Chapter Fifteen
Jason
"Did you hear me, Jason?"
"What?" I asked, absentmindedly. My phone was on the bed; I had Victoria on speaker, and the connection wasn't that great for some reason. I was getting changed to head out but had decided to get the phone call out of the way before I did. Might as well; I had been putting it off since the weekend.
"I said, it's almost been a week. Christmas is in two days. We need you back for the holiday broadcasts." Had it been that long already? I hadn't noticed. I didn't really care how long it had been anyway: one week or one month. I had come to L.A. for a reason, and it hadn't been to shoot striking port workers.
"I don't know, Victoria," I said. "I don't think I'm going to make it back before Christmas."
"What do you mean you don't think you're going to make it back? What are you still working on?" If she wanted to know, I was trying to get her former employee, Shelby Aster, back. She had nothing to do with this. Nobody but Shelby and I had anything to do with this and everything but getting her back had more or less faded into irrelevance.
"Nothing. Not at the moment at least. I called to tell you that I'm going to be taking a leave of absence." There was silence down the line for a few moments. "Victoria?"
"Jason... is something wrong?" she asked.
"What? No, why do you ask?"
"Because you just asked me for a leave of absence. A week ago, you asked me out of the blue to fly out to Los Angeles. Did something happen?" I wanted to tell her, yeah, something had happened. Something big enough that I didn't care that I was missing work or that I was going to continue doing so. Something so big, my life as I knew it was probably going to change completely, but she wasn't someone who needed to know that.
Vic had the reputation of being kind of icy, but ultimately a fair boss. I didn't think she liked me that much and probably liked me even less after Shelby had quit but we had an understanding. She was professional before she was anything else. She was asking me what was wrong out of genuine concern, sure, but she did have a station to run and losing her head anchor for an extended period of time was going to throw things off for her.
"Nothing happened, Victoria," I said. She probably thought I wanted the time off to deal with a death in the family or something like that. Depending on whether or not Shelby was being truthful with me, it could have been a family emergency of a sort, but she didn't need to know all that. "It's a... a personal matter."
"What? Are you sick or something?" she probed.
"There's something going on that I have to take care of. It came up unexpectedly and that's why the timing's so bad. I'm sorry I couldn't give you more notice. It's not something I have control over."
"How long would you want to take off?" she asked.
"I can't give you a specific time frame."
"You know the rules, Jason," she warned. Yep, I knew them just fine. I knew what I was asking her for; she didn't need to spell it out for me. Any more than six weeks and there was no guarantee that I would be able to go back and I would take the time off without pay. I understood that. The request was sudden for her, but I had been thinking about making it for days now.
Work had been my biggest priority for years. Advancing my career had been the only thing I cared about, sometimes even when I should have let it come second or third to things like personal relationships and family. I had taken those losses because my work had been more important. It fed me in ways nothing else did. It was me, my identity. I could have seen this day coming as much as she could have.
Over the past few days, any doubts I had had about Shelby had all but faded. The thing with her kid was still kind of murky, and there was the other thing with her and Davis, but leaving without getting through to her was unthinkable to me. I wanted her, so much I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't even know how I was going to do it, just that I wanted to and that I had to before I could do anything else.
"I understand," I told her. "I wouldn't ask for the time off unless I needed it."
"You're entitled to it, absolutely, but the rules apply to everyone, even you." I told her again that I got it, that I was sorry I couldn't be back and that I could tell her whether anything changed. I was sorry, I knew the holidays were an important time, and I did understand that if I stayed out too long, she'd have no choice but to replace me. I needed to figure this thing with Shelby out. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything else till I did.
We hung up, and I picked my phone up off the bed, using it to get a taxi. Davis wasn't the only one of my old classmates who had ended up in L.A. There had probably been a good number of them, but I had lost track of most. Lake had started as a communications major, then switched to journalism, then had ended up getting his degree in English when we had been in college. He had gotten himself to L.A. and had had some success producing for film and television.
Between his schedule and mine, we didn't get that much time to talk, but when we got together, it was like no time had passed at all. I guess I should have had more in common with Davis since we literally had the same job, but Lake and I had roomed together while I lived in the dorms at Cornell. You got to know a person well, maybe too well when you had to share space with them. He had witnessed the fallout of my worst breakups and best mushroom trips.
I was heading to a restaurant where he had invited me to meet him. A spot in Hollywood, of course, his neck of the woods. Fucking hotshot. I was happy for him. He seemed to be enjoying it from what he had told me when we would talk. I wanted to see him in his element.
