Page 91 of Fun at Parties
“I’m training for a marathon and my relationship just ended,” Summer reads. “How do I get my focus back?”
If this person is anything like me, they won’t. They’ll just keep going and keep feeling like shit. “Put one foot in front of the other,” I say. “It’ll get easier with time. It may even help you heal. And afterward, you’ll be a person who ran amarathon.What an accomplishment! You deserve to be that person, so don’t let this stop you.”
It’s a great place to end, but my mouth keeps moving. “That’s the thing about life, right? It’s hard, but we keep going. The key is that we do it together. You have me, and I have you.”All I have is them,I think.All I have is CycleLove.
Back in L.A., I will live alone, far from everyone who matters to me, and make smoothies for one and go to work every day, where I will pass my crappy ex-boyfriend in the hallway and then talk to these people through a screen about how awesome it all is. My eyes fill with tears. “We get through it!” Keeping my voice steady is a struggle. I grab a towel and pretend to wipe sweat from my face.
“Are youcrying?” Tracy asks in my ear. Shit. “Quinn, ifyou’re crying, use it. It’s perfect. The vulnerability.” I subtly shake my head. “It would mean a lot to them,” she presses. “They can relate. Let them see.”
She doesn’t care what it means to them, except when it affects CycleLove’s bottom line. And obviously she doesn’t care about me.
I’ve always been defensive when people called CycleLove a cult. I looked at it from the perspective of our riders, and it seemed like a huge exaggeration. But what about for me? Tracy and Co. expect me to show their preferred quantity of abdomen and smile as often as their tracker says I should. They want me to use my pain for their benefit.
They’d prefer that CycleLove be my entire world. They want me to put myself in the hands of their nutritionist and their social media expert, so I become the version of myself they think is best. They encourage us to socialize outside work and date each other—probably one reason I don’t have any friends in L.A.—and they mine those relationships for content. Ideally, in their minds, we believe in the brand wholeheartedly, and we can’t walk away. Which makes it sound…a little like a cult.
I will not cry for them. They already get enough from me. They don’t get this too.
The smile I give the camera is my absolute pearliest. “Thanks for joining me, everyone! If you want to sign up for a free trial of CycleLove, you can use the code QUINNFREE. Have a great night!”
It’s a small victory. A crumb I’ve managed to keep for myself. But they took everything else, and I’m the one who handed it to them.
Chapter 31
I leave for Seapoint atthe first hint of dawn. Bailey got home last night, and I need her.
The miles pass in a blur, and I’m startled when I stop for gas and realize I’m already past Baltimore. Inside, I fill a giant cup with Diet Coke to fuel me and like a few posts about my live class. When I check my messages, the one at the top turns my stomach to a block of ice:Is it true that your family got rich off Jolee? That shit was SUCH a scam. Are you a scammer?
I might be.
Tracy brushing off my concerns after directing me to channel more girl power. Summer telling the woman with cancer that everything happens for a reason. Me, not pushing back hard enough on any of it.
CycleLove doesn’t give a shit about actual empowerment. They want to sell the illusion of empowerment. And that is a scam.
“Excuse me?” The cashier raps his knuckles against the counter. “Are you ready to pay?”
I look up. There are four people waiting behind me, and I’m here in my own world, stress-chugging Diet Cokeas I worry about the con I’m a part of. God, I really am becoming my mother.
Work is never just about work, is it? For my mom, it was about identity. For me it’s about security. But other things matter too, and it’s time to get them back.
Driving into Seapoint has always felt like slipping my feet into a pair of broken-in shoes. My stomach knows the spot on the bridge over the inlet where my tires are going to rumble before it happens. I don’t have to think in order to look left at the exact moment necessary to catch the brilliant, straight-shot view down Sixth Avenue, of the place where the continent ends.
I should drive the three blocks to the beach to make the whole coast-to-coast thing official. Instead, I follow the road that hugs the marina. Today, the bay reflects the gray of the foggy sky like a tarnished mirror, and the wind whips viciously through my hair when I roll down the window. There’s a fishy note in the air, which I welcome into my lungs because it means I’mhere.
Bailey rents a cute little house on the west side of town, and I almost miss the turn onto her street. I stop short and hang the left too sharply, which means that despite my best maternal effort to throw my arm out as protection, my plant tumbles from its spot on the passenger seat to the floor. The pot splinters. The dirt spills. If this was meant to test our friendship the same way an egg is meant to test a high school student’s readiness for parenthood, I just failed at the last possible second.
I’m laughing, but I think I’m also crying. My eyes aredefinitely watering, at least, when I pull into Bailey’s driveway and turn off the ignition. She must have been waiting by the bay window, because within milliseconds she steps outside, pads through the grass in bare feet, and squints to assess me through my window. The contorted face, the collapsed shoulders, the cackling sobs. She takes it all in and, to her credit, does not back away in terror.
Instead, she opens the door and smooths my hair. “I was afraid it might be something like this.”
Over the last few days, I’ve realized that I have to tell Bailey everything. Our friendship deserves honesty, and I know now that I need to acknowledge the things that turn me red inside instead of burying them.
My plan wasn’t to vomit out the truth like I was possessed by emotional salmonella, but I can’t help it. The CycleLove saga comes out while I untie my shoes. By the time I beeline for the bathroom to pee out the thirty-two ounces of soda I drank in the car, I’ve already covered the broad strokes of every gripe I have against Tracy and Caleb, so I move on to enumerating the disasters that took place on the road trip. Bailey stands outside the door, listening, and when I open it and we come face to face again, I say, “Also, I’m in love with Nate.”
Her eyebrows ascend to the heavens. “That’s—”
“Horrible. It’s horrible.”
“Oh my god. I wondered whether something would happen between you two after you moved to L.A., but you’re both so damn secretive. When did it start?” she asks.
