Loved - A Novel (12 page)

              “Hello?”

              “Hi!” said a chirpy female voice.

              I was silent and I was filled with a sudden feeling of betrayal and my blood went as cold as their air. It was Crystal.

              “How are you? I ran into one of your friends from school and she gave me your number!” 

              I made a mental note to find out who it was and scold her.

              “Hi. I’m good. Just headed home from class.”

              I didn’t know what to say. This was not someone I wanted back in my life, not now or ever. Even the sound of her voice from hundreds of miles away made me feel like an insignificant little girl, weak and naive. She told me about how she was racing horses in Ohio. I listened and responded on command but I made no comments at all about my life. She couldn’t have even one piece of me anymore. I would not let her do more damage to me. I ended the conversation politely, knowing I’d never answer another call from that number.

              The affair with Ethan started to take a toll on me. He was certainly not the relationship kind and
he was probably not the right guy for me
, but I found myself wanting more. I wanted from him what I was not getting from Chase anymore. And though I knew Ethan wasn’t the answer, he gave me just enough attention that I couldn’t bring myself to walk away. I couldn’t start telling him
no
. He would have to stop asking the question. Until then, I was the girl who would drink all the liquor I was given and sit there in my bra in front of his friends while they drank and smoked pot. I sat there waiting for him to see me as more than I was and yet I was not willing to demand it. I was not willing to act like the girl I wanted them to see. If they were the jokes, I was the punch line.

              Sunday, December 8, 2002

Want to know what college is like?  My fridge is empty, my gas tank is empty, and my bank account is empty.

              I was empty inside, too.

              All my feelings went into my journal now and not into my letters. I was tired of being the one to give, give, give. I wasn’t getting anything in return. I believed in Chase, I believed in us, and I was willing to do what I needed to do to make it work. I just couldn’t keep saying the words when I knew they had no effect.  So I just kept writing to myself.

              December 17, 2002

              Dear Chase,

Tonight I was reading through emails you’ve sent me in the past. In so many of them you said how I made you happy. I made you want to face the day. I made you look forward to the rest of your life. Well, you don’t have me right now and I don’t think you have that feeling either. I don’t think you realize it’s missing. So my guess, more so my prayer is that soon you will know how that works and how madly in love with me you are. Then we can be together because that’s what I want more than anything. And I mean anything. If you said, “Kit, I can’t be so far away from you,” I would say, “PA, here I come!”  Not kidding. I lost you once and I don’t intend to let it happen again. I love who you are. Every inch of your body and every dark corner of your mind. You fascinate me and I love you. I love the way you make me feel about me. With you I’m smart and beautiful and say (some) things worth saying. And I love the way you make me feel about the world. It’s at my fingertips when you’re at my side. I don’t fear the distance. I don’t even fear your uncertainty. We’re a tank. We’re more meant to be than Romeo and Juliet. (We get to live.)  There’s no way God would let me feel like this if you weren’t going to come around.  I’ll give this to you when you do. To say thanks and I believed in us all along. I love you. Kit.

              While I was writing love letters to him that I wouldn’t send, he was sending letters to me that were void of love.  His mood was flat. I couldn’t decide if I was pleased that he wasn’t being hateful or if I was disappointed that he wasn’t being romantic. We were in purgatory, trapped between a heaven and a hell of our own making, waiting for something to change.  Something, but who knew what? Certainly not us.

December 19, 2003

Hey there. How are things? I’m back at school. It’s going ok.  I wish I had more to say. I wish inspiration would just come to me.  It’s happened before when songs would just come to me, like I wrote it all at once. Now there’s just fragments and choruses. I don’t wanna write recycled songs. Oh well, things could be worse. It’s good to have you in my life.  Know that.  I don’t know what to say about romance or what’s gonna happen.  But I do know that much.

“I was in bed with a girl at the end of the world, and she said I’m going home...”

me

December 21, 2003

Kit - Hello, how are you?  I wanted to write.  I dunno, I just felt like it.  So, I dunno if you knew this but whatever was going on between me and Becca has been completely over for quite some time.  She kinda just said it’s done, and I was like...O.  Then I found out she and one of my friends hooked up when they were on a trip this week, and I was like, O.  Whatever.  Well, I guess that’s it.  I’ll talk to you later.

name

              And so I just kept writing to myself.

              My birthday that semester had been an evidence of my failures in creating meaningful relationships. I invited all my guy friends to my party as well as Anna and the girls from Betsey Johnson. I wore a red dress, a color I didn’t often wear because of its boldness. I chose Hamilton’s, my favorite Nashville restaurant, for dinner.  It was warm for November so I sat on the screened patio under an outdoor heater and enjoyed the fresh air.  I knew my server from frequenting the place. He brought me a French martini while I waited for my friends, even though I was only turning twenty.

              Anna had to babysit—she had told me a few days earlier—so I knew she wasn’t going to make it. She said we would do something special later. People were always late, it seemed, but when ten minutes had gone by I called Kyle to see where he and the guys were. 

              “Oh, we’ll stop by later, where is it again?” I knew then
that
they wouldn’t show.

              I called Brittany but she didn’t answer.

              By then I didn’t even feel like calling any of the girls I worked with. I should have known they wouldn’t come.  They were sweet but completely unreliable.

              Happy birthday to me.