He was sitting out on the restaurant terrace when I finally got there. It was a pretty upscale Japanese fusion place. He was in a crisp white shirt and slacks with Ray Bans over his eyes, tapping through his phone. There was already food on the table.
“You ordered without me?” I said. He looked up.
"It's about time," he said, grinning. I shook his hand, clapping him on the shoulder.
"You know L.A. traffic," I said jokingly.
"I sure do. What brings you here?" he asked. We talked for a little while, catching up. He told me about his work, some independent movie he wanted to produce, what he had been up to since we had talked last. He had had salt and pepper hair since I had met him in college, but he had used to dye it back then. It didn't age him too much since he took care of himself. He was just under six feet but he was fit, and when you had enough money, almost any shortcoming could be forgiven.
"You never told me how long this trip of yours was going to last," he said as we got the rest of our order.
"If I knew, I'd tell you." He raised an eyebrow.
"Are you moving or something?"
"No. It's complicated is all."
"What is? I thought you came here for work."
"I did, I mean, I had to so I could justify the trip to my boss. I asked her for a leave of absence today."
"Yeah? What's up?" he asked.
"Do you remember me ever telling you about a woman I used to work with? Shelby Aster?" I asked.
"The name's familiar," he said.
"Christmas party hookup a year ago?" I said, trying to jog his memory. His face lit up, remembering.
"Oh yeah. The woman who used to write for you. I thought that had just been a one-time thing."
"It ended up being one, but not because I didn't want to keep seeing her. She quit and moved here after that."
"That was because of you?" he asked. "I thought it was because a station here had poached her or something." I started at the beginning, telling him what had happened, from the day that Shelby had quit to that past weekend when I had left flowers for her at her apartment after seeing her and her kid at the park.
"So it's a chick," he said, with a bemused look on his face.
"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because the last time I saw you this hung up on a girl you were nineteen and we were in sophomore year."
"No, this is different, Lake."
"How?"
"I don't know. It just is. I can't stop thinking about her. I'm here blowing off work so I can try to get her back."
"Is she interested in you?"
"We hooked up just last week."
"Not like that. You said you want her, I'm guessing that means more than just sex."
"Yeah, so?"
"So, since you're still here, whatever you're doing hasn't worked."
"What are you saying?"
"I've seen the way you treat women." I frowned.
"Hey, I don't smack them around."
"I know you don't, but you don't treat them well either." I stared at him.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You don't stick with anyone for longer than a couple months. You approach women like you can't wait to forget them. The only difference between you and a cave man is you don't beat them over the head with a club first. You're not going to get your girl back acting like that."
"What? I'm supposed to date every girl who looks at me for two years and meet her family? A lot of those girls only approach me because they want a hookup. They're not interested in the long term, so I don't make it an option." Lake stared at me from across the table, leaning forward in his seat.
"Jason. You're one of those men who women can't get enough of," he started. "You've been full of yourself since I met you, but it's only gotten worse the bigger you've gotten. It's not your fault that you attract groupies. It is your fault that you're so used to them that you don't know how to act around real women."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"This woman, Shelby? She's rejected you already, multiple times, so I know she doesn't buy into your bullshit. She doesn't think it's attractive. You said she has a kid, right? One you think might be yours? Then you need to man up, my friend. That's what she wants. She's done with the games."
"Man, you haven't even met her."
"I don't need to have met her to know that what a professional woman with a child wants and what a twenty-two-year-old groupie wants are different," he insisted.
"Yeah, and you're the expert at this?" I challenged. His last relationship had ended several months before, and he hadn't started dating again yet. It hadn't been a bad split; they had broken it off because the woman had had to move away and they hadn't wanted to be long distance. Still, who was he to talk? He could tell me how to get Shelby back when he had himself a wife and kids at home. Far as I could remember, both of us were single.
"You don't have to listen to me," he said, shrugging. "I'm just saying. What you've been doing obviously hasn't worked, it makes sense to try something different."
"Something different," I murmured.
"Not just anything. I mean changing your technique completely. If you're serious, then show her that you are. Be considerate; how about that? See what she wants, what she needs from you. Treat her like you want to keep her around, and she'll respond." I thought about that. I didn't want to admit it, but he had a point. I wanted Shelby, and everything I had done so far to get her hadn't worked, why would this? I was getting close to the point where I felt like it didn't matter my approach; any way I came at her, she'd deny.
What did I have to lose though? Not her. I didn't have her... not yet. I was giving up a lot to be here; I didn't want to go back to New York before I had her back. I wasn't going to. Lake seemed to know what he was talking about. If nothing else, he had just suggested I change the way I approached her. Why not? At this point, I was ready to try anything.