And still, I was taking notes. Studying him like a lab rat. As if he wasn’t human. As if he weren’t driven by the same things everyone else is: a heart, a mind, a body, hormones; as if he didn’t need air and water and maybe even love; as if he were this robot to be scrutinized and picked apart for the amusement of the world.
Really? What does it matter that he’s been with a thousand and one women? What does it matter that he’s the city’s obsession and now also mine? He’s human. He’s entitled to the little privacy he has. He’s so damn closed off, he rarely opens up to anyone, and I know it’s because he’s always so judged and scrutinized.
My eyes water, and suddenly I grab the cards and start tearing them up, one by one. Then I lie with all the notes scattered around me and cry a little. Then I look at the scattered mess. What did I just do? Oh god.
If I want to save the magazine, I need to deliver something.
I breathe in and out.
“Rachel?” I hear Gina call.
She peers inside and scans the mess of torn note cards, and then me. As broken as the paper around me.
“Oh, Rachel.”
I start crying.
“I need to write it.”
“Rachel, tell him the truth. Tell him the truth. If he knows you well at all, he’ll understand.”
“What? That I’m a liar?”
“Tell him you love him,” she says.
“He doesn’t want my love. He values . . . truth and honesty, qualities I don’t possess.”
“You possess them in spades. You’re loyal and honest with everyone.”
“But not with him.”
“From the moment you talk to him and come clean, you will be. Make him see it from your eyes. Maybe you can have it all.”
“Whoever gets it all, Gina? Nobody. Nobody, that’s who.”
“But yet we all believe that we can. Isn’t that the point of everything we do? We want it all. So write this piece. And if you still want him, then you should go get him.”
I pause. “I do want him,” I whisper, wiping my wet face with the back of my hand. “It’s a million tiny things that, added up, tell me there is no one in this world, ever, who will have this spectacular effect on me but him. Sometimes I just can’t see myself when we’re together, I’m so lost in him.” I wipe my eyes. “He’s the only man I dream about at night, and the only man I want to wake up next to in the morning. Everyone is after his fame or his money, but I love him not because of anything he has but because he has me. . . .”
“Oh, Rache. Don’t cry. Maybe there’s hope for you two.”
“How can there be? He doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”
“He’s fucking hurting, Rachel! Even I can tell, because there’s not one picture of him without fucking shades to cover his eyes. There must be hell in those eyes, Rachel. I can’t believe I actually feel bad for him now.”
“Because I was the Paul in our relationship. I was the liar.”
“Paul played me. You never played him. Your feelings were real.”
I groan and bury my face in my hands. I remember how Helen warned me from the beginning. That I was too young, playing with adults. I hadn’t seen all of this coming. She was right. I was not ready for this at all.
But I take the Kleenex Gina passes, wipe my tears, connect my laptop, boot it up, and write my heart out.
The day I turn it in, Helen tells me that the Edge email servers are bursting with hate mail for me, and she advises me to take the week to work from home.
The day it’s published, I don’t get out of bed. I don’t answer my phone. My mother stops by, but she ends up chatting with Gina because I don’t want her to see me like this; I’m too sad to fake it today, and she knows me so well. She tells me before she leaves, “I’m going to go paint.”
She’s telling me I should do the same. She’s telling me I’m free to go out there and do something I love.
But what I love hates me.
Twitter:
Did you read your girlfriend’s article? @malcolmsaint
On his Instagram:
No way @malcolmsaint would give that bitch a second chance!!
And the feminist groups online:
Rachel Livingston, our hero! Revenge on the playboys! Want to play with our hearts? Beware the time you will find your own weakness. Revenge is sweet!
Later that week I find enough energy to get out of bed and go to work, and I’m immediately called into Helen’s office.
There’s tension between us. Helen was not happy when I sent over the article. She said, “It’s not what I asked for.”
“No,” I concurred.
Helen took it and printed it anyway.
Today, I’m surprised that she seems pleased to see me, genuinely pleased. “It’s a circus out there,” Helen tells me, waving me forward from behind her cluttered desk.
“I’m not online. Can you blame me?”
“No. But let me fill you in.” She signs to a chair across from her desk, but I remain standing. “Your boyfriend,” she begins with obvious glee, “pulled Vicky’s piece. It can’t be reposted without legal repercussions now.” She eyes me with a new gleam of respect and admiration, and adds, “In case you lost me when I said ‘your boyfriend’?”—she laughs happily—“Malcolm Saint canned any print editions of Victoria’s post—and it was removed from the blog.” She nods ever so slowly and somberly.