Courtney’s room, 10:59 a.m.
She called me at 2 a.m. And I guess, because I was desperately trying to sleep and had finally nodded off, that when the phone rang I was unable to consciously tell myself to ‘let it ring.’ I forgot I was ignoring the world. I picked up the hotel room phone and groggily said hello.
There was a pause and a slightly bitter, slightly relieved laugh on the other end. “So you are alive?”
I was actually surprised it took her that long to call. I had figured she would have found out my number through the front desk the day after I started hiding from…everything. But she waited a few days and I don’t care. I don’t blame her.
She’s got more important things to deal with than me.
She told me she was coming over this morning, today, now, and that if I wanted to chicken out and leave that was my decision but that she wanted to talk to me.
I know she’s going to fire me. And I could have run. But I’m still here, sitting here, smoking again, waiting for her. I guess part of me wants to torture myself for being so stupid about everything. Another part of me wants to give Meredith the satisfaction of letting out her anger on me, ‘cause she deserves it.
‘Cause I’ve deserted her. Maybe I’ve done that from the moment I got here. Maybe I never really committed to this the way I should have.
Another part of me, a small part, is hoping that when she shows up she won’t be angry, she won’t fire me or put me through hell. Part of me hopes she’ll come in here and tell me how much of a mess Trace has been with out me.
I’m a fool. Just a god damn fool.
Nothing more happened than a nervous breakdown. At first I just figured I needed to be by myself and figure this shit out, figure Trace out. I was starting to panic because everything I thought would happen after her being attack: being fired, Justin killing me, everyone else hating me…none of it really happened. Nothing happened at all. Even though I knew something was happening—god, so much shit was happening—and I was left out of it.
And when Trace came down and tried to act like everything was fine and normal, I snapped. He walked away from me. I didn’t expect him to come back for me, but dammit if I wasn’t praying for it. I was too weak to go after him. So I wanted to keep to myself for a day or two, knowing Meredith was traveling and she wouldn’t really need me. She had been doing fine without me since it all happened.
And the more I stayed in my hotel room, chain smoking until I started hacking, drinking a glass of wine to calm down and finding myself with an empty bottle, panicking, hell, fucking crying—and I don’t cry. The more I did these things the easier it was to stay inside. The outside world became scary and hard. And I didn’t have the energy to deal with anything.
I broke down and I don’t know why. I think I’m just going crazy. And I haven’t had the courage to go out there and face any of them since then. So I haven’t.
And no one cared or made the effort to check on me.
There’s a loud knock on the door.
Except now.
I take one last drag from my cigarette, stub it out, get up from the chair I’ve been sitting in all morning and walk over to the door. Maybe I shouldn’t open it. I stare at the door as she knocks again. Maybe, maybe I’ll just go to sleep with my headphones on.
That sounds like a great idea.
“Courtney, I got the key to your room so either you can open it up yourself or I can.”
Fuck.
I open the door.
As always she looks perfect, bubbly, bouncy, not just a pop star but the type of girl you’d want to know and hang out with. The type of girl everyone wants to be in high school. I always despised that girl in high school. Even in jeans and a plain green t-shirt she makes it look fashionable. Even with an annoyed look on her face she looks friendly.
She’s always so fucking friendly.
She holds up the card key in between her fingers and gives me an annoyed look before nudging her way beside me and walking straight into the room like she owns the place.
I don’t know what’s about to happen. There’s a look on her face I’ve rarely seen. It’s not rage, but there’s annoyance there, concern and determination. I’ve never seen that face directed to me. Or maybe I have and I’ve just ignored it.
I have a hard time finding my voice when I close the door and say, “How did you get the key?”
I’ve never been more afraid of someone in my life. And she’s half my size, shorter than me, tiny. But I know she has a lot of power to tear me down and murder me and my esteem right now. Although, I think it’d be hard to get much lower than I am right now.
“The guy at the front desk has a crush on me, and so what? I’m Meredith Craven and you’re my assistant and I desperately needed to see you, anyone would give me the key,” she says in an amused but serious tone. So far every look and every thing she’s said to me has been a weird mix of emotions. It’s like she’s confused of how she feels and how she should react, maybe more than I am.
