“I’m trying to hurry. But they have papers they need me to sign.”
Another huge sigh. “That’s why I told you to postpone this meeting. Lawyers always take ages.”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I said, feeling more panic rise inside me.
“Do you know how important this shoot is for me . . .for us,” he corrected.
“I know.”
“I booked the photographer and everything. The whole studio is set up. Everyone is here, except you.”
A stab in my ribs again. I wanted to tell him how important this was to me too, but he didn’t seem interested. Or seem to care. This was something from my dad. The man who I shared half my DNA with. The man who was now gone, and who I would never have a chance to meet. This was a huge day for me too, and he was just disregarding it.
“I need you by my side for these photos—research shows that people are much more likely to relate to someone who has a girlfriend. Besides, I don’t just want to appeal to the male demographic.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” I said, feeling pissed off but trying to hide it. But really I wanted to shout in his face. I usually hid those feelings from Kyle, though. I was always so scared that if I showed him how I felt, really felt, he might leave me. I hung up as the lawyer came back with the pile . . .Oh God, that was a serious pile of papers.
My hand was sore by the time I walked out of the lawyer’s office. I hadn’t written that much, with an actual pen, in years. I rushed back to the staircase that I’d walked up to get here. I never took the elevator. I couldn’t be in small spaces, not since the shed incident. Besides, taking stairs burned five to ten calories a minute. But when I got to the stairs there was a “No Entry, Slippery When Wet” sign blocking them. I looked at the elevator, took a deep breath and walked over to it. Just thinking about being inside was making me nervous. I pressed the button and before the doors opened, I checked my lipstick and smoothed my hair back in the steel panel that was now doubling as a mirror.
I looked like a real businesswoman today, that’s for sure. I’m not sure why I’d dressed like this, to be honest. A full suit, black heels and matching black bag. My hair scraped back neatly as if I worked in an office. I’d tried on about ten outfits that morning, but it was hard to decide what to wear to the reading of your dead father’s will. A father who’d abandoned me in life, but decided to leave me something in death, even though I’d never gotten so much as a birthday card from him.
I didn’t know how to feel about this. And my mood-tracking app had given me no insight either. I suspected that if I did figure these feelings out, I might crumple to the floor in a heap of tears. Perhaps that’s why I’d worn the clothes I had. Black and smart and strong and sophisticated. Clothes that didn’t crumple to the floor in tears. My outfit was cool and calm and didn’t show emotion. It was a suit of armor to protect me from the emotions of that meeting. I looked up at the elevator light but it didn’t seem to be moving and, in frustration, I pressed the button five times in a row. This didn’t make it move faster, though. The elevator finally stopped, and as the doors were about to open, my phone rang again.
“I’m on my way!” I said immediately, because I knew it was Kyle and I knew why he was phoning. The lift doors opened. “I’m leaving now, okay?” I walked into the elevator, briefly registering that someone was inside. “I’m walking into the elevator. I’m in the elevator. I’m pressing the button. I’ve pressed the button. I will be there on time.”
“You better be,” Kyle said down the phone and I just felt like crying. Kyle often said things that made me want to cry.
The elevator doors finally started closing. “Elevator doors are closing now. They’ve closed. I’ll be there soon . . .” The phone delivered a loud hiss into my ear. “Uh, hellooooo?” The hiss continued and it was now joined by a static crackle. “Losing reception, sorry . . . uh . . . See you soon.” I hung up and looked down as the screen delivered a no signal exclamation mark. A bolt of panic grabbed hold of me. I hated it when I had no signal. And I hated it inside this lift. I tapped my phone on the palm of my hand, partially because I felt like I had a cramp in my hand from all that writing, and partially because the nervous energy inside me was coiling and bubbling and needed to come out.
Something caught my eye. A big, smiley emoji. I glanced to my left. The woman I was sharing the elevator with was wearing a smiley emoji on her shirt. I lifted my eyes to her face; ironically, she didn’t look smiley at all. She was fiddling with the strap of her handbag and looking as agitated as I felt. She gave me a small smile, but I looked away. I felt this nauseous sense of panic rising up in me and I was sure if I tried to smile back, I might get sick. I looked down at my phone again, no signal. I tapped it against my hand a few more times while I thought of that envelope in my bag. I thought of Kyle and the photoshoot and how important this was to him . . .to us, I corrected mentally.
