Chapter Twenty
Jaimie
When I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer, I decided to come clean to Randy.
On Friday afternoon, we went out for lunch at a seafood pub downtown, where I ordered beer-battered cod served with waffle fries. While we were waiting for our orders, I gave him the final report on Saturday night.
“We ended up making quite a bit less than we had projected.”
“How much less?” asked Randy, his brow furrowed.
“Well, about three thousand dollars less.” I took a sip of my ice water to moisten my dry throat. “Now given how many people showed up to the fight, we ought to break even after Aardman takes his cut. But I know you were expecting more than that, and I’m sorry.”
Randy stared down into his basket of hush puppies, looking momentarily puzzled. “I mean, it’s not your fault we didn’t make as much as we wanted. I really thought this fight was going to put us back on the map.”
“So did I, and I wish it had. I know we’ve both put in a lot of work over the past two weeks to make this event a success. But with the increased media exposure we’ve been getting since the night of the fight, our next melee ought to get massively more attention.”
Randy nodded sagely. “A lot’s riding on Braxton and how he handles himself in this next match. If he breaks out—if they both break out—then we could eventually place them in the octagon against each other. Promote it as a ‘battle of the century’ kind of thing.”
“Depending on how well he does.” I hated the fact that the future of our business might depend on that asshole as much as I hated the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
I sat silently, taking in the tranquil atmosphere of the pub with its wood-paneled walls and paintings of old sailing vessels. A smell of vinegar and salt wafted from the kitchen. It was an overcast day, and a dusky gray light filtered in through the windows above our booth.
“A lot’s riding on how he handles this press conference tomorrow,” said Randy. “I don’t know if you’ve been following the papers, but there have been some questions raised in the press about his criminal history.”
“How bad is it?” I couldn’t resist asking. Had I really hooked up with a convicted criminal?
“He hasn’t committed any felonies that I’m aware of. He was taken in last Christmas for ‘menacing’ a homeless man, and then a few weeks later was charged with assaulting a high-schooler in a city park.”
“A high-schooler?” I could feel my stomach dropping, disappointment coursing through every inch of my body. “Seriously?”
“That’s what the reports say. Fortunately for him, the defendant eventually caved and agreed to drop the charges, but even if it had gone to court, he wouldn’t have been guilty of anything worse than a misdemeanor.”
“Still. Assaulting a high-schooler is not a good look.”
“Well, no. But you have to remember that he’s only nineteen. He was in high school himself just a couple years ago.”
It was hard to say whether Randy was defending Braxton because he liked him or because he knew how much was at stake. I understood the temptation, though: I wanted to believe the best of him, too. He had a way of making you overlook what would have been unforgivable in anyone else.
Ever since our trip to the mall on Monday, I had been thinking over my conversation with Ren. Somehow remembering my horrible experience at summer camp had helped to put the weekend in perspective. It made sense that I would be embarrassed by how our tryst had ended—it was icky and selfish and one-sided. But old wounds were seeping into the encounter and making it worse than it really was.
Randy took a sip of his lemonade-and-vodka. “Are you coming with me to the press conference tomorrow?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a simple question.”
I hadn’t even thought about going. Ren and I had already made plans to visit the aquarium downtown and then maybe go out for dinner. She had just finished writing what she hoped would be the final draft of her book and she wanted to go out and celebrate. How hurt would she be if I canceled at the last minute?
“So what do you think?” asked Randy as the waiter appeared with our orders. “Are you in?”
I didn’t answer for a moment. Lately, it felt like he had been pressuring me to go everywhere with him, and once again I was on the brink of canceling my plans because I didn’t know how to say no.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally, feeling sure he was going to hate me. “I already made plans for tomorrow.”
Randy raised his brows in surprise, but if he was offended, he didn’t allow it to show on his face. “That’s okay. I’m sure I’ll be texting you my thoughts as it happens.”
“Oh, fantastic.” I made a mental note to turn my phone off.
