Chapter Two
I had a deadline for an article I was supposed to write coming up in a few days, but found myself unmotivated to work on it all afternoon. I had blown up my best friend Alice’s phone with a barrage of messages telling her about the coffee date with Heidi on my walk home, and was waiting for her to call me and help me think through the situation. She had a way of helping me sort through pros and cons of decisions that I could never manage to do myself.
Alice was currently away on one of her international escapades, this time au pairing for a family in France. She’d be starting her day any moment – it was now almost 6 a.m. in France – and I knew she’d freak out and Facetime me as soon as she woke up and saw my text diatribe. Alice had been my best friend since middle school and was there through the entire marriage ordeal. She’d met Heidi and Keely more than dozens of times.
While I waited for her call, I busied myself cleaning my apartment. Luckily, my favorite true crime podcast had just released a new episode. They were in the middle of a multi-episode deep dive on the questionable death of a woman named Kathleen Peterson and I was fully enthralled as I poured bleach all over the interior of my clawfoot tub, which was in desperate need of a scrub down. You know what, the floor needs it, too, I thought, and dumped the rest of the bottle over the tiny black and white tiles.
Ever since Alice left, life in Portland wasn’t really the same for me. We’d been inseparable since we were kids, but a couple years back, she’d quit her day job and started traveling the world while working odd jobs – farming, cooking, cleaning, you name it. She’d be back for a few weeks a time, but was always gone again too quickly. This time, she’d been gone for three months.
Lately, it felt like most of my friends were gone and the city was full of new-comers who’d come with hopes and dreams of a hipster paradise, but driven up the cost of rent. Most twenty and thirty-somethings in town made ends meet bartending or working at cafes, able to get by renting a bedroom in a shared house. I was lucky enough to live in an old building that the landlord had owned for decades. He hadn’t raised the rent since I’d moved in, three years back.
Much of my time these days was spent like this – listening to podcasts or watching my favorite YouTubers ramble about the celebrity scandal-of-the-day in the Twittersphere. Usually, every morning I worked up the motivation to throw on some make-up and go to one of my regular coffee shops for a few hours to pump out an article. I found that getting outside and planting myself on a bar stool with my laptop helped me focus.
I was busier than ever with work, but admittedly, my social life was pretty dead. Especially since my relationship with my last boyfriend had dissolved (well, exploded) in May, and he’d taken his rowdy band of bearded buddies with him. They’d constantly wrangle us together for nights of throwing darts and playing pin ball at a shady underground bar in Old Town.
On one such night – a particularly late one – one of the guys told me in all sincerity that he thought that my boyfriend was lucky to have me, and that it was so cool that I was “down with an open relationship.” Of course, that last bit was news to me. After a spirited conversation on the patio, I had a full Real Housewives moment and doused my ex’s head with a full pint of beer (an IPA, at that) and took off. But I was thankful to be rid of that relationship and took all the carnage in stride.
Actually, this proposition to live with Keely was coming at a good time for me. Maybe it would be good for both of us. I could keep Keely company at home and keep her out of the bars – or whatever she was up to in Seattle – and she could introduce me to a new city. Plus, the potential freelance clients I could acquire up there was promising, especially with the Vogels’ connections.
I just wondered how my dad would process the idea of me moving to Seattle to live with his ex-stepdaughter. He and Heidi had managed to come out of the divorce with their dignities intact, but I knew he’d never recovered from that heartbreak. He’d had the occasional fling with other divorcees that also had complicated family situations, or women a little too young for him, but nothing serious had manifested so far.
I was beginning to break a sweat over my tub, which was finally starting the show signs of white, when the phone rang and interrupted the podcast, which I realized I had completely zoned out.
I wiped my hand on a towel, grabbed my phone from the sink and immediately put Alice on speaker phone.
“I have been waiting ever so patiently,” I said dramatically.
“What. The fuck,” Alice said, ignoring me. I heard the French baby gurgle with contempt in the background.