But that’s impossible.
She takes some of the clothes that are strewn about a chair by the opened balcony and throws them on the floor carelessly. “Oh…”
She plops down in the chair, crosses her legs and arms and stares right at me. I’m still standing there near the door, staring back at her.
“So, how’s your vacation been?”
I close my eyes and walk to the bed and sit down on the edge of it, looking down at my lap. “Please don’t…”
“Don’t what?” she says bitterly, and when I look back up at her she’s uncrossed her body and is leaning forward, glaring at me. “Have an attitude? I think I have the right. Dammit Courtney! I want to come in here and hear some amazing, legitimate reason for you cutting yourself off, for fucking leaving me out by myself when I needed you the most, for fucking putting stress on me and Teddy when we didn’t need it. I’m willing to hear whatever reason you have….”
I say nothing. And in that moment I know I’m sealing my fate. If she had any ounce of pity for me, I know now it’s gone. I shouldn’t expect her to care about me when I’ve done nothing to help her, especially since all this shit has happened to her.
It pretty much comes down to the fact that I’m selfish and I failed at my job. And I really wish she’d just come out and tell me I was fired instead of stringing all this bull shit along.
“But I’m pretty sure it’s not gonna be a good reason, so please….what the fuck happened?”
Now that someone is finally asking me, really giving me the opportunity to explain myself, I feel weak and used. I’m so pathetic right now and hell, I don’t blame her for being annoyed with me.
I’m annoying the hell out of myself.
“I just needed to be alone.”
I realize how ridiculous I am when she just stares at me for a minute. No, more like two minutes, her mouth slightly opened, just staring.
I wish I could say more. I wish I could give her a better answer than that, but I can’t. She wouldn’t understand if I told her I was panicking, if I told her I have problems or that issues were coming back to me, issues that I thought I was done with, over—issues that I didn’t want to deal with again.
She wouldn’t understand it if I told her I wasn’t happy.
Finally, she shakes her head and says, “Ya know, Megan is so right. I am too fucking nice. Some man attacks me and you decide to go off on your own and not even care about it…”
I interrupt because that’s not the truth, far, far from the truth, “I do care—“
But she cuts me off, talking with her hands, being a little dramatic, but I guess she has the right to be that way, “…and here I am making the effort. At first I just let you be, and then when I found out even Trace hadn’t seen you, I started to worry about you, thinking maybe someone attacked you, too, someone got you, too. But I found out from the hotel and other people that had seen you lurking around that you were staying here still. I didn’t know what to do. I’m fucking trying to be a good person, a nice friend and give you the space you need. I’m fucking making the effort, Courtney. If you needed time off and didn’t want to tell me why, that’s fine…but you should have at least said something to me or Angie, or someone.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s all I can say. And the age old line “sorry isn’t good enough” keeps playing over and over in my mind and I keep waiting for her to say it back to me, but she doesn’t.
I am really sorry, but I know right now all I seem like to her is a pathetic little girl, sitting here frowning, not even trying. I’m just too damn tired to try.
“And if you’re doing this because you’re scared of Justin or you don’t like him or hate him, then I think it’s really immature to take it out on me. He’s my boyfriend, I’m in love with him, but that doesn’t mean that I’m some enemy of yours.”
I roll my eyes. Of course she has to bring him up. Of course I can’t go a moment without someone bringing him up. I sit up a little and run my hands through my hair, “That’s not what’s going on, ok?”
“Then what’s going on!” She yells and it kind of shocks me for a moment.
She looks sad, picks at her nails and then sighs. And I really, truly do feel like the biggest bitch in the world.
“Ya know he wanted to give you a chance. He said after this had happened he was hoping that you would come through and prove him wrong, but all you’re doing is confirming every fucking suspicion Justin had about you. I don’t want to believe it. I want to keep telling Justin he needs to stop being paranoid. ‘Cause I can’t deal with him being right about that, about my fucking assistant being some bitch. I don’t like calling people that, but damn if you haven’t acted like one this past week.”
