by Lynn Costa
This morning I felt exactly as Dustin did when he slumped down on my couch right after walking into my apartment Saturday afternoon and saying “I hate this.”
It wasn’t fair!
* * *
By 2:30 I was at LAX with Kensie and Courtney, about 45 minutes away from our boarding time. We saw Steve and Jack as we were going through security, about a dozen people ahead of us in line, but hadn’t seen them or anybody else from our firm since. We knew the two of them were on our flight, but didn’t know about anybody else who was making this forced pilgrimage to a couple square blocks of downtown Chicago.
Kensie and I had caught Courtney up on the whole Dustin-and-Zack weekend saga on the drive over (we all took my car) and while we were waiting at the gate, and her opinion was the same as Kensie’s: nothing was really over for me with either one of them even though this week would be so incredibly different – in terms of who was where, and with whom – than I had thought it would be.
Suddenly my phone dinged and my heart skipped at least two beats when I saw the text was from Zack.
Back now stayed extra night in SF. Not going into MetroGen today have afternoon meeting downtown. Have dinner meeting tonight then flying to Seattle tomorrow morning. Want to come over tonight after I get back from dinner meeting?
After I reread the message a second time, and then a third time and then a fourth, I held my phone out for Courtney and Kensington to see. And as I did, I time-traveled in my mind backwards almost exactly one year, to Miami, and in my mind’s eye I could actually see Josh Chamberlain’s “Back now want 2 come up?” booty call text that had triggered our angry sex a few minutes later on that had been so hot... but had also been the beginning of the end of Josh and me.
Then it was:
Courtney: “WTF?”
Kensie: “Sounds like he’s telling you to just come over for a booty call tonight!”
Courtney: “No explanation at all for not contacting you the entire weekend?”
Kensie: “No reason for why he stayed in San Francisco an extra night?”
Courtney: “He didn’t say anything about just finding out he had to go to Seattle, wonder if he knew that all along and just didn’t tell you?”
Kensie: “He didn’t ask how the breakup with Dustin went...”
Courtney: “...or if you were doing okay.”
The two of them went back and forth for another minute (though it seemed like an eternity), dissecting Zack’s message for what it said and, even more so, what it didn’t say. And all the while my mind went back to my first instincts last Thursday after Zack dropped the news on me about this weekend conference in San Francisco: how I instantly felt the same as when Josh had told me he was going to spend that one weekend in Fort Lauderdale with his fraternity brothers rather than with me, but how I had immediately told myself that making such a comparison was incredibly unfair to Zack.
Turns out I might have been right, after all.
“So what are you going to text back?” Kensie asked.
“If you text him back,” Courtney added. It almost seemed that Courtney was angrier with Zack than I was. As I thought that, I realized that with all that was going on I had never heard anything about her “rebound date” Friday night with that one guy from earlier in the summer. I would have to ask her, because from her reaction to Zack’s text and the story as a whole, she suddenly wasn’t nearly as much of a Zack fan as she had been only a couple days ago. Maybe her own date had gone badly, and she was making her own comparisons between Zack and that guy.
I found myself talking to my friends and finger-typing on my phone at the same time, even though I was only slightly aware I was doing either.
“I’m going to text him this,” I was saying in a somewhat detached manner as I typed, and when I finished – but before I could press SEND – I held my phone out to the girls so they could read my reply.
Not here tonight MetroGen project put on hold Sunday morning. We’re all being sent to project in Chicago don’t know how long. At LAX right now flight leaves half hour
Courtney: “Wow!”
Kensie: “You said a lot without having to say it!”
Courtney: “Like ‘Hey you dick! if you had contacted me over the weekend when I so badly wanted to hear from you, you would have known this already!’”
Kensie: “And you didn’t specifically mention the project in Chicago is the same one Dustin is on, but he’ll know.”
Courtney: “Especially since you said you weren’t sure for how long you’ll be there, and you didn’t say anything about coming back home...”
Kensie: “...or getting together next weekend...”
Courtney: “...or maybe ever...”
Kensie: “Plus there’s ‘I’m still here in L.A. but only for another half an hour, if you had bothered contacting me at least we could have planned to see each other for a couple minutes!’”
I looked at both of my friends.
“Should I really send it?”
To their credit, they both paused to consider my question ...even though they each paused for all of about two seconds.
Courtney’s “Yes!” and Kensie’s “Uh-huh!” were uttered at the exact same time.
“Okay,” I heard myself say as I pressed the SEND button.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
No reply.