“I hear that the princess is already awake,” I said.
“I live to serve,” she sighed. “But seriously, what the actual fuck.”
“Did you read my messages?”
“Yeah, kind of. I am barely awake. Heidi wants you to… what?! I didn’t even know you were talking to them!”
“I’m not,” I said. “Not since that horrible, cringey dinner way back when. She just texted me out of nowhere this morning and asked to get coffee.”
“And then asked you to come live with her daughter?!”
I laughed. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Well, why is she even in town?”
I paused. “I don’t know, she said she had friends to see here, but—”
“Yeah, I’m sure she does. Or, she flew down there in her private helicopter to proposition you to be … Keely’s new personal assistant? I don’t get it.”
“Basically,” I said, noticing a puddle of pink grime that had been growing in my sink. “No, I don’t know. It sounds like Keely has gone off the rails—”
“Called it!” Alice practically yelled. The baby shrieked in fear and Alice clucked soothingly.
“Well, yeah, none of us are very surprised,” I said. “She basically offered to pay for me to move my stuff up there and be Keely’s BFF slash A.A. sponsor.”
“Oh my God. Well, what did she say? I mean, about what’s going on with Keely?” she asked, adding, “Poor thing, by the way.”
“Yeah, it sounds sad. She wasn’t specific. Just said, you know, something about the ‘modeling lifestyle,’ etcetera. That Keely’s not doing so well, lately. Oh, well, she said they sent her on some health retreat to Utah, you know, rehab.”
“For alcohol?”
“I assume so. Maybe something else, too,” I said. “She was always a little wild in high school, but nothing abnormal… She always makes it seem like it’s all under control.”
Alice gave a concerned hum. “When was this rehab thing?”
“Last summer.”
“Well, who ever heard of a model with an addiction problem?” she asked, sarcastically.
“A story old as time,” I said. “I guess she just wants Keely to have a friend around that’s not all about, I don’t know, doing lines coke in the bathroom of a Seattle club.”
“Are there clubs in Seattle?” Alice asked. “I thought it was all computer programmers and Dungeons & Dragons.”
I laughed. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve been there, other than for that writer’s conference, since I was like, eleven years old. I have no idea what’s going on up there.”
Alice paused. “Well, are you thinking about it?”
“I am,” I said. “I mean, I’ve been kind of restless here, anyway. Especially without you here. And I have been toying with the idea of traveling or moving for a while.”
“True,” Alice confirmed. “It doesn’t sound terrible. And if she’s covering the cost of moving and everything—”
“Right.”
“—then, it sounds like kind of a cool idea. That is, if you’re down to be the Kim Kardashian to Keely’s Paris Hilton circa 2005.”
“I know,” I said, letting out a hysterical laugh. Keely herself had dubbed us Paris and Kim when those ancient screenshots of Kim’s appearance on the Simple Life in which she was Paris’ personal doormat started circulating. She always told me I was a prettier version of Kim, which was typical Keely-brand flattery – over the top to the point of edging on insulting your intelligence.
“Well, what’s the downside to all this? I guess giving up that sweet apartment of yours.”
I set the grungy sponge down in the sink and turned around to glance over my beloved little apartment. My queen-sized bed was shoved in the corner on a box spring. I hadn’t bothered to replace the Ikea frame when it gave way a few months back. A stack of unread books sat beside it. Old candle wax was dried, dripping from the windowsill above it. My overflowing, scratched dresser looked like it was far past ready to retire. The four walls were plastered with tattered posters from concerts I’d gone to, back when I went out at night, and pinned up polaroids with friends from years ago.
“Yeah, my sweet apartment,” I said. “This place—”
“Is depressing. You know what, you can get another apartment in Goose Hollow if you want to someday,” Alice said. “But maybe you won’t even want to. Maybe it’s time for a new chapter.”
“Of infinite self-growth and love and gratitude?” I chimed, knowing Alice would remember the infamous Insta-post.
Alice cackled. “Heidi Vogel style.”