Bloom (2 page)

Chapter 3

The moment that
I know I’m leaving occurs two hours later, when Corinne calls. She was perhaps the only producer at my show not bothered by Edward’s partiality.

“You know it’s not true, right?” I ask. “Edward never laid a finger on me.”

“I know,” she says. “But he wanted to, and that’s enough for most people. Which is why I’m calling. Have you been outside?”

“Not since I got home,” I reply. “Why?”

“Look out on the sidewalk,” she says.

I go to the window, my stomach filling with dread. Photographers. A lot of them.

“Shit,” I hiss. “How did they get my address?”

“Everyone is talking about it, Elle. Someone must have leaked it. If I were you I’d get out of the city as soon as possible. Because I think it’s going to get a lot worse.”

I take the train to DC. I’m still not sure about the beach — it seems slightly selfish, given what my mother must be going through. And I know she will need me, because she always has.

I’ve never had a traditional relationship with either of my parents. My father writes the checks but has always treated me like a peer. My mother and I do have a parent-child relationship, except that for the most part, I play the parent. For as long as I can remember, it’s fallen on me to clean up her messes, to remind her of deadlines and dates and keep her on schedule. When we travel, I book our flights and I hold the passports. I don’t know if I was born responsible or if I acquired it by necessity, but it’s been my role with her so long I’m not sure I’d know any other way to be.

I cab from Union Station to my parents’ house in Georgetown, and call my father on the way. As much as I do not want to have this conversation, he’s the person most likely to know how I should handle things.

The discussion goes downhill rapidly. A normal father would be distressed by my situation or perhaps even apologetic for his role in it, but he’s not a normal father. By the time he offers me a pissy reminder that he and his new girlfriend “have problems too” and can’t afford to worry about mine, the gloves come off. I guess I’m not all that surprised that he thinks he’s the victim here. My father always did have an impressive ability to spin a story to his advantage.

My mom is getting back from yoga when I pull up. From a distance, she could be my twin – the same wavy blonde hair, the same mouth – the upper lip just a shade too full. She’s still beautiful, and looks a decade younger than her age, but what’s up with the booty shorts? My mom doesn’t wear booty shorts. I’m pretty sure this is how a post-divorce meltdown starts – one day she’s wearing booty shorts and the next she’s getting tattoos and dating the kid who mows her lawn.

She looks a little troubled. “I didn’t realize you were coming home,” she says.

“Well, yeah, I mean, I can’t stay in New York.”

She nods but seems oddly displeased with my answer. “So what are you going to do all summer?” she asks.

Yes, she’s definitely a trifle put out.

“I don’t know yet,” I reply. “Ginny invited me to come stay at the beach but I … ”

“Yes!” she cries. She sounds relieved. “That’s perfect.”

I waver. “I really ought to be calling affiliates and looking for work.”

That takes the wind right out of her sails. “I suppose,” she sighs.

Just a year ago she was begging me to stay in DC for school. I thought she’d be ecstatic to have me back.

It would seem that I was wrong about a whole lot of things.

**

Stacy, the producer who fired me, calls the next morning. At this point the shock has begun to recede, replaced by anger. They had no right to shove me out the way they did, and I could probably make this very uncomfortable for them if I wanted to.

“One thing we didn’t discuss,” she begins briskly, “is how you’ll deal with the press. Your response to all media inquiries is to be ‘no comment’.”

I laugh. If she expects to find a meek teenager on the other end of the line she’s in for a rude surprise. I’ve spent too much of my life arguing with my father to be intimidated by
her
. “You fired me,” I reply. “Therefore you don’t get to tell me how I’ll be doing
anything
at this point.”

“If you want a career in this field you’d better do exactly as you’re told,” she snaps.

“You weren’t willing to help me in any way,” I reply. “So it’s not like you have anything to take away from me at this point.”

“I have plenty I can take away from you, Elle,” she snarls. “Fuck with me and just try getting a job at the smallest, crappiest affiliate anywhere in this country.”

