Page 75 of Business or Pleasure

“The rest of my life,” I repeat. “That’s too much pressure. Can anyone really say, definitively, what they want to be doing for the rest of their life in their twenties or thirties?” He moves to my wrists, thumbs dipping into my skin. “I like this. Working on the book with you, actually feeling like we’re collaborating. It’s different from the others.”

A grin. “Are you saying I’m your favorite?”

“Only if you promise not to get a complex about it.” I shift my weight underneath me, half hoping this massage ends soon while also wishing he’d never stop. “Even when I was enjoying this work, it wasn’t fulfilling, not in the way I thought it would be when I started out in journalism. Even when I was at The Catch, I don’t know if I felt fulfilled every day. I’ve probably built it up in my mind because the layoff really sank my mental health, but creatively, professionally, fill in the blank—I didn’t want to write listicles for the rest of my life. I want to love what I’m doing with my whole heart. Or is that just a lie that society sold millennials when we were young, and none of us really love our jobs?”

“Some of us do,” he says. “But I see what you’re saying. It reminds me of those posters every teacher had in their classrooms. Shoot for the moon—”

“—and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” I finish with him. That bullshit kind of encapsulates the millennial experience. Because the thing is, some of the stars are really fucking far away from the moon. And maybe you don’t want one of those distant stars at all. Maybe you never wanted the moon in the first place, you don’t know if you even want to go to space, but you’ve got to make a decision soon. And it better be something you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life.

There’s just no room for uncertainty, the place I seem to live these days.

“Before this trip, I felt completely trapped,” I continue. “They told us we could have it all but that’s just not true. We could do something creative, but also something stable. Something fulfilling, but that doesn’t turn you into a workaholic. Something good for the planet, but that also makes money. I grew up with everyone telling me how special I was, which was amplified by being born on Leap Day. It was always, ‘You’re going to do something great’ and ‘You can do whatever you want’ and never ‘It’s okay if you don’t figure it out right away.’ But I’m starting to wonder if none of that is true.”

“Maybe ghostwriting isn’t too different from acting.” Finn drops my hands, and maybe worse than the massage is the way his face is inches from mine, his eyes sincere. “You’re assuming someone’s voice and identity for a little while, promising to take good care of it.” He rubs at the back of his neck. “I feel that way, too,” he says. “Trapped. By my brain sometimes, when I wish I could stop the obsessive thoughts but I’m too deep in a spiral. Or when I think about the general perception of OCD being connected to cleanliness, which is true for some people but not for everyone. And then I start worrying I fall into that stereotype, even though it’s not about things being neat and tidy for me. It’s, if this food has gone bad, it’s going to poison me or someone I love. I have impostor syndrome about my OCD. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“No,” I say. “I have impostor syndrome about nearly every facet of my identity.”

“Our brains are cruel, cruel organs.”

We’re quiet for a few moments while snow flurries paint the night sky and the fire slowly turns to ash. Our relationship has been a strange journey, the physical and emotional pieces coming together at different times. I haven’t been this vulnerable with someone in a long time, and it feels freeing. Comfortable. Safe.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” I start. “About my past. If that’s okay?”

Finn’s brow furrows. “Of course. You can tell me anything.”

Right. I already knew that, really, but hearing it makes the words come even easier. If I’m going to be truly open with him, I can’t go back—and maybe I don’t want to.

Maybe I have always been able to trust him like this.

“I had an abortion,” I say. Not looking away. Not avoiding eye contact. “My sophomore year of college.”

Finn nods slowly, letting me decide how much I want to share.

“I’d been seeing this guy for a few months. David. I wasn’t always the best at taking birth control pills, and we just kind of assumed since we were using condoms, we were being safe. But I missed a period, and then I started feeling nauseous, like, all the time, so I took a test. And it was positive.” David had been sweet, equally happy to go to an off-campus party or watch a movie on the threadbare couch in the house he shared with eight other roommates. We’d met sitting next to each other in a physics class we were both taking for a science credit. “He told me that it was my decision, that he’d support whatever I wanted to do. I could see my whole career stretched out in front of me, or at least my vision of what I wanted it to be, and when I saw those two lines on the stick, it just... completely changed.

“I didn’t have the money to raise a kid,” I continue, running a fingertip along the floral comforter. “I didn’t want to raise a kid, not when I had so many other plans for my future. So I think I knew, the moment I first thought I might be pregnant, what I was going to do. It’s not this deep, dark secret, but I wanted to tell you because it’s part of me. Part of my history.”

Finn takes another few moments to collect himself, the way he always does when he isn’t sure what to say. He’s looking at me with a careful intensity, one that sets every anxious cell in my body at ease. “I’m so glad you could make that choice. And I’m not judging you. At all,” he says, voice ever steady. “I’ve never had anyone tell me that before. Maybe you could tell me if I’m fucking up this reaction?”

“No,” I say. The relief is instantaneous. “You’re not.”

“You can tell me anything you want about it. Or nothing. Whatever you feel comfortable saying.”

When I think about that day, what I remember most is the way my mom gripped my hand in the waiting room, told me she was there for whatever I needed. How fast and relatively painless the procedure itself was, a little discomfort and then some cramping afterward. I’d never known whether I wanted kids someday, not really—it was always something I thought I’d figure out when I was older. And maybe I do, one day, but I’m still not sure. I only knew I didn’t want one when I was nineteen.

As it turns out, there’s nothing about it that I feel uncomfortable telling him. “I was lucky that in Washington State, it wasn’t too difficult to find a clinic, and I was ten weeks along, still in the first trimester. There were protestors outside, just a few, but once I got inside, everyone was so kind. My mom went with me, and it was really just... a medical procedure. It was just a thing that happened, and it was the right choice for me,” I say. “I know I had a much easier time than a lot of people—because of how early it was, how supportive my parents were, because I could afford it. And I’m grateful for all of that.” I take what feels like my seventh deep breath in the past few minutes. “I don’t regret my abortion. I don’t even think about it very often, if I’m being honest.”

The look on his face—I can’t describe it in any other way except genuinely affected.

“Thank you,” he says, voice solid and true. “For telling me. For trusting me with this.”

“If someone’s going to be part of my life, I need them to know this about me. And I need them to accept it. Otherwise... either we won’t be close, I guess, or we won’t be in each other’s lives for very long.”

Too late, I realize I’ve indicated some closeness between us that extends beyond this trip, beyond this book. But Finn doesn’t even flinch.

“I’d like to be in your life for a while,” he says. “If you’ll let me.”

He raises an arm, glancing at me, eyes asking a silent question. When I nod, he drapes it across my shoulders. Rubs my back. I drop my chin to his shoulder, letting myself exhale into him.

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