Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
After her usual walk with Beau, Blaise had stopped in to check on Brick. He was on his way out to see Holland again, so Blaise had only stayed long enough for a cup of coffee and a quick catch-up.
Brick was in good spirits, made even better by a visit with Beau. That man really needed a dog of his own, but that was his decision.
Now that she was home, it was time to get back to writing.
Blaise settled onto the sofa with her laptop balanced on a pillow, the cursor blinking at the spot where she’d left off. The house was quiet. Beau had gone back to his bed as usual, worn out by their walk and the excitement of visiting Brick.
The air conditioner hummed softly. She thought about putting on some soft background music but then wondered if she wasn’t just procrastinating.
She took a sip of her ice water, rolled her shoulders back, and started a new chapter.
She’d told the story that had led her here, and the story of when she’d found happiness with Jay. Now it was time to tell the story of how her career had begun.
Her fingers hovered for a moment before she began to type.
I was fourteen the first time someone decided I was beautiful enough to make money off of.
The recollection came to her easily, the moment etched in her mind. A thing like that become a core memory without trying. It was a pivotal time in her life. She’d remember it till the day she died.
She wrote the scene exactly as it played out in her head, a faded, grainy movie that was like watching someone else’s life.
It happened at the county fair. The sun was brutal that day, the kind that bleaches everything out and raises heat waves off the ground.
I was holding a cup of lemonade, the ice cubes nearly melted, when a woman in oversized sunglasses stopped short in front of me and said, “Has anyone ever told you that you should model?”
Blaise could still hear that voice clearly. Confident. Definitely not the first time it had said those words.
My mother thought she was a scammer. My father said we were absolutely not giving our address to a stranger. But the woman, Jennifer Travers, pulled out a card. A real card. With a real agency name that turned out to be legit.
Blaise paused, rubbing her thumb along the side of the laptop.
Her parents’ faces came back to her. Her mother had been full of worry. Her father full of suspicion. Despite that, she’d sensed something more in them, even at her age. A kind of longing. A sort of hopefulness. She hadn’t understood it then, but years later, she’d realized what she’d seen.
They’d wanted it to be true, because they wanted more for her than they’d ever had.
Blaise kept writing.
The meeting should have ended there. But Jennifer told us to look her up, to call the agency, and to bring me in for a test shoot if we wanted. And because she didn’t push much more than that, I believed her. She was too cool about it. Too casual.
Blaise let out a slow breath as she continued. My father said no immediately. My mother said let’s think about it. I said please, please, just let me try. I wore my mother down in a day. It took two more to get my father to agree. It helped that the agency didn’t want money from us.
She smiled faintly. Her mother had always been easier. Her father not so much.
The shoot went well and I got signed. I thought I’d made it. I hadn’t. Not yet. There were dues to pay. Go sees to go on. Being signed meant nothing if no one wanted me.
Then jobs starting rolling in. Small ones to start with, but they still meant I was earning money.
My mother came with me to every early job.
She sat in folding chairs with fashion magazines she’d never read.
She held my bag. Kept snacks ready for me.
She made sure no one asked me to wear anything too provocative, or do anything that wasn’t right for my age.
She became my first line of defense. I didn’t realize then what she was protecting me from. I only knew she was there.
The sounds of that era came back to Blaise with the memories. The clicking shutters, the nervous laughter of the other girls, the rock and roll played to hype them up, the buzz of hairdryers, the way people spoke about them instead of to them.
It had been exciting and terrifying in the same breath.
It was a strange world to step into at fourteen.
Part dream, part pressure cooker. Every room I entered seemed to be filled with people wondering if I was enough.
I thought that often enough myself. And every time the bookers or the photographers said yes, I felt a rush of belonging.
Like maybe I’d found the version of myself I was meant to be.
But there was also that sense that someone was suddenly going to point a finger at me and tell me I didn’t belong. That I’d get found out for being a fraud and sent home.
Sometimes, that fear kept me up at night.
Blaise stopped, flexing her fingers. The words were coming pretty easily but there was something unexpected coming with them. A thin ache had settled over her. It felt like the tug of what she’d lost.
