Page 16 of When I Picture You
It was after her fifth panic attack, at the end of her second year, that Renee realized she needed a break. Just as everyone else was developing their thesis plans and choosing mentors, Renee announced she was going back to Michigan to find a thesis topic by connecting with “regular people.”
Her mom and Dave met her at the airport with a bundle of balloons. They meant well, but it made Renee feel like a failure, an Icarus who’d tried to soar but, instead of dying elegantly, had come home to live in her mother’s remodeled garage unit.
That first night sleeping on the Ikea bed meant for Deborah’s Airbnb guests, Renee promised herself she wouldn’t get stuck. She’d follow Instagram accounts about curing burnout. She’d meditate. She’d do morning pages. She’d return to New York to make the most brilliant and thought-provoking thesis her program had ever seen.
All she had to show for it now was a mostly empty notebook and abox of film stuff, including her old camera, gathering dust under her bed. Also, insomnia, which might not be unrelated.
“You can’t give up on your passion, Renee,” Kadijah said. “I know you’re really talented.”
A boil of self-hatred burst in Renee’s gut.
“No, youdon’tknow that,” Renee said more viciously than she’d meant. “You’re obsessed withSummer House, which is the stupidest of all the Bravo franchises, and true crime podcasts, and—andLola Gray! The kind of films I want to make would put you to sleep.”
Kadijah’s kohl-lined eyes were stony. “Let me get this straight: my taste is so trash that it’s an insult for me to say you’re talented. Because if you were actually talented, I’d think your stuff was shit.”
Renee swallowed hard. She was ashamed of herself for lashing out at Kadijah when they were nowhere near the right target. “That was mean. I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
Kadijah turned away. “All right, Walk Away Renee, why don’t you make that schedule at home? Like I said, I can handle things here.”
5
Lola was leaving LaGuardia in the back of a black SUV. Her phone lit up with a text from Claudia: a photo of her and Josh sipping cocktails with little umbrellas under a cabana. Lola grinned. Nothing made her happier than Claudia’s happiness, and her sister’s smile hadn’t dimmed in the week since the wedding.
The wedding—the night of the wedding.
Lola’s face heated.
She kicked herself again for giving in to her desire to take Renee to bed. She didn’t feel ashamed, not at all. The NDA she’d picked up off the floor of the hotel that morning was ironclad—though it had been punctured by Lola’s heel in her rush to kiss Renee. Lola just worried that for the rest of her life, whenever she thought of her sister’s wedding, she’d think of how intoxicating it was to finally get the taste of Renee on her tongue, the feeling of Renee’s fingers snaking into her hair, how Renee had called herLo, which no one ever did. How could Lola let her memories of her sister’s day be overwhelmed by a one-night stand?
Lola massaged her temple as the New York skyline came into view.
Perhapshowwasn’t entirely a mystery.
All the years since she’d last seen Renee had made no difference. Lola’s body hadn’t forgotten what it felt like to look at Renee and course with longing.
When she was a teenager, her feelings for Renee had come out of nowhere, like thunder from an unseen storm. Their childhood friendship had faded with the start of high school, as Lola’s commitment to her dream began to consume all her time and attention. Then sophomore year, she had come back from a disappointing trip to L.A. and gone to pick up the missed assignments Renee had collected for her. When Renee had opened the door, Lola saw that she’d hacked off her hair, in retaliation, Renee said, for her mom forcing her to remove the eyebrow piercing she’d done herself. There on the Feldmans’ stoop, Lola had felt like she was seeing Renee for the first time—not as a childhood playmate, but as her own person, rebellious and tough and unbearably cool. Renee was angry at everything, because of course she was—Lola knew what her dad had done. Lola had wanted to pull Renee against her, soothe her pain, and taste a little of that wildness.
Back then, it was just a massive unrequited crush, the kind sixteen-year-olds wrote a million songs about and then got over. But in all the years since, Lola had never been able to move on.
She still had to sing about it every night.
Half the tracks on her debut album,Seventeen Candles, were about Renee, including her breakout hit, “Jean Jacket.” Or, notaboutRenee, but notnotabout her either. Lola’s early songs were about the romance of teenage longing: lust, pining, heartbreak, and hoping that the cool girl next door in her jean jacket would finally, truly see you.
Renee hadn’t. Neither had anyone else. Lola had spent high school obsessing over her career, not going on summer-night drives with the top down and her hair streaming in the wind, like she sang about. That first album was so rich with yearning because it was about how badly she wanted things that never happened: dances she’d had to skip, dates she was never asked on, kisses no one gave her. Fallinghard into the kind of love that changed everything, when she’d never fallen into any kind of love at all.
It was easy to hide the gender of whomever she was singing about, when she wanted to: useyouandweand the listener filled in the rest. She’d known even then, before she was truly in the business, that being bisexual wouldn’t help her get where she wanted to go.
Lola was still so careful, discreet. It wasn’t like her to hit on a woman surrounded by wedding guests, when only a tiny handful of people—her parents and Claudia, select members of her team, a few of her closest friends—knew she liked women at all. But when she saw Renee waiting in the parking lot, she knew it was her last chance to live out that teenage dream.
The SUV hit a pothole, jolting Lola back to reality.
She’d had her fun. That night was an ending, closure for the past—not the beginning of something new.
Lola forced her mind to the writing session she had calendared for the afternoon. Maybe she could channel all of this into a song. “Jean Jacket, Part 2”—the fulfillment of that unrequited crush from the original, coming full circle. She opened a note on her phone and typed,
it’s ten years later but we’re better older
the way you looked at me tonight