I looked up at the floor numbers, but they seemed to be going so slowly and I wanted to scream. I wanted to be out of this lift so bloody badly and it was moving so slowly. And then, to my horror, it stopped and a hurried-looking woman strode in. She pressed the button once, and when the doors didn’t close immediately, she pressed it another five times.
“It’s not going to work faster if you push it more than once,” I said to her, remembering my failed attempt with the exact same technique. But oh crap, she must have read my tone wrong, because she swung around and glared at me angrily.Oh wow!I inhaled sharply. This woman looked a little wild in the eye. She did have good eyebrows though, high and arched and black. But they did give her a very stern look.
The doors finally closed and she turned back. I was grateful when she did, because I felt like I was disintegrating under her intense stare. I turned and tried to catch Smiley Emoji’s attention, and hopefully share a look of acknowledgement in solidarity of what had just happened, but she was too busy fingering the strap of her bag. Another noise caught my attention—it was the woman who’d given me a death stare. She was tapping her foot on the floor in a way that made my agitation boil, and made me tap my phone on my palm even more. We were each in our own worlds, tapping away. We were so physically close to each other, and yet so far away. All alone in our own worlds and—
Fuck!
A loud screeching noise ripped me from my thoughts. My stomach flew into my head, hot and red and choking as the lift plummeted. I opened my mouth and screamed as we fell so fast I felt like I was going to pass out.
I was going to die!
I was sure of it. And in that moment the only thought I had was that I would never see what was inside that envelope. And never know what my father had said to me . . .
CHAPTER 20
I gripped the envelope in my hands tightly and turned to Cujo. He was looking at me as if waiting for something. As if there was food in the envelope. I shook my head and slipped it back into my handbag.
“I guess meditation is not my thing,” I said to him, pushing myself off the tree trunk. “Guess we’ll just go back to the hotel and sit there. And sit there and stare at the ceiling. And sit there and wait and wait and wait . . .” The need to reach out and touch my phone was so overwhelming again. The thought that I would go back to an empty room, alone, and have no way to contact the outside world, or distract me from what was going on inside, was killing me.
“You know, screw space! I mean, really? What the hell is so special about it anyway that we have to point these temperamental satellites at it? What kind of high-tech satellites get disrupted by a little Wi-Fi anyway? And what more do we need to know about space? It’s a bunch of stars, okay! Stars!” I said to Cujo and started walking. He followed right behind me. I walked faster as this feeling of messy anger started rising inside me. I didn’t know what I was angry about, exactly. Maybe everything. “And screw meditation. Thinking about nothing . . . What is that? Bashing brass bowls about, what good does that do? I can’t believe I ever thought I could be some kind of spiritual blogger. Screw crystals. Screw tie-dye and definitely screw purple. And it’s not like we were thinking of nothing anyway. That Cheryl was making me think of things I don’t want to think of.”
I took a deep breath to continue my rant. A rant that was making me feel slightly better. Cujo was a good listener. “The past is in the past, right? Motivation Monday, let’s move on! Let’s look to the future and better ourselves. That is what people expect from us. No one wants to come to my Insta and see me dwelling on the past. People want to see me smiling and squatting and eating smoothies and kissing Kyle. That’s what they want and that is what I give them! Kyle says that we have to project an image of success at all times. We need to be aspirational and motivational and always strive to be the best people we can be. Our Massive, Explosive, Smash Through Best™! That’s what’s important, right?”
I walked faster and the muscles in my legs started burning and it felt good, because at least it was distracting me from the painful feelings that were swelling inside me. And all this thinking of Kyle and our relationship was making me feel somewhat mad. But it was also making me think. My sister’s words echoed in my head . . .narcissistic user.
I stopped walking for a moment and turned to Cujo. He sat down and looked up at me. “Maybe . . .” My voice was softer this time. Less frantic, more thoughtful. “Maybe, okay I’ll admit this,maybethings with Kyle weren’t as good as I thought they were. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised by the break-up.” My stomach knotted and I suddenly felt bad for saying that. I felt like I needed to defend Kyle and our relationship in some way. And so I did. “It’s just that he was very driven and ambitious, okay? We both were. He was always pushing me to be a better person. Is that so bad?” I asked Cujo, who obviously didn’t respond. “It’s not that he didn’t like me the way I was, though . . . he just wanted me to be better. For us both to be better. To have more followers and grow our businesses and focus on the things that really mattered, like what others thought of us!” Sadness. Sudden and hard and cold. Nibbling away at me as I spoke. I stopped walking and stared ahead of me.