“Nice. So you fire me without cause and now you’re threatening me?” I ask. “I realize I don’t have my degree yet, Stacy, but it sounds to me like this would make a pretty good story for someone.”

I hang up, only realizing afterward exactly how livid I am. My heart is beating so hard that it makes my hand, still holding the phone, appear to vibrate.

My mother looks at me. “You’re not really going to do that, are you?” she asks, her eyes bleak with concern. “You can’t let your name be dragged through the paper, Elle. You can still recover from this, but if you start giving interviews … ”

“Yes,” I sigh. “I know. But she had no right to call and demand anything after the way they treated me.”

She nods. “I agree. But this isn’t about them. It’s about you. You can be defiant right now or you can be smart, but if a career in broadcast is still what you want, then you’d better choose smart.”

I don’t resent what she’s saying, necessarily, because I know she’s right. But I do wonder why things feel so different with her now. What happened to the parent who always took my side?

And what happened to the parent who seemed to want me around? She says the right things but I get the sense that her mind is elsewhere. And she’s been oddly preoccupied. Continually running out and apologizing for the fact that she already has plans, giving me the distinct impression that I’m not a comfort to her so much as I am an inconvenience.

“You need to talk to Bruce,” she warns. “Before you do anything.”

I stifle a groan. Bruce is my parents’ extraordinarily over-cautious attorney. “Let me save you $500. He’s going to say ‘just lay low Elle, and wait for it to all die down,’” I gripe. “And then he’ll say some shit about how these things usually go away on their own.”

“You have no idea what he’s going to say,” she scolds. “You’re not an attorney.”

Three hours later, my mother and I listen to Bruce over speakerphone.

“I’ve gone over this very carefully,” he says. “And I think the best thing Eleanor can do is lay low.”

I look at my mom with an arched brow and she makes a face at me.

“So you want me to not respond at all?” I sigh.

“Yes,” he says. “Just wait for it to die down. These things usually go away on their own, as long as you go away with them.”
I’m psychic
, I mouth to my mother.

“Fine, so I won’t say anything. But I can at least look for an internship somewhere else, right?”

“Eleanor, I don’t think you’re grasping what I’m saying. The last thing you need is to be anywhere near a TV camera. In fact, you shouldn’t even stay in town. Go someplace where no one knows you or will recognize you and stay there until school starts. And do so silently. Don’t even use your real name.”

We hang up, and my mother — again — looks relieved.
What the hell?
“Go to the beach with Ginny,” she says. “It’s the perfect solution.”

I feel depressed and elated at the same time. I really need to intern this summer, but a small part of me is doing a wee victory dance, picturing a montage of me and James holding hands on the beach and saying meaningful things to each other as we watch the sun set.

“I guess I thought maybe you might need someone around,” I tell her. “For moral support.”

She laughs. “You don’t need to worry about me.” And I have to admit she doesn’t look like a woman whose husband just publicly humiliated her. She looks, in fact, happier than she has in a long while. I feel oddly disconnected in time, as if I’ve landed somewhere in the future where it makes sense that so much could have taken place. Where it makes sense that my abandoned mother could be so blissfully happy. And that she could want me to go away. The world is moving too quickly, and it makes me want to go to bed and wait for it all to slow down.

Chapter 4

It’s not a
long drive — about three hours, most of it in Maryland. On the way, Paulina, the lead producer for “Tonight with Edward Ferris”, calls. I let it go to voicemail — I’ve had enough threats from that office for one week. Oddly enough I don’t spend the whole drive thinking about my internship. While I have brief moments of anguish as I consider the past two days, I spend the bulk of that three hours thinking about James.

The boy I remember doesn’t exist anymore. He’s an adult now, and I’m sure he’s changed. But the boy I remember was beautiful, and I’d stared at him so long and so hard that I could sculpt his face with my eyes closed. The blade of his cheekbones and his nose, the slight swell of his upper lip, the long lashes so at odds with his hard jaw. His eyes reminded me of the tea that used to steep on their back deck, a honeyed brown shot through with sunlight.

