Loved - A Novel (15 page)

              I got ready to go to his house with great care. I wore a little blue Jim Morrison t-shirt, my dark A-pocket jeans, and white pointy-toed heels. Rock and Roll. I scrunched my long blonde hair so it looked like I had beach waves. California girl.

              I was so nervous when I knocked on his door. He answered and I walked into his wonderland, the rabbits and the birds all saying
hello, welcome home
.             

              His mom was there and she asked me all about school and California. I could tell by her questions that Chase had been talking to her a lot about me. Could it be that he was proud and not just angry?

              We talked for hours. We did end up lying down on the bed and watching part of a movie but he never touched me except for hugging me hello and goodbye, and I didn’t stay very late. These last few visits we had both been so hesitant with every movement and every word, like if we touched each other we might turn to dust, like if we talked about our feelings we might spontaneously combust.

July, 2004.

              It was almost time to graduate college and move to L.A. and I couldn’t wait! I may not have had
the celeb-studded pool and all the free time like I had at Belmont West, but I preferred to be busy anyway. I would be working and making a name for myself doing something like managing bands. I would find some new friends and settle into a small but charming apartment. I imagined that I would wear sweet colorful A-line skirts and tanks and carry a Louis Vuitton, spending weekends on the beach riding bikes and getting a tan. First, I had to focus on my last two classes before my new life could start.

              Because I was only going to be in Nashville for a month, I stayed with Lacey and her roommates instead of getting an apartment. When no one else was home, I would sing Julie Roberts’ songs.
Oh the things lovers do when it’s over.  Oh the things lovers do when it’s done. Find a cool bottle or a warm shoulder, wake up older and try to move on.
  I sang to the bathroom mirror, an earphone in one ear while the other dangled below my shoulder.

              My car was still in L.A. so I had to walk everywhere or get a ride. I felt stranded. It was too hot to walk anywhere.; every day was over a hundred degrees. Kyle and Ethan were living in a house across the street from Belmont and I went over to visit a few times. I hung out with Lacey and her roommates a little bit. They were really great Christian women and I wanted to be more like them. I wanted to feel like I was really a part of their group but no matter how nice they were to me I knew I would always be an outsider.  When I compared myself to them I felt so dirty and damaged.  They had a way of making me feel lucky to be around them. I studied their clothes and their vocabulary. When I first became friends with Lacey, she taught me which brands of jeans I should be wearing and when I got my first $170 pair of Paper Denim and Cloth jeans, they all joked, “You’re in the club now!” But I wasn’t, really, and I wasn’t in Ethan and Kyle’s club either for that matter.

              One day I called Anna to let her know I was back in Nashville, and she invited me to come out to her new boyfriend’s pool about twenty minutes outside of town. She was already out there so she asked a friend that she worked with at Starbucks, Sophie, to pick me up on her way out there. Sophie was also from the Pittsburgh area and Anna was excited for us to meet. She told me Sophie would be there to get me at 11:00. I got my suit on and packed a beach bag, and then I waited outside until a little black car pulled up.

              “Hi,” she said. “You must be Kim?”

              She had shoulder length light brown hair and tanned, olive skin. She was tiny with cheekbones to envy and eyes the color of burnt honey. I told her where I was from and that I was about to graduate. She told me that she still had one year left as a commercial voice major.
Everyone’s a singer
, I thought. But she had Julie Roberts’ CD playing so at least she had taste. 

              It was great to see Anna and it turned out that Sophie and I had a lot in common. We talked about home and we talked about boys. She seemed to say whatever she thought without concern for what I might think. Whether she was self-assured or just honest I didn’t know but I found it refreshing.  She was funny and she reacted to what I would say in a way that made me feel heard. She was smart and interesting and I think she thought I was too. 
Maybe Sophie and I are in the same club
, I thought.

              The first week of July I flew back to L.A. It was great to have my car again but I still didn’t have a job or an apartment. Well, I kind of had a job. The movie studio had agreed to take me on as a temp; they would call me on days when they needed my help in various departments. The first few days I was in L.A., I
had nothing to do so I spent money that I didn’t have at the Beverly Center Mall and watched a lot of movies at the house where I was staying on a previous Belmont West girl’s couch. She lived in a one-room pool house off Pico Boulevard at a house with no pool.

              Finally, the movie studio called and said they needed me the next day to fill in for the VP’s assistant.
Well, that’s one way to start,
I thought. I was only slightly nervous to be filling such big shoes. Luckily, it wasn’t a day when anything major was happening. I answered the phone and took messages or let her know what or when her next appointment was. I thought it was very exciting to see the idea boards that documented who might play the leads in upcoming films.  There was a different air on this floor compared with the music supervision department where I’d interned. Music people are super laid back but everything had a feeling of importance here. I couldn’t decide if I liked the high-pressure environment or the laid-back atmosphere better.

              The president’s assistant sat in a cubicle next to mine, where I could only see the top of his head over the cubicle wall. We talked a little bit over the office IM. He told me he played a small role in Cruel Intentions II, which I never saw.
  Everyone in Nashville is a singer. Everyone in LA is an actor.  What am I?

