Page 47 of The Lovers
I want to hold on to the ideal I’ve tried so hard to embody my whole life, but with every second I spend in this desert, it gets harder to pretend.
I shove through the gate and up the path to my Airstream trailer, fumbling in my bag for the keys. My hands are shaking with adrenaline, so I struggle to fit the key in the lock; when it finally goes in, I twist the handle, drop my bags onto the floor and my body onto the bed. My shoes slip off one by one; I unbuckle my belt and roll out of my coat. My eyes drift closed and she’s right there in my imagination.
Long, tan neck, the gold chain winking at me as the heart dips into her clavicle.
Her eyes are bright oceans.
Her lips are small, with a deepmand plump pout. They would fit so well between mine. I could work my tongue inside for a taste. I could run my fingers over her jawline, touch the gold hoops, the diamond-studded cuff in her earlobe, before losing my grip in the soft, dark waves of her hair.
I roll over and grab my purse, yanking out the phone. I ignore the notifications from Mom. A few texts, a missed call. Nina also texted, probably to lovingly check in on my ongoing freak-out about being in Julia’s presence. I open the Instagram app where notifications from other verified accounts that I follow pop up, and the message icon is lit with a bunch of DMs. I go to the search bar and type in Julia’s name.
The top hit is @jak_lovealways, which features a headshot of Julia as the PFP. There’s another one @foreverbyjak, but it doesn’t have a photo or any details in the profile so I click the top hit instead, going in for a closer look. The profile picture is also one of her pinned posts, which is captioned with information about her agency acting as a static pitch. In the photos, she’s dressed in a green power suit, her hair tucked up in a low chignon, her expression fierce. She looks every bit the pro she wants to be, butnothing like the actual Julia Kelley that I used to know. Or even got glimpses of tonight. It’s as if all the personality that made her a target for Karen MacMillan, that later turned her into the person I never got tired of, who always surprised me, has been smoothed out. Combed back into that bun, wrinkles ironed out with dry-cleaning.
Her grid shows how good she is at her job. Perfect, pristine, unique, dynamic wedding scenes play out in little squares of glossy color, but what I don’t see in the shots isher—her mark on the scene. Maybe I’m not supposed to. What she does for a living is so different from my job. I’ve had to play up the manic pixie dream girl, boho goddess energy that exists in much smaller doses within me just to land jobs and carve out my own little corner of the internet.
The rom-com ideal is more than my daydream for a happy ending, it’s my living. A vivacious, appealingly quirky ingenue is what people want. Men and women alike. It’s fuckable and fragile; it’s how they know for sure that they are the main character and I’m just there to inspire their greater appreciation for life. Clients and boyfriends, subscribers and followers, everyone succumbs to the fever dream it offers. I guess we’re both playing a game of pretend, and I wonder if it’s as much with ourselves as with everyone else.
My finger hovers over the follow button for a split second before I let it tap. No turning back now. I like the pic of her in the green suit for good measure since I’m not sure which notifications she receives, and I want her to see this one when she wakes up.
I click out of Instagram and am about to let the phone go dark when it buzzes. A text, not a notification. Dad is burning the three a.m. oil per the usual. He has never been much of a sleeper,claiming his mind comes alive after midnight and he has to seize the opportunity to write when he can. I have always thought his orthodontic patients would probably prefer him to be well rested when he tightens their braces, but whatever. He’s set in his ways.
I check the text. It’s a photo of a stack of boxes labeled with his name,Clint. My heart twists with sadness. I click on the icon of his name and tap FaceTime. It chimes to connect, and when the image comes clear he’s holding his phone up so I can see his face. He’s sitting in the rocking chair on the pool house porch—I can see the windows reflecting the lit-up swimming pool.
“Hey, there, cupcake.” His voice is tired with an edge of pensive. His teeth are stained dark from the tannins of red wine. He lifts a mostly empty glass to cheers at me. “To the demise of love.”
To be fair to myself, both my parents have a flair for the dramatic. I come by it naturally.
I scoot up to lean against the pillows at the head of the bed.
“It’s shit to see you like this.”
“Your mother doesn’t care. She walked through the backyard before midnight in a bikini, talking loudly on the phone about vacationing in Cabo to her girlfriend.” The wordsyour motherandgirlfriendso close together send a spike of adrenaline through me.
“She cheated on you, Dad. Maybe you shouldn’t be pining.”
“It’s not that simple.” He looks into the camera, the magnification of his glasses making his teary eyes look massive. “She was my true north. You and Camille—but it all began and ended with her.” His voice cracks and he silences the wobble with a gulp of wine. “She was the love of my life, but I wasn’t that to her.”
“Don’t say that. You were married over thirty years. She loved you.” I rethink the past tense. “She loves you, even if she’s not in love anymore.”
“I’m not enough.” He whimpers into his glass.
The concept of a true north, a soul your compass leads you to, is a romantic notion my dad has made as much a part of the Rom-Com Ideal as public declarations of love and the affable, good-natured male lead. Too bad that—for me—a psychic promised mine was a girl I met in seventh grade.
“Did you know about Mom?”
“Cheating on me?” he asks.
“No, the other thing,” I say, nibbling my lip with nerves. “The thing where she’s bi.”
“Oh,” he says, waving me off. “Always, always. She was with a woman before she and I got together—it was the late ’80s in Laurel Canyon. I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Mom was with a woman before?” My voice gets all high and weird. Awesome, I sound as shocked as I feel. “I can’t believe I never knew that.”
“Why would you need to know? She was married, it was in her past.”
“But how could it be in her past? I mean, I get it, she married you, a man, and you two were monogamous—” He groans at the trigger word. “Sorry—but that doesn’t make her any less of a queer woman.”
“Oh, well, sure, cupcake, of course I see what you mean,” he says, shaking his head. The dismissive tone of his voice makes me wonder if he really does. “But in the end, it wasn’t real love.”