I spent as many hours as possible at Ginny’s house, largely for the thrill of watching him come home at night. There was always something so focused and certain about him, a sense that no matter what was going on around you, if you were with him it would all make sense, feel safe.

He was left in charge of us, occasionally, when the nanny had to go. He watched “The Princess Bride” with us one night, begrudgingly at first, and then with reluctant laughter. I looked over at him … at his tawny skin and his easy smile and the way his eyes crinkled up when he laughed, and thought that no movie hero could hold a candle to him. There was a character in the movie who kept insisting things were “inconceivable”. For years afterward, James made a point of saying “inconceivable” to almost anything I told him, just to make me giggle. I’d always respond with the movie’s follow-up line: “I do not think it means what you think it means” and he would laugh too. It felt like a small victory, pulling that laugh out of him.

I stop just outside of Rehoboth to clean up, and am slightly appalled by myself. My career is shot. My family is all over the paper in the most embarrassing way possible, and everyone thinks I’m sleeping with a married guy my father’s age. But what am I doing? I’m standing in the Royal Farms bathroom wondering if James Campbell will think I’m pretty.

“This is so silly,” I tell my reflection in the mirror. “He’s probably not even that cute.”

The house is only a block off the beach, slightly run-down but nicer than I expected for a beach share. It’s owned by James and Ginny’s parents, who used to rent it and long ago decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. I think it was the summer that someone took a dump in each of the dresser drawers, in every room of the house. Or maybe it was the year someone spray-painted “keep the deposit” on the living room wall.

I knock on the door, and no one comes, though I hear a surprising amount of noise inside. I should have asked Ginny precisely how many housemates we
have
. I ring the doorbell, and still there is nothing. I open the door tentatively, hoping against hope that I’m at the right house. The house is swarmed by 20-somethings holding red plastic cups, so at least I’m not interrupting a bar mitzvah or wake.

“Hellooooo, beautiful,” says the first guy I see. “Welcome to the party.”

“Hi,” I say. “I’m looking for Ginny? Ginny Campbell?”

“Ginny!” he shouts, over the crowd. “My future wife is here looking for you!”

Heads turn, but I recognize none of them. I stand there awkwardly, wondering if this kind of party is an everyday event here. If it is, I may be heading back to DC.

“Elle?” screeches a voice, and then my best friend is rushing across the room toward me, beer sloshing from her cup as she runs. “You’re here!” she squeals. Ginny is small and fair and has delicate features — almost in direct contrast to her personality, which is large and loud. I used to wonder if she or James was adopted — physically they couldn’t be more different.

She asks about my drive and if I’ve eaten and where my bags are without waiting for an answer, all the while dragging me across the room. She opens the sliding glass door and pulls me toward the keg.

“Hey boys!” she shouts. “Your new roommate has arrived!”

Four heads turn, but I’m only looking at one.

He wasn’t a fantasy. He wasn’t some figment of my 14-year-old baby hormones. James Campbell is 100% as beautiful as I remember. Only now, he’s grown-up hot. Steamy hot. A head taller than any guy at the keg. Tan. His brown hair already turning light with the sun, his eyes just as striking, as impenetrable, as they were.

His brows come together. “Elle?” he asks with disbelief.

“Hi James,” I say, sounding shy despite strenuous efforts not to.

“Hi,” he says, but his tone is remote, as if he doesn’t understand why I’m here.

I turn to Ginny. “He knew I was coming, right?” I ask under my breath.

“Yes,” she says loudly. “Why are you acting so weird, James? You knew she was staying with us.”

He shakes his head as if to dislodge something. “You’re all grown up,” he says quietly. He sees that Ginny is now 19. Why on earth does he seem surprised that I grew up too? Then again, the last time he saw me I had braces, glasses, and was so skinny that my nickname was “Skeletor”. And Ginny’s so small she looks a lot less 19 than I do.

The guy beside him grins and extends a hand. “What my stammering friend here meant to say is that you are stunning, and we are happy to have you here for the summer. I’m Max.”

“We have another roommate too,” says Ginny. “Dan. But he’s like a groundhog. You’ll only see him for a few minutes a month.”

