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James looks up, surprised at being addressed directly. “Just over two months.”
I blink across at her, wondering what she’s up to. I’ve never seen her engage James in conversation before. Someone is just full of surprises today. “Remind me what you did before?”
“I was a structural engineering consultant.”
She taps her lips with a graceful finger. “I forget—where did you work?”
A muscle in James’s jaw clenches, and color slowly blooms along the tops of his cheekbones as we both realize what she’s doing. “Rooney, Lipton, and Squire.”
“Ohh,” she says, like it’s just now come back to her. “Right, right. That was the place with all the embezzlement. They were inflating the books and taking money from employee pensions, right?”
He answers with a clipped “Yes.”
She whistles. “I sure hope you didn’t lose everything.”
My stomach drops. I can tell from his expression that he did.
I catch our driver Gary’s eyes in one of the oversize mirrors, and we both wince. I can never tell how much he hears, but the tension is so heavy and the conversation so razor sharp, he’d have to have cotton in his ears to miss the feel of it.
“Aren’t they still investigating that?” Melly’s saccharine voice is wrapped in a brittle veneer of indifference. “Maybe you’ll get some of your retirement money back.”
“Melly.” I very rarely admonish her, but I’m already tired of whatever this is.
“He’s one of my employees and I’m just concerned about him.” With a breezy wave, she goes back to her magazine. “I sure hope he isn’t in a sticky situation.”
Closing his laptop, James stands, meeting my eyes across the bus. “I appreciate your concern.”
When he disappears to the back of the bus, I walk to the kitchenette and open the fridge, needing a little distance. The close proximity is starting to make me feel panicky and oddly dissociated from my body, like we’ve all been put here for something else entirely, and none of this is real. In some ways, that might even be a nice outcome: Ted and Robyn step out at some point, smiling broadly, admitting they’re not a producer and a publicist but instead are really collaborators on a psychological study on the effect of forced proximity while attempting a task with absolutely no chance of success.
As I survey Melly’s pressed juices and gluten-free, dairy-free, taste-free snacks, my mind drifts back to James. I can still feel what we did last night in the tenderness of my joints, the ache that lingers from the delicious frenzy of our first time. Every move I make today requires the use of some sore or exhausted limb, and the sensations become these mocking little reminders about what life could be like if I decided to be brave.
In truth, our phone call earlier shook something loose inside me. I’ve never thought of Melly as abusive before. Temperamental, yeah. Manipulative, sure. But abusive? What would Debbie say if I was honest with her about what really goes on? Have I held back from describing everything accurately not because of the NDA but because I’ve always known, deep down, that what James said is true?
He asked where I see myself in the future. If it were up to Melly, I’d be working with her for at least another ten years. Keeping her calendar organized. My stomach clenches with dread. I don’t want that. Working for Comb+Honey solves one problem but creates another: I have the resources to pay for anything I need—including whatever treatments I might need in the future—but the constant stress of dealing with the show and the Tripps is making my symptoms worse. If I’m struggling to hold a pencil now, what will it be like in five years, let alone ten?
Unfocused but staring into the open refrigerator, I imagine telling Melly that I’m quitting, damn the fallout. It would be unpleasant, but it wouldn’t last forever, and then I would be free to think, for the first time in my life, about what I’d really like to do. I’d be broke and it’d be hard, but I might have James. I might have time to get myself a house and a dog and a few hobbies. I might actually have a life.
Just knowing that the possibility is there is like that first gulp of air after kicking toward the surface. Somehow, the elephant doesn’t seem so huge.
James tries to talk to me a number of times once we get to Sacramento, but it’s just too chaotic. We are off the bus, into one store, signing stock in a flurry, then getting back on the bus to weave through downtown Sacramento to the next store. It doesn’t actually seem to be the best plan, because obviously we are not at all inconspicuous inside Melly’s and Rusty’s heads on wheels, and by the time we pull up at a Barnes & Noble, a few cars have trailed us on the journey, with fans getting out and asking for pictures.
