55
Present Day
I sat there at our table in the lounge, listening to Shanna order some specialty off-menu cocktail, and thought about everything that had happened between us in that dorm room four years ago.
Once she was finished, I told the waiter, “Just a glass of merlot, please.”
“Jeez, you’re a cheap date,” Shanna said as the waiter walked off.
“I don’t have as much money as you.”
“I told you, I’m buyin’ first round. You shoulda got champagne to celebrate. Maybe not Cristal, but…”
“Mm.”
Life had gone well for Shanna over the last four years. Her parents hadn’t let her go back to UGA, so she’d gone to community college, just like she’d predicted. And then she’d flunked out of there, too. Too much partying, too much living life like it was her last day on earth.
However, her other… skills had led to more interesting prospects. She slept with an up-and-coming (pun intended) fashion photographer and ended up in a relationship with him. Because she didn’t have anything else going on, he took her on as his assistant – and she became pretty good at it. When they broke up a year later, she leveraged the contacts she’d made and moved out to New York City. She started working as an assistant making peanuts, but through befriending and partying with models, she’d met some people and snagged a pretty sweet job at a modeling agency. Because she knew photography, she was valuable in that respect, and she was a hell of a people person. Now she had a good salary, shared a small apartment in Manhattan with another woman at the agency, and was leading a pretty nice life for a 23-year-old in the Big Apple.
As opposed to me, who had $50,000 in student loans, no job to speak of, and had to beg my parents for rent money for a shitty studio apartment in Queens.
Which is another reason it had been so hard to turn down the Rolling Stone gig: I was so tired of being a flat-broke failure.
“If you take the gig, you’ll probably be drinking Cristal every night,” she prodded. “Or at least really good bourbon. I hear they like to party hard.”
“I doubt Ryan does.”
“Ha! That’s probably true.” She sighed and propped her chin on her palm. “I hit on two band members before they got rich and famous… and I struck out with both of them.”
“Ryan wasn’t your fault. He was a little too innocent.”
She wiggled her eyebrows. “I know. I could’ve taught him a thing or two, though.”
“Or twenty or thirty.”
“See? You can interview me for the article, too. Just call me up and tell me what kind of quote you need – ”
“I’m not taking the job.”
“Why not?!”
“There’s too much… history there.”
“Funny, I was under the impression there was a certain lack of a history there.”
I glared at her. “I can’t be objective.”
“Who gives a f*ck?”
“Journalists, that’s who.”
“F*ck journalists. And I say that as someone who has actually f*cked a couple of them. You know who doesn’t give a shit about ‘objectivity’? Derek Kane’s fans. They couldn’t care less if you slept with him or not. All they know is he doesn’t give interviews to anybody, but he’ll give one to you.” She paused and reconsidered. “Actually, if they knew about the history between you two, they’d probably want to read your article even more.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Well, true, some of his female fans would want to claw your eyes out… but they’d still drool all over themselves reading your article anyway.”
The waiter came and set down our drinks. I sipped at mine morosely.
Shanna rolled her eyes. “Just go see him and write the f*ckin’ article. What are you so afraid of?”
I said it before I even thought about it:
“Giving in.”
She looked at me like I was insane. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
She was right. It kind of was.
So I just went onto other reasons.
“I shouldn’t do this.”
“Says who?”
“It’s like sleeping my way to the top. Which is basically the only reason I got this job.”
“Or not sleeping your way to the top, in this particular case.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Better to sleep your way to the top than to be like me and sleep your way to the middle.”
“You’re doing pretty well.”
“Yeah, and you could be, too, dummy. What are you really afraid of?”
I sat there and thought about it for a long moment.
“…maybe knowing that I should have made a different choice… that maybe I shouldn’t have left him, and now it’s too late. Or maybe I’m afraid I’ll sleep with him because I won’t be able to stop myself – and I’ll find out this amazing experience I had… this amazing couple of weeks that were probably the best in my entire life… that it was all bullshit. That he’s just another guy, and after he tosses me aside he’s going to go sleep with his thousands of groupies, and that I never meant anything to him at all… except I was the one girl he didn’t sleep with four years ago.”
“He didn’t sleep with me, either,” Shanna pointed out.
“You know what I mean.” I paused to take another sip of wine, and then I asked, “I had to take 20th Century Literature at Syracuse, and we had to read The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner… you ever read that?”
Shanna gave me a look like Are you serious?
“Even if I had to, do you really think I would’ve?”
“Stupid question,” I admitted. “Okay, so, in The Sound And The Fury there’s this character named Jason Compson who’s been taking care of his niece for 17 years. Her mother Candace had her out of wedlock back when that was really scandalous, and had to leave their town in Mississippi in disgrace. So for 17 years Mom’s been out traveling the world and living this crazy, decadent life, sleeping with rich men – ”
“Sounds like my kind of chick,” Shanna said.
“Yeah, actually, she was. Anyway, Candace has been sending Jason checks to support her daughter for years and years and years… but Jason burns them.”
“Why does he do that?!” Shanna asked, shocked.
“He hates his sister and doesn’t want her money.”
“Money’s money, I don’t care how much he hates her – ”
“Never mind. Shush. Anyway, Jason’s mother doesn’t want to burn them, but Jason says that if he cashes one of those checks, even one of them, then he’s lost all that money he’s been burning all those years. But if he keeps burning them, then the money’s not real… and he never has to deal with how much he’s lost.”
Of course, I didn’t mention that Jason was an a*shole, and that he’s only burning copies of the checks, and that he’s doing it to scam his mother so he can spend all the money on himself instead of his niece. It would have taken too long to explain, and it would have muddied the waters.
But the central analogy was sound.
Shanna narrowed her eyes. “So you’re saying…”
“I’m saying if I never see him again, then I never have to deal with everything I could have had. But if I go back and there’s still something between us… then I’ve lost… so much…”
“Orrrrr you could cash the check and at least have a couple of bucks instead of a pile of worthless ashes,” Shanna said in an offhand manner. “Which is basically what all your ‘might have beens’ are.”
Just like four years ago, her words were a slug to the gut.
I stared at her, my mouth slightly agape.
“BOOM,” Shanna said with a grin. “Got all insightful on you, didn’t I?”
I gave her a reproachful look. “I don’t think you understand – ”
“Oh, I understand plenty. You’ve got all your fancy shmancy reasons, Kaitlyn, but you know what you’re really afraid of?”
My stomach twisted. “What?”
“Getting hurt.”
I thought about saying Everybody’s afraid of getting hurt, but then I considered who I was talking to, and how she lived her life like no one was watching.
So instead I copped out.
“No I’m not.”
“Yeah you are. That’s what it boils down to: you’re afraid to get hurt. And especially by the one guy in the world who can really, really hurt you.”
I sat there in silence, feeling her words plow into me like a ten-foot wave.
She took a sip of her drink. “Just so happens, he might be the one person who can make you really, really happy, too.”
“So what should I do?” I asked, half in sarcasm, half in despair.
“You want to go out and live life and write about it, right?”
“…yeah.”
“So go out and live life so you can write about it, dumbass.”
I grimaced. “In other words… go see him and write the f*ckin’ article.”
She toasted my glass with hers. “Go see him and write the f*ckin’ article.”