Page 41 of Fun at Parties
I’d like to smack my head against a wall, but I settle for banging my phone against my forehead a few times. First, I was boring and not fun. Now I’m fun but not deep enough.
Quinn:Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got it covered! I’m about to post a “day in the life” video, and I’m going to a party tonight that will have exactly the vibe we’re trying to achieve. You’ll be happy with the results, I promise.
She responds immediately.Great. Regardless, can you share your account information with Summer so she can help you out and track your analytics?
I don’t love that idea, but pushing back for a second time in one conversation doesn’t feel tenable, so I send my password. Her command to “go deeper” makes my stomach hurt. It’s not that I don’t know how—I could do it without leaving this bench, with a simple video thanking people for their support, telling them how happy I am, how great it feels to take time to focus on myself.
I pull up my camera to see how it would look. The golden-hour sunlight turns me glowy, like I’m fully hydrated, wearing airbrush foundation, and radiatingpositive energy. But I can’t bring myself to press the red button. It doesn’t feel right, acting like I have my shit together. It’s one thing to stay positive in my own head, or on a ride when I’m encouraging everyone to finish one last climb. It’s another to build an elaborate façade to sell them on the idea that happiness is easy (easier if you buy a CycleLove bike and take my classes!).
I need to tide Tracy over until I figure this out. I add one more clip to my video, a shot I took through the windshield outside Vail, of the road flanked by rolling green hills with snow-capped mountains in the distance. My bare feet were on the dashboard. Only momentarily, thanks to the morbid Dad Fact that Nate told me about what can happen to your anatomy if you’re in that position during a car crash.
This is how desperate I am: I’m posting my feet on the Internet for free. I add a sunwashed filter, trending audio, and a vaguely inspirational but ultimately meaningless caption about enjoying the journey. I post it.
The door swings open. “There you are. I woke up and you were gone,” Nate says. His hair is sticking up and his white T-shirt is rumpled.
“I figured you’d sleep longer.”
He glances down at my phone, which is playing my own video on repeat. His mouth tightens with disapproval. “Let’s get ready now,” he says. “There’s somewhere I want to take you before the party. I promise we won’t be late.”
There’s something intimate about getting ready in the same space as another person. I hear Nate spit out his toothpaste, I see him fasten his belt. He reachesaround me to grab his razor off the bathroom counter as I straighten my top, a lemon-yellow yoga tank that almost looks like it’s not activewear. When we make eye contact in the mirror, my brain generates a scene from a French cosmetics commercial: him crowding me from behind, kissing the side of my neck. How did we do this for thirty days straight when I crashed with him, while maintaining secret crushes on each other andnothooking up?
That’s all out in the open now, but I don’t know where it leaves us. I shouldn’t even be thinking about it, but there’s something here—some kind of stubborn chemistry that refuses to die—and part of me wants to explore it. If only I knew how he felt about me now.
Thirty minutes later, the sun is descending in the sky and we’re pulling up to the Denver Botanic Gardens. “Seriously?” My face is nearly pressed to the window.
He rushes to throw out a disclaimer. “We don’t have a ton of time and I know almost nothing about Denver, so this is the best I could do. But we don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.”
“Nate. Stop. It’s perfect.”
There was relief in his voice when he found me outside the Airbnb and heat in his gaze when our eyes met in the mirror. For the second time today he’s tried to plan something nice for us to do. Those are real, undeniable observations. Like the golden-hour sunlight but in pill form, warming me up from the inside out as I swallow it down.
The only sounds as we walk through the gardens are the rustling of the leafy plants that surround us and the occasional murmur of other visitors. Nate’s presence nextto me is reassuring, but I don’t feel obligated to keep up a conversation as we follow the path. Scanning the butterfly bushes and goldenrods, reading the placards with the plants’ Latin names, lulls me into a trance.Liatris ligulistylis.Rocky Mountain Blazing Star.
I may not be going full Cheryl Strayed. A botanic garden is the opposite of wild. But I think I understand the whole journey-of-self-discovery thing.
I’ve gotten used to living in a constant state of internal vigilance. Monitoring my own emotions, vetting them to determine whether they’re safe or useful and if not, how to make them go away. But in this moment, I go as quiet on the inside as we are on the outside.
“This is the happiest I’ve been in a while,” I say eventually. It spills out of me like water over the sides of the fountain in the distance. I don’t have to think about it or talk myself into it. It’s just the truth.
Nate pulls at his collar, and an odd look crosses his face. “Can we…?” He gestures toward a bench across from a bed bursting with red and orange dahlias. “I need to tell you something. It’s about the camp.”
I plant myself on the seat. Nate is slow to settle in next to me, giving me plenty of time to catalog the way the setting sun picks up the gold in his hair. He rubs the back of his neck.
When he finally stops fidgeting, he still looks uncomfortable. “When I got my first job working for Logan’s parents when I was fifteen, I didn’t know I was starting my career.” Okay, we’re reflecting. I like it. “In fact, if I had known I was starting my career, I’d have been confused and pissed. Not because I didn’t like it—I’ve alwaysliked it—but because I assumed I’d end up doing something bigger.
“That job kept me going when my family life fell apart. For a while it was the only thing that made me feel like I had any value whatsoever. And then the Stantons encouraged me to apply for the job in L.A., and I’ll always be grateful for that. That they saw something in me? And not just as an instructor, but in a leadership role? The last couple years doing that job have changed everything for me. They’ve changedme.”
He turns slowly until his knee bumps mine. “Quinn, I fucked this up. I should’ve told you everything from the start.”
My nerves spring to life. “What do you mean?”
His forearms flex as his fingertips curl around the edge of the bench. “I’m not building a swim school in L.A. When I went home for Blake’s birthday earlier this year, Logan was in town, and we had dinner with his parents. They told us they’re ready to retire. I’m trying to get him onboard to convince them to sell to us.”
“First Cove,” I croak. “You want to move home?”
He winces. “Iammoving home. I have a winter rental lined up in Seapoint, and I quit my job. Sold my car. The last few weeks I’ve been tying up loose ends, clearing my stuff out of the apartment and shipping things home. I needed to show them how serious I am about this.”
“You’re not going back,” I say, frozen in place. “You don’t live in L.A. anymore.”
