She didn't say it back.
I left because I was running, but this year ended up being exactly what I needed. I would say I've been finding myself, but it sounds like such hokey bullshit. That's the best way I can describe it, though.
I tried to talk to her after the reception, but she wouldn't even look at me.
“I don’t give a shit about anything else, Kate,” I’d said. “I don’t care who knows, and I don’t care what they think. And you know that Brighton Bingo thing was Chase, not me. He’s the asshole who leaked that to the press.”
“It doesn’t matter, Caulter.”
I tried to convince her to just leave everything and run away with me, but she didn't want to hear anything I had to say.
Ella and I had the blow-up to end all blow-ups -- her screaming at me, calling me the most irresponsible fuck-up that ever existed, me telling her I didn’t give a shit about the trust fund anymore. She could keep everything.
I left the same day. I headed to the airport and got the first flight I could find out to Boston. The next day, I had a ticket to Bangkok by way of Tokyo, where I planned to spend the next month drinking through my bank account and hitting on Thai waitresses. I had no plans for what I was going to do after that.
The first night I was in the city, I got good and shitfaced and passed out in my fancy hotel in the business district. And I woke up and nothing was different. I was the same immature, irresponsible dick I’d always been.
So I decided I didn't want to be a dick anymore. I wanted a change. I sold everything -- my designer watch, my electronics, all of the things that tied me to my other life, the one where I was the son of one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.
And I did something that I’d never done before.
I worked.
Odd jobs, here and there. I scraped by, and I traveled, the way I’d never done before -- in a crowded bus in India, on a train in China. I made friends with people who didn’t give a shit whose kid I was.
I wasn’t like all Zen and shit, totally detached from everything back in the States. I kept tabs on everything, reading about it from the other side of the world.
It took a month for the Senator and Ella to split up, in the fallout from what happened with Kate and I. It wasn't entirely me and Kate's fault, of course; the relationship was doomed from the start, what with the Senator's political obsession and Ella's love 'em and leave 'em tendencies. Ella notified me with an email. She was busy redecorating the place in Malibu, prepping it for a fresh start. The scandal didn’t tank the Senator’s re-election campaign, which was pretty much uncontested anyway.
And Kate…
The media coverage of the incident was sweeping in the couple of weeks after it happened, but then they were on to some other more scandalous story. Kate refused to give any interviews. But she did go to UCLA, not Harvard.
I smiled when I read that. She was studying art.
She is studying art.
Sometimes I think about her in the past tense, like she’s a part of my prior life. And then I see someone who looks like her when I glance out of the corner of my eye, or a girl tucks her hair behind her ear the way Kate did...and she’s very much a part of my present again.
Six months ago, my mother emailed me, offering to give my trust fund back to me. I agreed, but on my terms. The first handful of investments I made were in the arts, to places I knew Kate would like. I vetted them, the same way I plan to do with the other business I want to help, start-up companies and people with good ideas who are struggling but don't have the capital to fund their projects. I didn't think any of the places I'd invested in had any connection to Kate.
Until a week ago.
It wasn’t luck that I stumbled on the tiny mention of the exhibit online. I had online alerts set up on the businesses I’d invested in...and on Kate. I guess I was never in any danger of getting her out of my head, even on the other side of the world.
When I saw the announcement about the art show, the name was what immediately caught my eye. But it was the picture of the artist’s work that made me go to the nearest travel agent and buy a one-way ticket back to California.
“It’s insane.” I spin around the gallery, my head as far up in the clouds as it can possibly be. “I can’t believe I’m seeing my work on the wall, in a real show.”
“Believe it,” the gallery director says. “There has been a lot of interest in you. You are an up and coming star, Katherine. You have such talent.”
“I’m just glad you were able to keep the gallery open,” I say. Three months ago, this place was under threat of going under, and given the gallery’s long history in this part of the city, that was tragic.
“Cheers to the angel investor that saved the gallery,” she says.
“You don’t know who it was?”
She shakes her head and shrugs. “He apparently prefers to do his good works anonymously,” she says. “Anyway, my dear, there’s a reporter here who wants to interview you.”
I groan. “Not about my personal life.”
She shakes her head. “Entirely about your art.”
“But...why?”
“I told you that you’re talented,” she says. “Why do you think I’ve spent the last two months cajoling you into letting me show your work?”
It took her two months to convince me to show my charcoal sketches, mostly because I didn’t trust that her interest wasn’t simply related to the fact that I’m Senator Harrison’s wayward daughter.
My father and I haven’t spoken in months. He has no interest in the way I’m “choosing to throw away” my life. But I’m proud of myself for choosing UCLA, and for choosing art.
I’m not proud of myself for the way things ended with Caulter. That conversation in the hallway outside of the wedding reception still haunts me. It replays in my head over and over, his “I fucking love you.”
I didn’t say it back. I stood there while he looked at me, giving me everything he had, knowing that Caulter wasn’t the guy who said something like that.
And I didn’t say it back.
When he tried to explain, I said I wanted nothing to do with him. I was overwhelmed with everything that had happened -- in the public eye, no less.
I didn't think he would just leave. Even afterward, I thought I'd be able to track him down in Hollywood, and I tried. When I emailed Ella, she had no idea where he was. Thailand, she thought. India, maybe. He was backpacking around Asia. I wrote him a hundred emails I never got the courage to send, telling him how I felt about him, that I loved him too. But it was too much to put in an email. The ugly truth is that I was just too much of a chicken shit to say how I felt.
For the first few months after he was gone, I expected him to knock on the sliding glass door of my patio and just walk inside, with that stupid smirk on his face. But it never happened.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t think about him all the time. But as it turns out, life isn’t really a fairy tale after all, no matter how much I’d like to believe it is.
I think if Caulter were here, he’d be proud of me. And I think he’d laugh when he saw the subject matter in my gallery exhibit.
But he's not here. Neither is my father. My friends from school are here, though, and so are a handful of professors from the art department. Standing here, surrounded by my drawings, I'm pretty convinced this is the best things can ever get for me. I'm ecstatic, even if part of me knows something is missing. Caulter is missing.
A reporter from a small, arts-focused paper wants to interview me. He asks about the inspiration for the show. I don’t lie, but I don’t tell the truth.
“It was inspired by a friend of mine,” I say. I don’t elaborate.
“It’s an interesting title choice -- Prick,” he says. “Some friend.”