“Oh, no, I have no opinion.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
“You should do what you think is right.”
You should do what you think is right?Something was off here. She was spouting generalities, and she was sounding uncharacteristically uncertain. “I’m just feeling like most of the way we left things is on me. Scott is not a bad guy. You’d like him.”
“Does your sister like him?”
What an odd question. “Not so much.” Auden had never come out and said it, but I hadn’t gotten the sense that she was the president of the Scott Collier fan club. “But she doesn’t really like anyone. She tolerates him, though.” Or maybe I should say “tolerated,” past tense. Because unless I did reach out, I probably wasn’t going to see Scott again. That was a sobering thought. How could someone who’d been such a big part of my life just be… gone forever?
“I think I have to tell you something,” Gretchen said, sounding more like her usual, decisive self.
“OK.” My stomach dropped. But why? It wasn’t as if I were getting dumped, which was what her tone brought to mind. You couldn’t get dumped if you weren’t in a relationship to begin with.
“I should have told you this a long time ago.”
Now I was getting freaked.
“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”
Which is it?I wanted to ask.You should have told me a long time ago, or you don’t know why you’re telling me?
“It’s not like it has any impact on what you do or don’t do with respect to Scott.”
Huh?
“It’s not a big deal, is the point. I’m building it up like it’s a big deal, but—”
“Will you just tell me!”
“I went on a date with Scott.”
My blood turned to ice water. “What?”
“We matched on Tinder. He was my last hurrah that I mentioned.”
“What?”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say.What?was the only thought in my head right then. It was taking up all the available space, pushing up against the edges of my head—of my whole body.
“I didn’t know it was him,” she said quickly. “And even once I knew it was him, I didn’t know him. I couldn’t have named any of the members of Concrete Temple at that point, and I couldn’t have picked Scott—or any of you—out of a police lineup. I only recognized you at the Minneapolis airport because I’d googled you after Marion wrote to us about joining the staff at Wild Arts.”
I didn’t like this feeling of having one giant, unsettling thought in my head. An angry thought. This was how I ended up smashing TVs in Hilton Garden Inns. Not that I was going to lash out violently here. I was more confused than anything.
But more than that, I needed to not be the kind of person who lashed out violently in general. Ever. So I forced myself to replay what she’d said and to react to it in a normal way.
“I’m sorry I was such a dick that day at the airport. I was… I was a mess. I was coming off more media attention than I’dever had in my life, and it was all focused on behavior I wasn’t proud of. The most attention I’ve ever got coincided with the worst day of my life. Not that I wantedanyattention.”
“You know,” she said quizzically, “you always hear famous people saying they don’t want to be famous, but it always seems at least partially disingenuous. But with you it seems real.”
“It is. I accept that a certain amount of fame comes with the privilege of getting to make music for my job. If you want to make money playing music, you can’t do it without an audience. But usually people recognize me only in specific settings, and that’s how I like it. But…” I was trying to find a balance here, of not going all Hulk-smash but also getting my needs met. I needed to talk about this date. So I took the remarkable yet unremarkable step of opening my mouth and asking, “Can we talk about Scott, though? Can you tell me about this date?”
She proceeded to spin the most astonishing tale. Everything she said made sense. We had been in Minneapolis that night. Scott had been in the hotel room next door to me, for fuck’s sake.
The way she described Scott was both familiar and not. As difficult as it was, I let her speak without interruption. The pit that had opened in my stomach when she first said she’d gone on a date with him slowly started to fill with… something. Dread, I suppose, though I felt it physically, like tar. I felt responsible for this having happened to her, though I understood with my intellect that Scott was not me and I was not Scott.
Maybe that was what I’d been needing to understand, to articulate, all along.