Even though she’s 100% correct, hearing her say that hurts. Even though I know I deserve it, I immediately get defensive and cross my arms over my chest.
When I say, “Ok, I’m fucking sorry! I get it,” I know I’m acting like a child, and ya know what? I really don’t care. She’s acted like one numerous times on this tour, ya know?
“Do you really get it?” I look at her and she just stares right back at me. I feel like she’s my mother, like I’ve done something horrible, like failed a grade and she’s berating me about it. Not just disciplining me, but making sure that I feel as low as possible. “Do you understand that I was laying on a couch and some fucking psycho got on top of me, tried to kiss me, fucking pulled me down onto the floor and tried to…to…” She chews her lip for a moment. “C-could have…”
She stops talking and presses her palms into her eyes. I hear her take a deep breath. It’s clear she’s better but still very shook up about it, and it will probably take her a while to get over it. I can’t imagine how I would react if it were me, if some man tried to do that to me. I don’t know the level of safety Meredith feels in her life, if she feels more secure than normal people because of all the security around her or less than normal people because of her high public status. Either way, whatever level of comfort she had before this happened was knocked out and violently shaken around, and she’s trying her hardest to get back to it.
And I feel horrible. I feel as low as possible. I feel like I should hunch down under the bed, because I know how bad she’s hurting and I feel like I’ve let her down.
I did let her down.
“Of all the fucking times in my life when I needed someone, that was it, this is it…this is when I need someone to take care of my stuff so that I can try to figure out what the hell is going on in my life. The one fucking time on this tour when I’ve really needed you and only you, Courtney, when I didn’t care if you liked me or hated me or wanted to be friends with me; the one time I really wanted you to do your job and be my assistant you fucking vanished on me.”
She needed me. I figured she would want space, but I know that’s a lie. I know she needed me then, but my pride and my fear got in the way. I didn’t want to be blamed for anything, I didn’t want anyone interrogating me any more than the police officers did. But I should have sucked it up, because my damn pride isn’t as important as the well being of Meredith and her career.
“I know, it was my fault.”
She shakes her head and wipes her eyes a little bit, “It wasn’t your fault he got in there, Courtney. It was a lot of peoples fault. No one could have known that guy was going to do that. You didn’t even know I was in the dressing room. I don’t care about that. I don’t care. I care about the fact that, that you really don’t give a shit about me, do you?”
I stare at her and she keeps talking, her voice now shaky, panicked, “And ya know, if in that moment it was too much for you to handle, if you were like, ‘whoa I can’t handle this and I don’t wanna be apart of this if people get attacked’ or whatever, fine; but have the nerve to tell me so that I get Angie here or Megan or someone to help me out. I had to make Teddy take the reigns, and he’s already fucking paranoid about everything and security has been beefed up. I just don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me you couldn’t handle it. That’s all you had to do.”
I feel like utter shit and I realize that I should have done that. I should have talked to her and told her that I was breaking down—that as dumb as it is, I was scared. But I didn’t want to say that to her and have her think I was weak, that I couldn’t handle this drama when it didn’t even happen to me. I didn’t want to tell a woman who had just been attacked that I wasn’t able to handle it, that I was scared.
But the sad thing is, I know now, and I knew then, that Meredith’s too nice and sweet of a girl. If I had gone to her with this and told her, she would have immediately put herself and her own drama aside, she’d put the fucking fact some stranger got on top of her and god knows what he wanted to do to her, she’d put that aside and ask me what was wrong, ask me how she could help.
And she wouldn’t have been able to help, because my fucking petty ass drama is just me being weak and stupid. And I couldn’t admit that to her. I couldn’t admit to a woman who was just attacked that I couldn’t handle making phone calls and hanging out with her because I was freaking out about people not liking me and that my stupid relationship was falling apart.
Everyone else was there for her. Everyone else was concerned with her and careful with her and a friend to her, and what do I do? I panic and hide.
I’m so lame. And it makes me despise who I’ve let myself become.