“How was your drive?” James asks politely. He still seems unsettled by my presence here. He hasn’t smiled once.

“Good,” I say. “I went to DC first, to see my mom.”

He nods. “I’m sorry … Ginny told me about your parents and uh, everything else.”

I flush. I suppose ‘everything else’ is the picture — now all over the internet — of me entering a restaurant with Edward Ferris by my side.

“Come upstairs and I’ll show you our room,” Ginny says, pulling me away. I follow her, but not before I hear the following exchange:

“Damn, dude,” says one of the guys.

And then James’s voice. Deep and unhappy. “I know.”

Ginny frowns as we take the stairs. “Well, they all liked you,” she sighs unhappily. “I feel like I just brought Kate Upton into the house.”

“James didn’t seem too happy about it.”

She waves a dismissive hand. “I don’t know what that was but he’ll get over it.”

“You still haven’t told me why he’s even here. What happened to his internship?”

“Oh Jesus. He’s such an idiot,” she says. She opens the door to her room. Our room, I guess. It’s immaculate, something I’d have expected had I thought about it, because Ginny always was ferociously organized. Her clothes are ordered by shape and then by color. Her books by topic, and then height. She keeps her life’s goals on her wall in a complicated Venn diagram. I still remember the first one she did — she was seven.

“Okay,” I say, plopping down on the bed opposite hers. “Now tell me how James is an idiot.”

She groans and smacks her forehead. “So he gets that same sweet internship he had last summer, right? Tons of money, guaranteed associate’s position next year after he graduates, and he freaking bails after the first day. The first day!” she cries. “And now he’s saying he doesn’t want to be a lawyer and he’s not sure he’s going back to school at all!”

“Wow,” I say quietly. It’s a pretty spectacular derailment, especially for the firstborn of the hyper-achieving Campbells. Though no derailment could be as bad as mine. “What happened?”

“I have no freaking idea! Last summer went just fine. I mean, he said it was boring, but whatever. Suck it up, right?” she asks. “Allison thinks he’ll come to his senses, but he can kiss that associate’s position goodbye.”

“Who’s Allison?” I ask, something sinking in my stomach already.

“Oh,” she says, looking at me blankly. “She’s his girlfriend. And Dan’s sister.”

Given that I haven’t even seen the guy since I was 14, the words hit me surprisingly hard. “Girlfriend?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “I can’t believe I never mentioned her. She’s
awesome
.” This is somewhat redundant. As if James would date someone who wasn’t awesome. “She’s brilliant. Law review, dean’s list, the whole deal. He’s totally going to marry her.”

The sinking in my stomach was a small boat capsizing. Now it’s the Titanic. I think of the beautiful boy downstairs with his brooding eyes and his dark brows and the way his mouth quirks up to the right when he’s trying not to smile and all I feel is loss. It’s as if I’ve spent my whole life training for a race only to discover I’ve gotten to the starting line five minutes too late. “He’s
marrying
her?” I gasp.

“Well, he hasn’t asked yet, but he will. I mean, they’ve been together for nearly a year, and she’s just amazing. She’s beautiful but she also just has her shit together, you know?”

I kind of wish Ginny would stop talking. A girlfriend was bad enough. A girlfriend I could never compete against? One he’s planning to marry? That’s a whole other level of bad. The word ‘horrific’ comes to mind. “So what does he want to do instead?” I ask weakly.

“Who cares?” she asks. “What he needs to do is finish his freaking degree and pull his head out of his ass.”

Ginny came out of the womb ruthlessly ambitious. She’d chosen both her college and law school back in the days when we still believed the stork brought babies. Certainly I benefited from it — in elementary school, she created an online form for our Girl Scout cookie orders, and devoted inordinate amounts of time to cutting down overhead at our lemonade stand.

Even
I
seem relaxed by contrast, and that’s saying something.

“I can’t think about this anymore,” she says, jumping to her feet. “Allison’s coming down in a few weeks. She’ll straighten him out. Come on. You need a drink.”

Ugh. Allison. I already hate her.

Thanks to her, I do need a drink now. Badly.