Page 3 of Bloom

“You can work at the bar with me,” she says. Ginny, ever industrious, is temping at a law firm by day and waitressing by night.

“The bar you said made the Hooters uniform look ‘professorial’?” I ask, with a tearful laugh.

“Come on. It’ll be fun. My brother and his friends are here too. You’ll forget all about Ryan and this current disaster.”

Ryan is my ex-boyfriend, and the truth is that I’d already sort of forgotten him. But she had me at the mention of her brother.

“Why is James even there?” I ask. “I thought he had an internship.” James is brilliant and every bit as ambitious as Ginny. When he graduates next year, he’ll have both a law degree and a master’s in international finance. During the summers he’s been interning at some law firm in Boston that pays him insane amounts of money.

“Long story,” she sighs. “Tell me you’ll come and we’ll have all summer to bemoan my brother’s terrible judgment.”

**

I’m not sure when I first fell in love with James. All I know is that it came long before I should have been thinking about boys. It came before my first sleepover (memorable solely because James was —OMG!— in the very next room). It came before my First Communion (memorable solely because I wanted James to see my new white dress). Almost every memory I hold is like a pendulum with James as its axis. He came before everything else.

We are only six years apart, but it was always a significant six years. In even my earliest memories of him, he’s so far out of my league he’s almost like a different species. And each year he just got better: better looking and bigger and more assured.

“I’m going to marry Bobby Sanchez,” Ginny would whisper to me during recess.

“I’m going to marry your brother,” I’d whisper back.

“Ewwww,” she’d groan.

Her side of the conversation varied over the years. Bobby became Ryan Wesling, who turned into Adam Goldfarb and then other boys, a new one each month. But my side of the conversation? It always stayed the same.

James Campbell. James Campbell. James Campbell.

Though Ginny and I have seen each other every summer since I moved, James was already off at college and working at the beach during breaks. I don’t even mention him to Ginny anymore, though I wait for her small references to him like a panting dog waiting for a treat. But sometimes at night I have this moment when I’m dozing off and it’s his face I see. Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep, my brain seems to chant his name, as if insisting that I not forget.

I should say no when Ginny suggests the beach. I should be calling my father’s friends, people in different markets, smaller affiliates, and begging for work. But the part of my brain that still dreams about him is the part that says “maybe”. Ready to abandon every last whisper of ambition for a boy I haven’t laid eyes on since I was 14.

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.