There’s no one to blame here. It doesn’t matter that I took this job and got in this weird relationship with Trace. It doesn’t matter that Justin hates me. It doesn’t matter that Meredith and I have clashed. None of it does. I let myself become this person and I can’t stand it.
“I panicked,” I finally say. “I figured I would just give you and everyone else some space for a day or two, let you figure out all this and calm down from what happened. But then when Trace and I broke up or whatever, I just…I fucking lost it. I didn’t want to be blamed for you getting hurt. I fucking failed at my job. I realized that that’s all I have left in my life, my job. Me and Trace are doomed for failure, I know this. I know once the tour is over he’ll move on from me. And all I have is this job, is being your assistant and I’ve failed, and it’s like fucking déjà vu to me. I’m losing the job I love and the man I…”
She laughs distantly and shakes her head, “But you don’t love this job, Courtney. The only time I’ve ever seen you happy was after you’ve spent the night on the bus with Trace, or when you’re about to go hang out with him. If he hadn’t been on this tour, you wouldn’t be happy. And I fail to believe that you, someone as strong and independent as you would let Justin make you that miserable. When I first met you I thought you were so…” She shakes her head and stares at me. “Shit girl, you intimidated the hell out of me, Courtney. I thought you had it all together and now, I don’t even know who you are. I don’t know what you like, what you don’t like, I don’t know anything about you or your family and we just spent the last four months together, almost everyday. That says something!”
“I have a hard time opening up to people.” I shrug.
“Then why did you let the one person you did open up to walk away from you?”
I look at her and narrow my eyes at her. I know what she’s talking about but I don’t want to let my mind wander that way. I get depressed when it wanders that way, “What?”
“You can sit here and say you love this job, but you don’t. You love the idea of this job. You fucking love Trace. And you just let him go, you pushed him away!”
I blink at her, shocked. Why the hell is she bringing up Trace? She knows nothing about what’s going on with me and him. I doubt he’s told Justin, well maybe he has…I don’t know.
“Yeah…” She shrugs and smiles at me. “We’ve talked. In fact, last night after the show, Megan and Josh came up again and we were all talking and drinking a little and Josh and Justin were playing some stupid video game and Megan was falling asleep on the couch and I ended up talking to Trace. He’s one of the main reasons I’m here right now. He’s the reason I called you last night. He fucking broke down to me, Courtney and I just couldn’t handle it anymore.”
I can’t stop staring at her and I can feel my eyes watering. I look away and rub my forehead. Dammit, she can’t say this to me. She can’t let me know that…that he maybe misses me.
I’ve wanted to hear it, but she can’t just say that to me.
I swallow the lump in my throat and look up at her and she rolls her eyes. I can tell she’s annoyed that I’m crying and breaking down right now.
She laughs bitterly again and shakes her head, “I was the one who fucking was attacked, who’s performed my ass off every night, who’s had to deal with a neurotic boyfriend and a wishy-washy assistant! I’m the one who’s having to pull everyone together, to keep everyone in check. I know people look at me and think I’m just some bubbly immature little girl, but I’ve never felt more like a mother the past few months. Always keeping everyone’s shit in check and having to deal with my own, by myself in the process.”
“Meredith…” I say and I realize now that she’s going to make me say it over and over until the words really do have no more meaning. But I can’t take it anymore, my nerves and my feelings are so fucking shot and I just need this to be over with. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I know I fucked up. I know I’m fired. So just get it over with.”
There’s a pause and she starts to laugh a little. “I’m not firing you.”
“You’re not?”
“No…” She glares at me and gives me a questioning look. “You’re quitting.”
“…excuse me?”
She looks at me like she’s shocked and shakes her head, “You quit your job the minute you gave up on it. You’ve cut your life off, me, Trace, everyone. You’ve hid in here and tried to ignore everything.”
I nod and look down at the floor again. “Ok.”
“That’s it? You’re not even going to fight it?” I look up at her and she’s now standing up, walking over to me. She pushes my shoulder and I have to put my hand down on the mattress so I don’t fall backwards. She’s glaring at me, pissed off now. She just…she just pushed me! “What the fuck is wrong with you Courtney? Who the hell are you? What happened to the girl I first met who didn’t take no for an answer and was bad ass and knew what she wanted and was sure of herself?”
