and digesting film theory than making anything.
Renee quickly learned that vicious criticism was both rewarded and came easily to her, but her classmates didn’t hold back in tearing into Renee’s proposed projects any more than she did theirs.
And it wasn’t just the students—the professors gave feedback like they were hunting for sport, and nothing satisfied like a kill shot.
While the other students easily connected with the faculty, Renee was never able to tell which professors wanted her to push back against their words and which expected her to thank them for their brutal insights.
As they said in the program, “Everyone wants to make films. Not everyone can .” The words swam in Renee’s head like her own personal hymn, the evil lullaby that whispered her to sleep, the alarm that woke her in the morning.
She found herself tearing apart every idea she had before it was even fully formed, all of her work conducted in a panicked, last-minute frenzy, her stomach on fire at every screening.
It was after her fifth panic attack, at the end of her second year, that Renee realized she needed a break. Just as everyone else was developing their thesis plans and choosing mentors, Renee announced she was going back to Michigan to find a thesis topic by connecting with “regular people.”
Her mom and Dave met her at the airport with a bundle of balloons. They meant well, but it made Renee feel like a failure, an Icarus who’d tried to soar but, instead of dying elegantly, had come home to live in her mother’s remodeled garage unit.
That first night sleeping on the Ikea bed meant for Deborah’s Airbnb guests, Renee promised herself she wouldn’t get stuck.
She’d follow Instagram accounts about curing burnout.
She’d meditate. She’d do morning pages. She’d return to New York to make the most brilliant and thought-provoking thesis her program had ever seen.
All she had to show for it now was a mostly empty notebook and a box of film stuff, including her old camera, gathering dust under her bed. Also, insomnia, which might not be unrelated.
“You can’t give up on your passion, Renee,” Kadijah said. “I know you’re really talented.”
A boil of self-hatred burst in Renee’s gut.
“No, you don’t know that,” Renee said more viciously than she’d meant. “You’re obsessed with Summer House , which is the stupidest of all the Bravo franchises, and true crime podcasts, and—and Lola Gray ! The kind of films I want to make would put you to sleep.”
Kadijah’s kohl-lined eyes were stony. “Let me get this straight: my taste is so trash that it’s an insult for me to say you’re talented. Because if you were actually talented, I’d think your stuff was shit.”
Renee swallowed hard. She was ashamed of herself for lashing out at Kadijah when they were nowhere near the right target. “That was mean. I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
Kadijah turned away. “All right, Walk Away Renee, why don’t you make that schedule at home? Like I said, I can handle things here.”