              I tossed and turned again on the couch that night. It was hot but that didn’t matter. I would have been awake anyway. Something had been off ever since I got back to L.A., but I had no other plan.
I have nowhere to go. Nashville?  What would I do in Nashville?
I turned over again and wrestled with the blanket, kicking it off one leg. If I were to be working at the movie studio or anywhere, I would be working very, very hard with long hours, high stress and very little free time; it would be a while before I was even in a position that I enjoyed. Would I love this work or this town enough for it to be worth it? I was afraid that I didn’t. I couldn’t afford to live here if I worked in retail. I didn’t have a lot of friends in the city. The only real friends I had made at Belmont West were either back in Nashville or south of L.A., in Huntington Beach or in San Diego.

              My mind continued to spin: The extra twenty pounds I’d gained had me feeling insecure, traffic in L.A. was ridiculous, I kept getting parking tickets because I didn’t understand the parking signs and everything was so expensive.  I was beginning to hate the city, which surprised me. Finally I fell into a hot, restless sleep.

              I woke up the next morning and called Anna in Nashville. She had mentioned that she wanted to move to an apartment in the complex where her boyfriend lived, where we had gone swimming with Sophie. Apartments in that area were affordable on any budget. I could work a retail job in Nashville and still pay my bills until I figured out where to start to get to where I wanted to be.  I had friends there who wanted me around. Anna was thrilled when I told her that I was considering coming back and living with her.

              Next I called Dad to tell him I wanted to go home to Nashville. I think he was relieved but he never said that. He just said, “Okay, whatever you want to do is fine with me.”

              I began to pack the car to drive three days by myself back to Nashville. I gave myself one day to take care of everything that I needed to take care of and I would leave the next day.

              On day one of the drive, I saw my first dome sky. The world was so flat that I could see the level horizon all around me and the sky looked like a dome. Skies like that will give you perspective when nothing else will. The second day, a tumbleweed blew across the interstate.
I’m in a western movie,
I said to myself, laughing. I found it so much easier to laugh now that this weight had been lifted from my shoulders. That night I stayed in Albuquerque and had dinner at an Applebee’s near the hotel. I was truly enjoying being on my own without any plans other than to follow Interstate 40 East.

              The third day my old rock star neighbor from L.A. called. 

              “I just haven’t seen you around lately,” he said, “so I thought I’d call and see how you were.”

              “I’m great, thanks. I left in May but I was back there last week.”

              “And where do you live the rest of the time?”

              “Nashville.”

              “Well that’s great,” he said. “You take care and let me know when you’re in town again.”

              “I will!”

              I can’t believe he just called me
, I told myself.
Your life is weird.

              A week later I found out he died in his L.A. apartment. 

Life really is weird.

August, 2004.

              Anna and I moved into our apartment a week before graduation. Everything I owned except for what I had in my car was in storage. My parents were planning to bring it all with them when they came up for graduation. I slept on my bedroom floor until then.
At least I have a home now.

              My favorite thing about the apartment was my walk-in closet. It was deep and had so much space that I could organize my clothing like I had been taught at Betsey Johnson: light colors to dark, lighter fabrics to heavier, sleeveless to long-sleeved. Sometimes, I would lay on the floor in my closet and look up at the variety of fabrics and colors above me.  Each one so unique, coming together to create a collection that described me in all the ways I can be seen. Some days I wore a hot pink T-shirt and ripped jeans, another day I was in a black dress with thin straps and lace trim across the skirt. Sometimes, it was brown boots with cropped tweed pants and a deep turquoise satin camisole.

              I got a job in retail. Betsey Johnson had replaced me and didn’t have an open spot but there was a store that was moving to a new space in the mall and wanted extra help.  The manager was by-the-book and very good at what she did. I liked her right away, though I was a little scared of her too.  She lived and breathed her job. I’ve always had so much respect for people with that kind of passion. I became the pant expert, familiar with every fit, every fabric and every color. I could look at a customer and tell her not only which fit would flatter her figure but which size would fit best and what we had available.

              I hated what I had to wear to work. I had worn clothes from the store in high school and college and was tired of them. After Betsey Johnson, these clothes were vanilla compared to Chunky Monkey; classic, sure, but bland. Better mixed with other things. My personal style was developing just as my personality was. Even just a little, I was becoming surer of both.

              Things were starting to go a little better now that I was feeling settled. I had Anna, an old friend by now, and then there was Lacey, with whom I was going to the same young church we’d found before I went to L.A. She was also my shopping buddy and the only friend I would share clothes with. However, Sophie was becoming my closest friend. It seemed that she was everything I had been searching for.

              Sophie was the best singer I’d heard at Belmont and that’s saying a lot. There are some seriously talented people at Belmont. Sophie could sing anything and make it sound like her own, as though the melody had been written for her voice alone and the lyrics from her own life. We spent a lot of our time the same ways, reading and listening to music. We always had so much to talk about between our favorite bands, the guys we were interested in and our goals for the future.

              Sophie moved out to our neighborhood, across the complex from the place I shared with Anna. I took her to her first
Dave Matthews Band
concert. We watched all of the Steelers football games together. Our lives aligned so easily.

              I stopped in at Betsey Johnson one day that fall and chatted with one of the girls that I had worked with there before. She told me they were hiring part time. She scheduled me for an interview with Lily, the manager that I had loved working for, and within minutes of the interview Lily hired me back.