I calm down from the fact that she pushed me like a child would and I laugh quietly.
“She doesn’t exist.”
“Dammit girl…” Suddenly she’s sitting beside me. Part of me is shocked that she’s sitting there, her hand now on my back, being, I don’t know, friendly and comforting. But part of me knows this is just how she is. I don’t think Meredith stays mad at people very long. She’s right, she is too nice. “You can’t let some asshole from your past keep you down. You can’t let every little snag that happens turn you into this. Things happen, you use it to better yourself, but you’re doing the opposite. You’re hiding from everything because of shit that’s happened to you. You know that’s not the way to solve things, but you don’t care cause you’d rather give up than try.”
I don’t really know how she knows all this shit unless Trace has told her. I haven’t really opened up to her about my past relationships so I’m assuming that’s the case. Dammit. Trace broke down to her and now she’s trying to get us back together, and while I’m thankful for that, I don’t know what to do with it. I kind of want her out of my business and out of my personal life.
But I guess that’s the thing about this career that I forgot, that I never really realized, even in the beginning. You can not be professional when your title is “personal assistant”. I should have known that from the start. I should have known I was going to have to open up to people and I was going to have to let her open up to me as well, and not complain about that.
“I’m tired of trying,” I say and rub my hands over my face. “All I ever do is try and nothing works.”
“Courtney…” She sighs and pulls her hand off my shoulder and turns so she’s facing me, her one leg bent against the bed and hooked behind her other leg that’s dangling off the bed. “Look, I want you to be happy and if that’s not here, not at this job, fine. The only thing that made you happy on this tour was Trace and you let him go, you pushed him away and now you’re heartbroken. I get it. I just didn’t know you guys were this deep ya know, in love and stuff.”
I shake my head. “We weren’t.”
That’s what sucks so bad about this. We weren’t that deep, we weren’t in love. We just fucked around. Yeah, I was having those feelings. Maybe I did trick myself into thinking I loved him and maybe somewhere I thought he loved me.
But I know now that was all a joke, just one huge fucking joke put on me.
She laughs and shakes her head, staring at me until I’m forced to look back at her. “Yes you were. No...” She points and smiles a little. “You still are, both of you are just…”
I look back down at the floor and just stare at it. I’m starting to feel numb from this whole situation. I wish she would have just fired me so I could have gone home. Home…ha, I don’t even really know where that is. Sure I have that place in LA, but it doesn’t feel like mine. I’ve barely even lived there.
“Dammit Courtney…” She’s pissed off again and stands off the bed and points at me. “If you don’t turn this around now you’re gonna regret it your whole life. Giving up isn’t the way the world works, but you can do it! You can throw up your hands, sit in your hole and not care, but if you really want to make something of your life you have to try, even if it fails.”
I shake my head at her and say, “You’re right, and I know this Meredith. But I just…”
She rolls her eyes. “You won’t let yourself go back to him and admit you were wrong.”
I shrug. Maybe that’s the reason. That’s what I hate so much about this, that’s why I’m so numb, because I don’t know why I did what I did. I don’t know why I freaked out and panicked. I don’t know why I pushed him away. There are a million little reasons but all of them don’t add up, and all of them don’t make it justified.
That’s the thing. I fucked up. I acted ridiculous and instead of taking a breath, saying I’m sorry and sucking it up and going about my day and my life and my job…I fucking hid from everything and everyone.
“Maybe, maybe it is as simple as pride. I let a man become my life before and I let go of my pride and he made me feel like a fool.”
“Ok, so what?” I just look at her. “You and I both know that Trace wouldn’t do that to you. You and I both know that Trace has been more hurt than either of us really understand.”
I hate to admit that she’s right. I hate to think that I keep blaming my life on what I let some asshole do to me a year ago, when we weren’t even engaged, when a wedding wasn’t even planned. Trace had it deeper and stronger than I did. Back then I was a lost little girl that hung onto everything that this guy said and did. I’m not that way with Trace, and I never have been. I’m stronger now.