She hadn’t grown up like a normal child. What teenager did math homework on a redeye flight to Paris?
She exhaled, needing a break. She clicked over to her email. Nothing from any publishers—which seemed about right, since it had still only been a few days. But no acknowledgments, either. Not even an automated reply.
She let the disappointment pass through her without letting it take root. That was easy for her. And she was too far in now. She wasn’t giving up, no matter what the outcome was.
She went back to the document. She read the last line she’d written and began a new one.
I didn’t know then what that world would take from me. Or what it would give me. I only knew I was stepping into a world bigger than the one my parents had grown up in, bigger than high school hallways, bigger than the life I was already living. The one that suddenly felt too small for me.
She paused, then typed one more line that summed it all up. For better or worse, that day at the fair changed everything.
She sat back, rereading what she’d written.
She liked it, but that sense of melancholy had returned in full force.
Thinking about that time in her life made her heart ache slightly.
All the traveling she’d done meant she’d missed out on family life.
She’d grown distant from her sister, too.
Something they’d never really recovered from.
But remembering those days also felt like giving new life to a part of herself she’d long ignored.
She wasn’t done—not even close—but the fact that the words were coming at all amazed her. She’d thought it was going to be harder, which wasn’t to say that it was easy. But it was happening.
And that made her believe she could really do this.
Blaise stretched her fingers, ready to dive back into the next paragraph, when the soft chime of an incoming email broke her focus. Her heart thumped hard against her ribs.
Maybe this was it. Maybe someone had finally responded.
She clicked over to her inbox, breath catching in anticipation. But the sender wasn’t a publisher.
It was Cece.
The rush of disappointment was like stepping into cold water. It took her breath away for a moment. She let it wash through her, then clicked open the message.
Hey Blaise, I pulled together a few questions for Thursday’s recording so you can think through the answers and figure out what you want to say ahead of time.
Totally flexible, answer however feels right to you.
And of course, you can talk about anything else you want to.
Can’t wait for you to be my first guest. Thank you! — Cece
Blaise blinked at the email, a small smile tugging at her mouth despite everything. Of course, Cece would be organized and on top of it enough to send homework. And of course she’d do it in a way that made Blaise feel like part of the process.
Cece was amazing. She ought to interview herself.
Blaise opened the attachment.
The questions weren’t softballs and they weren’t surface-level. They were thoughtful.
Intentional. And very Cece.
Blaise read through them. What moment in your life shaped you the most? What part of aging has surprised you—in good ways or hard ways? What do you want women of any age to know about reinvention? What scared you the most about starting over? How did you keep going anyway?
Blaise sat back, the words blurring for a moment as she thought about the answers to those questions.
Cece wasn’t just interviewing her. She was giving Blaise a chance to tell the truth, but more than that, she was offering Blaise an opportunity to shape her story before the rest of the world, and any publisher, got their hands on it.
She scrolled farther and found one more question: If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
Blaise swallowed. Well, that was going to be hard to answer. Not because she didn’t know what the answer was, but because there were so many.
She closed the laptop halfway, letting the screen dim as she looked out the window.
Thursday suddenly felt closer than she’d expected.
And very much like she was taking another step in a direction that scared her.
It wasn’t necessarily a bad kind of scared.
More like a new challenge, really. It definitely felt good to be wanted.
But would anyone besides Cece be interested in her? Would anyone want to work with her again? Maybe she was old news. Maybe this was all for naught.
Maybe her financial troubles would be with her for the rest of her life.
She pushed out a breath. Enough of that thinking. She reopened the laptop and typed a quick reply. Got them. Thank you. These are wonderful. And terrifying. lol I’ll have answers ready by Thursday. Thanks! B
She hit Send and sat back. Beau got up from his bed to get drink. On his way back from the kitchen, he came over to her, as if checking that she was okay.
“I’m fine,” she murmured, rubbing his ear gently. “Just…thinking.”
The publishers would reply when they replied. If they replied. For now, she had words to write and an interview to prepare for. She needed honest words and answers. Something that might help other women the way she wished she’d been helped.
She set her fingers back on the keys.
Time to write again.