Page 62 of Fun at Parties
We say our goodbyes, Livvie urging me again to borrow from her wardrobe, and they promise to text me as soon as they spot Logan. By the time Nate slides open the bathroom door and emerges in clean clothes and a cloud of steam, I’ve laid out my own shower supplies and an outfit on the bed.
“We’re sleeping here,” I explain, examining the topI snagged from Livvie. “Livvie doesn’t want to share with Kyla.”
“Oh,” Nate says. The line between his eyebrows appears for a millisecond, but his face is otherwise inscrutable.
Annoyance flares inside me. The prospect of sleeping next to him makes me as shaky as a tower of Jell-O blocks, but his only reaction isOh?
“How was the shower?” I ask.
He’s zoned out, looking at the bed. “Okay,” he says automatically, then shakes his head. “I mean, no, it was incredible. I tried to keep it short so you’d have hot water.”
Mythanksis snippy, and I stomp off to take my own shower. When I step out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, my skin is scrubbed clean and I’m dressed in Livvie’s white crop top, pink miniskirt, and denim jacket, with my own mostly dry silver cowboy boots. My cheekbones and eyes are illuminated with holographic highlighter, and my wet hair is back in a low bun.
I want to watch his face when he sees me, in case I get that movie makeover moment where my beauty gobsmacks him and the power of his newfound devotion brings him to his knees, but I resist. I grab my bag, breeze past him, and slide my sunglasses on. “Ready?”
And when he clambers down the steps after me and answers, “Ready,” in an unsteady voice, I don’t read anything into it.
In the VIP lounge area at the center of the campground, people sit around drinking mimosas and eating a late breakfast from a well-stocked buffet. There are large TVs streaming the festival for anyone too comfortable,hungover, or disinterested to plop their ass into a golf cart and ride over to see it themselves. The shows haven’t started yet, so the TVs are currently showing highlights from last night.
“I don’t know if I can ever go back to being a normal person,” Nate says as he settles into a lounge chair and digs into a plate of cheesy eggs with turkey bacon and fresh tomatoes from the omelet station. “In the last hour, between the shower and this food, I’ve grown accustomed to a VIP lifestyle. I’ll accept nothing less from here on out.”
“If you were in my downline, I could manipulate you so easily.” I take a bite of my egg whites and veggies and pretend to crack my neck. “ ‘This year, our annual convention is in beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah, where our thriving company was founded! Convention is great because it’ssoinspiring to connect with the Jolee community. You know, if you can recruit just one more person to join your team before month-end, you’ll hit Lilac status, and that comes with incredible perks. You’ll get to hang with us in the Go-Getter Lounge, and that means free champagne and mini manis with other top consultants between presentations. You don’t want to miss out on that! I love how Jolee spoils us as a reward for investing in ourselves. Speaking of which—and this is totally confidential, I shouldn’t even be telling you—I’m treating all the girls on my team who come to Convention to the cutest Kate Spade business card holders! I love you all so much. Now, should we see if that cousin of yours is free for a quick call?’ ”
Imitating my mother feels slimy in a disturbinglyfamiliar way. This is exactly how I feel wrestling with the idea of being Single Girl Quinn. Of selling myself as asymbolof something. Convincing people to emotionally invest in me. It’s artificial. Calculating.
A piece of egg falls off Nate’s fork as he stares at me wide-eyed. “That was terrifying. Is that really how it works?”
“Oh, yeah.” I swallow the unsettled feeling. “If you were a mom, I’d throw in a guilt trip about how you’d get to spend more quality time with your kids if you quit your day job to focus on Jolee. At least that was one of my mom’s go-to strategies. Which was funny, because she worked constantly.”
In fact, she’d have a million conversations just like this fake one from her home office while I sat on the couch, waiting for her to come back to the living room so we could start an episode ofNew Girl.Often, I could still hear her on the phone when I trudged up to bed two hours later.
Nate presses his lips together, and I wince at the bitterness in my voice. “It’s not that I resented her for having a career,” I clarify. “She taught me everything I know about hard work. But what she sold was a lie. Jolee didn’t give her any more free time to spend with family than a regular job would’ve—it probably gave her less. We hardly ever spent time together unless I was helping her package gifts for her downline or pose for before-and-after photos with new products. And every time she convinced someone to commit to Jolee full time, that person was doomed to either a schedule like hers or financial failure. Or both.”
“How much did you understand at the time?” Nate asks. “About what Jolee was?”
I rake my fork through my eggs. “It was all I knew. We were fully immersed in it. It’s fucked up to say, but I have so many happy memories from that time, before things started to go bad. You may roll your eyes—Iroll my eyes—but Jolee was our community. At least it felt that way, until it was gone.
“Do you want to know the first time I Googled what a pyramid scheme was? Junior year, the day one of my best friends told me she wasn’t supposed to talk to me anymore because her parents blamed my mom for the ten boxes of worthless Jolee trash they had sitting in their garage instead of a reliable car.”
He opens his mouth, but we don’t have time for sympathy. I toss my plate in the trash. “I see a coupleBeach Housepeople over there. I’m going to ask them if they’ve seen Logan.”
They haven’t, but they heard he headed to the main stage early, so we grab a ride on a golf cart. “I don’t want to be too heavy-handed,” Nate says as we wind down a tree-lined path. “When we find him, let’s be cool at first. Once he warms up to me, I’ll ask if we can talk privately between shows.”
“At what point will you break out the dogcatcher’s pole?”
He shakes his head. “So sassy lately.” Before I can respond, he frowns at his phone and brings it to his ear. “Hello?”
The golf cart pulls to a stop in front of a fenced areawith an entrance flanked by security guards. I thank our driver and hop out, hovering in the grass while Nate distractedly follows suit, focused on his conversation.
“Yeah…Are you sure?…How did you hear?…Who are they?…No, I appreciate it.” His dismal expression worsens as the call goes on.
Other festival-goers stream around us into the VIP area. It’s warm and sunny today, although the ground is still wet. People are dressed in a mix of Midwestern practical and country chic, with one particularly ingenious woman wearing a cute crochet two-piece set and a pair of white leather ankle boots wrapped in plastic bags. I wonder if she’s going to take the bags off for photos or just crop out everything below her shins.
Speaking of photos, I should take some once we pass a photogenic spot. There’s supposed to be a sunflower garden somewhere, which will be a perfect backdrop. Maren Morris is performing later, and I know I can find some on-point song lyrics about bad relationships in her discography to use as a caption.
I should be excited about this stuff. It furthers my goals and gives me an opportunity to connect with people. But finding the enthusiasm to do it is like struggling to turn on a car with a bad engine.
Boo-hoo. Poor me, stuck at a big party teeming with energy and live music, posing in a cute outfit for a photo that thousands of people will like and comment on, that will serve as one of the building blocks helping me take my career to the next level. At least today I’m not going to insult a woman with cancer.