But maybe it did bother me that the only thing that was making me happy in my life was him.
And I swore to myself I would never let a man be the reason I was happy again. But maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe being in a relationship with someone can make you happy and turn you around.
And if you fuck up that relationship you can be left sitting here feeling sorry for yourself if you are as weak as I am. I hate that. I hate realizing how weak I really am—how my whole fucking life I’ve put on his barrier, this mask of being a strong woman when really all I am is a little girl waiting, praying for someone to like me.
“I guess that is a problem I have. I always assume that I’ve been through more shit than everyone else, that my problems are these things that I’ve dealt with and moved on from, but in reality I haven’t dealt with them, and in reality they are nothing compared to other people’s. And maybe, maybe that’s what happened with you…” She just stares at me and her eyes turn from concern to a little worry, and then she ends up looking down at the floor like I’ve been.
“Ya know, you fucking thought you were pregnant and I looked down on you for being so insecure about it. I looked down on you for being so open with Justin and not caring who sees you with him, not caring how expressive you are with him. Maybe me thinking that way was a way for me not to be so jealous of how easy you were able to be in love with him without any worries.”
She keeps looking down and says softly, “Courtney, this isn’t about me and Justin or really about me and you anymore. This is about you and Trace.”
She’s right. And I bow my head and feel tears come to the corners of my eyes. I’ve never in my life felt more lost than I do right now.
“What the hell am I going to do?”
“Take a moment, take a few hours. And then go after him. This is the last night, Courtney. Tomorrow I fly back home, we all do.”
“I don’t even know what or where home is right now,” I say. I’m crying now, hard. I feel pathetic and stupid.
I’m supposed to be stronger than crying. I shouldn’t cry. I shouldn’t be this girly. But I fucking am. And honestly, it feels good to let this out. I feel so lost but she’s so right. This can all be fixed easy if I just go for it.
But I’m too fucking scared to go for it.
“I’m giving you the next month and a half off. I won’t be around, I won’t need you at all. Go figure yourself out. Figure you and Trace out and I’ll call you when I get back from my trip with Justin, and if you want to still be my PA and if you still really wanna work hard at it, we’ll talk about it. And if you realize this isn’t where you want to be, I’ll understand. It’s ok to quit Courtney, but it’s not ok to give up.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?” I ask, wiping at my eyes.
Suddenly she’s sitting by me again and she’s hugging me, her head on my shoulder.
I never thought after all the bull shit I’ve put her through, of making her feel bad, of making myself feel better by looking down on her, by leaving her when she needed me the most that’d she’d be here comforting me.
I never thought that she’d actually fucking be my friend.
“Maybe…” She pulls back a little bit and looks at me like my mother did when I was little, but not because I did something wrong, but because she cares for me and wants the best for me. “But I have more respect for people who admit they can’t do something, to quit something they realize they aren’t ready or right for. People who just give up and don’t try, well that’s just not ok, not in this business and definitely not in relationships.”
“I really wanted to be good at this,” I say harshly.
“And you were Courtney, you just…life gets in the way sometimes. I think you have the ability to be a brilliant PA, but maybe not with me, or maybe in a different arena, or maybe you just need to sort some stuff out with yourself before you take this path.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry for hurting your feelings.”
“You didn’t…” She starts to say, and I know she doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. But I have to apologize. I have to.
“Yeah, I did. Every time you tried to include me or be interested in my life and I cut you off, I hurt your feelings. I am sorry about that ‘cause you’re a sweet girl, Meredith. You deserve all the best and you are a good friend.”
“Ok, I’m getting annoyed.” She pulls away and stands up and I just stare at her as she rolls her eyes and then breaks out in a smile. “I feel like we’re at high school graduation or something.”
It makes me laugh for just a moment. It’s the only thing that’s made me smile in a fucking week.
She suddenly pulls her phone out, looks at it, smiles and I know what that means.
“You leaving?”