              How did I get here, celebrating my birthday on my own? How had I managed to alienate everyone in my life, to isolate myself by choosing people who gave me only so much of themselves and to whom I gave only so much of myself?  Was this a method of protection? Was I scared of being hurt?  Was I afraid to keep hurting other people? All I knew for sure was that I was really, truly alone.

January, 2003.

I hadn’t seen much of Ethan after spring semester began and I found out why one afternoon when Kyle came to see me at my apartment. He acted like he was just stopping by, making small talk at first but when he managed to work into the conversation that Ethan was seeing someone, I knew that was why he had come over. Kyle was the unfortunate messenger.

              I wished I’d been able to walk away on my own strength but at least I finally had the push I needed to emotionally step away from Ethan. I turned some other things around that spring too. Chase emailed sometimes but it was always small talk about what shows he was doing or if he’d played at an open mic night lately. He stopped calling me Kit.  I hated it but at least I wasn’t crying over him and I was sleeping in my own bed most of the time. I wasn’t drinking. I was studying, managing a band at school, writing a lot and getting a proper amount of sleep at night.

              I even found myself praying rather than avoiding the shame of my brokenness. 

              Dear God, please set my watch to your time. Help me be patient and let you remain in control of my life. Thank you, Lord, for loving me and for sending your only son, Jesus Christ, to die to save us from our sins. You give me so much more than I deserve Lord and I praise you and love you and give you my life.  Over and over again.

              God, remember how Chase used to completely adore me? He loved the way I breathed, he loved my hair, he loved it all. I want that again. I want someone to think I’m a dream. I think I deserve that. I’m like a split personality; I’m okay and so not okay at the same time. There’s a war in the Middle East and a war in my soul. I’d love for both to end peacefully and with minimal casualties. 

              There were times when I thought of Chase more than others. Times when I would dream of him, feeling him lie next to me when I turned out the light, feeling his hand hold mine and feeling him kiss me. I’d been dreaming of our dream—our cool bare apartment. The dreams were peaceful, not desperate, not full of sadness. I still believed it could happen.

              I had left my white jacket at Ethan’s the last time I was over there. I wore that jacket often enough to miss it so I had to get it back. On the afternoon I dropped by to pick it up, I could hear music playing so loud that I had to pound on the door to get him to hear it.  He opened the door and gave me that gigantic electric smile; it was the smile that he used when he wanted only one thing, the smile that made me trip over nothing trying to get out the door—if I even made it out the door at all. 

“Hey! To what do I owe this pleasure?” he greeted me.

“Just stopping by to see if you had a jacket of mine here.”

“Oh, sure! How are you?” He let me in the door past him. “You look great.”

Suddenly I felt like I was in a wolf’s den. I had to get out before he could sink his teeth in to me. 

“I’m good thanks. Here it is! I gotta run but I’ll see you…” I didn’t want to say “soon.”

“Cool, yeah, I’ll call you…”  I was gone before he could finish, waved quickly from the sidewalk as I hurried toward home.

Finally, jacket in hand, I had learned to make it out the door.

May, 2003.

              I went to Las Vegas with Service Corps to work
at
the Academy of Country Music Awards and the related press events. During some downtime, I explored the city with Lacey, a girl I met on the trip. I had kind of a girl crush on her right away, from the first moment I saw her as I was jumping into the van that would take us from the airport to the hotel.  She was beautiful, though I don’t think she knew it, and she was wearing the prettiest navy and cream skirt. I
was in awe of her
wardrobe throughout the whole trip and as I got to know he
r,
I liked her a lot as a
person
too. Both of us were often quiet when we were in a group of students, but when left to our own devices, we had plenty to talk about. We started to become friends.

              The day of the awards, I saw a lot of my old friends as I was volunteering on the red carpet. Each volunteer was assigned to an artist or “talent” as they were called; we were to escort them between press interviews much like what I had done at the Country Radio Seminar. The TV host was there as well as the eldest from the band of brothers and a newly signed artist who I knew from my days spent waitressing downtown. He played in the house band at the restaurant where I used to work and the song that I always requested turned out to be one of his hits.

              Although I was the only student to already have friends in this world and I liked thinking that maybe I had a leg up on the others, I was still willing to put in the work as a volunteer. I knew I had a lot to learn and a long way to go to build a career.

              “Hey! Where are you interning this summer?” Lacey asked, coming up beside me as we waited to be assigned to the next wave of arriving talent.

              “A PR firm, you?” I asked.

              “A management company. One of their artists has a big annual event so I’ll mostly be helping with that.  Gosh, her dress is gor-geous!”

              “It is!” I said and then she was off down the carpet with another artist.

As the pre-show wound down, I was buzzing with excitement. I loved the energy of live events far more than any studio or office work I’d done. The flashbulbs on the carpet, the electricity in the air and the slight sense of urgency backstage, it all turned me on. I was completely infatuated.

              Over the summer, I started my first internship for Belmont, filing news clippings for a PR firm that did publicity for several major country music acts. I also modeled for a photo shoot with a coworker at Betsey Johnson who was trying to build her portfolio as a photographer. The best part had been choosing the outfits I’d wear, and in what scenes I’d be wearing them: black and electric pink sitting in an old car; a blue tank and jeans, legs in the pool (jeans and all); a soft white blouse on a bare mattress in a peach colored room; a white miniskirt and jean jacket in front of a wall splashed with graffiti. Putting the visuals together, the color, texture, and mood came as naturally to me as understanding the world of music. I started to wonder if this might be a direction to explore, something having to do with helping the artist create an image. I’d have to learn more about that side of the business.