Page 48 of Guy's Girl
She inhales. Exhales.
That’s it, then. She won’t chase Adrian anymore. She’ll stop texting him, stop responding to his Instagram stories. If he genuinely likes her, he’ll reach out. And if he doesn’t?
She’ll have her answer.
***
Back in her bedroom, Ginny takes out her notebook for the first time in weeks. She stares at its empty insides. Page after page, blank after blank. Nothing since the day she arrived in New York.She does not have a story to write. She does not have a character or a plot or a setting. She has only one sentence. Twelve words bouncing around and around the inside of her head. She scribbles them out. As soon as they have been excised from her body, she flips the journal shut again, spent.
We only tell each other the truth when it’s already too late.
Two weeks later.
No matter how hard Adrian focuses on work, his mind keeps wandering back to his phone. To Ginny.
It’s been like this for days. The constant loop of questions:Why did she run out so quickly the last time he saw her? Why hasn’t she texted him since? Was it truly because of what he said?And look: it’s not that he’s suddenly decided he wants a relationship—given his miserable schedule, that’s still out of the cards—but he’d become accustomed to her presence, her smile, the heat of her tiny body curled up beside his. Its absence is a shock. Like an old friend who leaves without warning.
His phone buzzes. He lifts it up, checking the email that just landed in his personal inbox. It’s from the head of international strategy at Disney, the woman with whom he interviewed the day before.
Hi Adrian,
I really enjoyed talking with you yesterday. I’ve spoken to the team, and we all agree that you would be a great fit.
I’m pleased to extend to you an official job offer as a global analyst for our Eastern European division, working out of our New York City headquarters. Should you choose to accept...
Adrian’s heart starts pounding. He fumbles with his pocket, pulling out his phone to text Ginny the good news.He’s free. He’sfinallygoing to be free. He scrolls down, looking for her contact.
Then heremembers.
Part III
One YearLater
Adrian should be more nervous. That’s what he’s thinking as his driver—an ancient man in a 1974 Suburban with torn leather seats—whisks him from Ferenc Liszt International to Tristan’s house in Hegyvidék, Budapest’s swanky twelfth district.
It’s strange to not be driving straight to his grandparents’ home in Szentendre. The neighborhood through which they now drive is nothing like the artist district. It’s gated driveways and European sports cars. Security guards and private mountain compounds. He can practically smell the wealth drifting from the hillside, even through the Suburban’s closed windows.
“You got a house here?” his driver asks in Hungarian.
“Nem,” Adrian says. “My friend does.”
Adrian was surprised when he received the invitation to join his old roommates for a week’s vacation in Europe. Since things ended with Ginny, he’s barely spent any time with them. It’s nothing personal; after starting his new job, Adrian was absorbed into the Disney social culture, his calendar packed with happy hours and conferences and corporate retreats. All at once, he no longer had time for his college friends. He would have thought that his absence would put his old roommates off inviting him on a group trip. Apparently not.
Or maybe they simply felt guilty not inviting their Hungarian friend to Hungary.
For him, the trip couldn’t have come at a better time. He just wrapped up his first big project at Disney—a ten-month-long slog outlining strategy for the company’s new streaming service overseas. His focus area: Eastern Europe, including Hungary.
Working for Disney sounds sexy. It isn’t. Though in front of the curtain, Disney’s content is nothing short of magical, the machine behind the scenes is purely a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. And like every other multibillion-dollar conglomerate, it runs on bureaucracy, bonuses, and bullshit.
Adrian loves every second of it.
He might not be the one creating the content, but he’s the one who ensures it gets into the hands of kids like himself. The ones who watch cartoons from the floor of their grandparents’ homes in Hungary, Bulgaria, or Romania.
The streaming service was announced globally two weeks ago, marking the close of almost a year’s work and the perfect opportunity for Adrian to head out on vacation. He took off three weeks: one to spend with his friends, two with his grandparents.
The house toward which they are now driving had been rented out by Tristan’s father for a company retreat that month. According to Tristan, they hosted them every year in different locales: Costa Rica, London, Singapore, Budapest... His father is a terrifyingly successful figure: the head of one of New York’s largest hedge funds, once cited by theWall Street Journalfor his habit of lying down on the floor of conference rooms and pretending to sleep when he wants a meeting to end. It’s no secret that Tristan has spent his entire life chasing his father’s success. Get him drunk enough and he’ll tell you all about it.
But Tristan isn’t the one Adrian is nervous to see. Not even close.