“I’m really curious to see how he handles this,” Randy added as he cut into his tilapia. “If he can successfully spin his prior criminal history as a non-issue, then he may really have what it takes to succeed in this business. It’s just so rare that you see someone with a gift for both fighting and PR. This guy is the full package.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see…” I said uncertainly.
“Yeah. Or I’ll be seeing, anyway.” Randy laughed at his own joke.
But when I met up with Ren that night at the tattoo parlor, she was adamant that I cancel our plans.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, as she sprayed the shop in a cloud of incense. “Of course you have to go to this thing.”
“Why, though?”
Ren paused and looked me in the eyes. “Can you tell me in all honesty you don’t still like this guy? Even after your drunken tryst?”
“My own feelings don’t come into it,” I replied, dodging the question. “I seem to remember you saying he was icky and not the sort of person I should be pinning my hopes on.”
She shrugged, as though to say she wouldn’t deny it. “Well, if nothing else, this is a chance to confront him in person and try to force an apology out of him. If he apologizes, then maybe you were vindicated in liking him before. If he doesn’t, then he’s not worth your time, and you can move on.”
It was hard to argue with her logic. “So do you like this guy or no?”
“I think he’s a heel, personally,” said Ren as she lit a scented candle. “But you seem fixated on him, and this would be a good chance to tell him how you really feel.”
“But I’m not even sure how I really feel!” I exclaimed. “Sometimes I wish I had the strength of a fellow fighter. Then I could punch him in the face. But then I’ll see his picture in the paper or see him being interviewed on TV and I want to go up to him and kiss him and never stop kissing him.”
“Well, there you go. The lance has to boil sometime.”
I shook my head. “You and your metaphors,” I muttered.
Ren shrugged, though she looked faintly pleased with herself.
“Anyway, enough about me.” I sat down in the papasan chair, swathing myself in a blue blanket. “How does it feel to finally have your book finished?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it finished,” Ren said with a sigh. “The thing about being a novelist is that your books are never really finished. Now my agent will have to look over it, and if she likes it, she’ll start shopping it around to a publisher. And then if it gets picked up, they’ll want to make corrections, and I’ll have to go through a whole ‘nother round of edits. So in a sense, finishing the novel is really just the beginning.”
“I’m not looking forward to going through that hell,” I said. “I wish I could just do the writing and pay someone else to take care of all that.”
“Well, that’s what an agent is for. You can’t expect one person to be brilliant at everything.”
“And do you like the book?”
Ren nodded eagerly. “I’m not saying it will be the next Fault in Our Stars, but I’m pretty proud of it. It only took me about six weeks to finish this one, and I think it has a better chance of being picked up than any of my other books.”
“Here’s hoping,” I said, fingers crossed.
“Yeah. When are you going to finish yours?”
The old question again. “As soon as Randy stops inviting me everywhere. As soon as life slows down a bit.”
Ren stared down into the glass candle bowl as though transfixed by its flame. In the darkened room the light shone eerily on her face. “You know, Jaimie, at some point, you have to stop blaming others for your lack of success.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked in a defensive tone.
“Just that if you really wanted to write, you would find the time. You’d write during your breaks. You’d write for ten minutes at night while you were falling asleep. I read an interview with—I can’t remember if it was Neil Gaiman or Stephen King, one of those guys—but he read somewhere that if you write just one page a day, three hundred words every day for a year, in a year you’ll have written a whole novel. There’s no excuse.”
So we had reached the “lecturing Jaimie” portion of the visit. For some reason, I never looked forward to this. “I understand all that, and I get it, but I don’t think it’s as easy as everyone says.”
“I mean, if I can write a book in six weeks, surely you can write one in a year.”
There was no arguing with Ren when she got like this. I was overjoyed that she had finished her book, but I wasn’t going to pretend we were the same. Some things were harder for me, and there was no shame in that.
I picked up my keys off the desk and began heading toward the door.
“Hey, where are you going?” Ren called after me.
“Going home.” I paused in the doorway and turned toward her. “And I think I will go to that conference tomorrow. Maybe see you some other day.”
“Good night, Jaimie.”
“See you.” I closed the door behind me, leaving her alone in the empty room.