She nods. “Yea, Justin just texted me. We’re going to the venue early. He wants to…” She cuts herself off and lifts her eyes from her phone to me for a moment and then blushes and looks back down at her phone. She was rambling, like normal, saying what was running through her mind. She cringes a little as she stares at me, “Never mind.”
“What?”
“You…” She blushes some more and then laughs. “Really, you do not wanna know. Let’s just say he’s getting all sentimental and wants to do…” She giggles and starts pressing buttons on her phone, texting him back, I guess. “…everything one last time.”
I nod and say, “Have fun.”
Suddenly she’s got her phone in one hand and my hand in the other, swinging it a little bit. “Courtney, come to the venue tonight. Or at least go see Trace. You know where his room is. He might have an attitude at first, he might be a little harsh, but all he wants in this whole world is for you to come talk to him. I promise you you’ll make up and be happy and it’ll be great.”
I shrug, even though I know it will take a huge force to get me out of this room today and tonight. “Maybe…”
“Be happy Courtney,” she sighs. “You have one of the nicest, most fun men on the planet head over heels for you. You get paid really well, you now have time off—Hello!—Paid time off for the next month and you can figure out what you want, and you’ve got me and Angie and you know we’d give you great recommendations if you want to go anywhere else.”
Dammit, I was doing ok there for a second when she was talking about herself and now I’m back to frowning again and my eyes burn. “I’ve fucked up too much to be happy.”
“Everyone fucks up in their life Courtney, everyone. Almost every day I do something stupid that I wish I hadn’t done. Several times a year I’ll do something major that’s huge and stupid and that I hate and get bummed about. But I don’t dwell on it. I don’t sit around and get depressed about it. I’m not perfect and I freak out easily and get frustrated easily, but I try not to let the bad shit in my life over take all the good. You could have a great life Courtney, you just gotta grab it!”
Her phone starts playing one of Justin’s songs and she rolls her eyes and smiles and brings it to her ear. “Yeah, I know. I’m coming…” She gasps and her mouth drops for a second, but she’s still smiling. “Oh my god, you perv! Yes…” Her voice gets quiet, she turns from me, but I can still see the expressions in her face through the mirror. She’s biting her lip as she says, “Stop it…Justin I know. Yes! Kay…” She’s smiling and I can see the excitement in her face. “You too…”
I felt that excitement with Trace. I was able to hide it more than Meredith. But dammit I could feel it when he called me and looked at me.
I want to feel it again.
“I gotta go, ” she says, breathing deep and sliding her phone back into her jean’s pocket. “Cheer up, seriously.” She laughs a little and waves her hand in the air. “We got the apologizes out of the way, you’re off the hook job wise and we can figure it out later, everything else is up to you now.”
“Yeah…” I say, nodding distantly. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I should come out tonight, just go for it, see what he will do. Maybe he’ll want to talk. Maybe him talking with Meredith about this is a good sign. Maybe we will work out.
Maybe I’ll be able to give into myself and act like Meredith does and not care so much about every other little thing in the world.
Maybe I’ll just sit here and smoke some more.
“Ugh, you don’t look any better than you did when I first came in.”
I look up and she’s by the doorway staring at me with her head cocked to the side and her hand on her hip.
“Meredith…” I shake my head, and force myself to stand up. I smile at her. It’s forced and I know she knows that, but at least I’m trying now. “Go hang out with Justin. Stop worrying about me, I’m…” I sigh and force myself to say it and to try and believe it. “I’ll be fine.”
She shrugs a little and waves, and soon the door clicks shut and she’s gone.
I try to believe it, but I do a very poor job of convincing myself that I am “fine.”
But she’s right. I have to fucking try. ‘Cause if I just give up now, if I give up on him, I don’t know what will happen to me.
I used to look down on her for being so dependent on Justin, but damn, I’m more dependent than she is. I need Trace, he’s…he’s all I got.
And even if all this is doomed to fail, if all this crumbles at my feet, I should let him know that. I should let him know how much he means to me, how much I need him and want him in my life.
God, I should just…just go out there and do it.
I should at least try.
Story Tags: assistant justin tabloids
