“Yeah,” I say, smiling in her direction. “She is. And she really likes you too.”
We stand there for a moment in the comfortable quiet.
“How close are we getting to shutting down Daniel?” he asks.
“Marcus thinks a few more weeks.”
“Good. That’ll be a relief. And even better would be some resolution with Bruce.” He picks up his drink. “Keep me in the loop, okay?”
“For sure.”
He squeezes my shoulder before going to sit down.
When I take our drinks to the table, Lola leans over. “Grandma Donna just asked if I thought she’d look good with a tattoo on her shoulder.”
“What did you say?”
“I said absolutely.” She presses her lips together to keep from laughing.
I snort and look at my adorable little grandmother with her tight curls and buttoned-up sweater. “Did she say what she’d want?”
“She mentioned Orion, said he was a river otter who frequently visits. She said Goldie’s talked about him for a long time, but she’s only recently gotten to know him better since being at the Friendship Bench more often.”
I chuckle. “That’s great. Does she want the knitted version of him?”
We laugh about that.
“Have you ever seen him?” Lola asks.
“No! For a while I thought Goldie was making the whole thing up, but then Milo saw him too, so…I can’t believe even Grandma Donna has seen him. Enough to want a tattoo of him on her shoulder.”
We lose it at that all over again. It isn’t that I don’t think tattoos are age-specific, it’s just…you gotta know Grandma Donna. The thought is hilarious.
“I so hope this happens,” I say, wiping my eyes.
Lola’s phone lights up, and it’s Isla. She lets it go to voicemail, but then it rings again. When it happens a third time, Lola picks up. “Isla, I’m at the?—”
Whatever Isla says makes Lola go still.
“Send it to me,” she says.
They hang up, and she nudges me to look as she opens the link Isla sent. I read it over her shoulder.
The headline is from a popular gossip outlet with a large enough following to do real damage.
The headline is:NHL Star Tully Whitman’s New Girlfriend Has a Type—And It’s Always Famous.
The story underneath is three hundred words of implication and anonymous sourcing.
“Sources close to the situation…”
“Those who know Donavan say…”
A carefully assembled suggestion that Lola has a pattern—a history of pursuing athletes and men with public profiles, that the relationship with me is the latest iteration of something deliberate, and that she is, the piece implies without quite saying, using me.
There are photos of us in Colorado, at MSP, and at a restaurant in Minneapolis. Her tattoo Instagram account is pictured and captioned with something about building a brand that makes her work sound like a prop.
The implications and framing from anonymous sources,combined with real photographs, have been constructed by someone who knows exactly how this kind of story spreads.