* * *
We arrived at O’Hare Airport just after 8:30, and by the time we got our luggage, grabbed a cab, and made it through the still-heavy traffic into downtown Chicago the time was past 9:45. Dustin was waiting for us in the lobby and given that Kensington and Courtney knew all about Zack and that by all rights Dustin and I should have been over this past weekend, this particular meet-and-greet was really uncomfortable for me! Especially when Dustin gave me a warm kiss right before he said hello to the girls, and in response they gave him the fakest “Hi, Dustin! So nice to see you!” responses. Well, at least I knew they were fake; hopefully Dustin had no clue.
We quickly checked in but left our luggage with the bellman since we were all starved and needed to get something to eat... and drink, even though we all had to be at the client’s office by 8:00 tomorrow morning.
As I expected, Dustin came with us to the lobby bar. We all ordered bar food (potato skins, fully loaded was what I got) and a beer. Fortunately, the conversation for the half hour that we sat there was dominated by Dustin giving the three of us the rundown on just what to expect tomorrow when we showed up. We didn’t know all that much about this project from hell because of its confidentiality, but I had also picked up a little from Dustin’s heartfelt pouring forth of his work life agony this past weekend. Dustin spent some of his time focusing on what we were likely to be doing but even more on the extremely difficult personalities we would have to be dealing with: not only those of the various client executives but even our own firm’s senior managers and the two partners who were leading this account. And the more he told us, the more it sounded like Dave Evers had been cloned and every one of those clones sent to Chicago where they were eagerly waiting for us tomorrow to make our lives miserable every day, for the foreseeable future.
By 10:30 we all decided we needed to wrap it up. The three of us new arrivals went to retrieve our luggage, and then all four of us rode the elevator up together.
Courtney’s room was on the sixth floor, so she left the elevator first as we all made plans to meet at 6:30 tomorrow morning for breakfast.
Kensie’s room was two floors higher, and as she left the elevator she was able to shoot me a sideways glance without Dustin noticing; a glance that wordlessly indicated she completely understood the predicament I was in, and she would be there for me since I no doubt would need all the support of my good friends that I could get.
My room was on the fifteen floor, but I hadn’t pressed the button for fifteen. I knew that Courtney and Kensie had noticed.
Dustin’s room was on eighteen, and that
’s where I got off alongside him, and that’s where I would spend the night.
Part II: Dustin
Chapter 13
Tuesday – Friday, September 24th – 27th
The entire work week in Chicago was pretty much a blur. Well, not a total blur; I had some very vivid memories that will stay with me for a long time of the total hell someone’s job can suddenly become, for hours on end into the darkness of night. And at the same time, once-vivid memories of Zack and Cerise and Vivant and Solazarse, of “Trojans and ‘Cocks” toasts and promising sidewalk kisses on Wilshire, of fantastic sex in his apartment... all of those memories faded a little bit more each passing day to the point where as tired as I was, I swear someone could walk up to me and within an hour convince me that it had all been nothing more than an intense dream. In fact, maybe not even so intense anymore, either. After a couple of days I would find myself thinking about that first dinner with him at Vivant, or how we both had gazed hungrily at each other and said so little as we sipped Remy Martin after our dinner at Solazarse before the cab ride back to his apartment, and my recollections were becoming gauzily detached; almost as if I were watching conjured images of Kensie or maybe my sister Lauren on those dates based on what I had been told afterwards, rather than seeing myself and reliving what I had personally experienced and felt.
It was all so incredibly sad because at least a couple times each day, as the work pressures were getting to me, I tried to get my mind to take me back to recent happier memories as a way to cope with how shitty my days were. However, not only did the realization hit me that now there probably wouldn’t be any new memories I would be making with Zack – no new dinners or more fantastic sex, and also no weekend trips or maybe even longer vacations that we had never had a chance to experience – but also that the handful of memories I did have were fading so much and so quickly that I couldn’t even hang onto them to help me get through one bad day after another.
And to make things worse, the time I was able to spend with Dustin the first few days in Chicago wasn’t coming anywhere close to making up for the terrible sadness and sense of loss I was feeling.
I tried. Really, I did try! We ate dinner together after that first incredibly long workday that ended around 8:30 Tuesday night, and then again the next night as well as the next. Each of those nights we ate by ourselves; no Kensington or Courtney or any of the other people from our firm who came out with us from L.A., or who had already been out here with Dustin since the beginning of the month. Just the two of us: Dustin and me.
Almost our entire conversation that first night was rehashing everything that had gone on Tuesday for more than twelve hours straight, from the time we showed up at 8:00 in the morning all the way through delivered pizza in a conference room during a working lunch until they finally let us go at 8:30 that night, with orders to be back Wednesday morning even earlier than that first day – 7:00 A.M. for a mandatory planning meeting that was expected to last through lunch. More delivery pizza, halfheartedly eaten while working through lunch in a windowless conference room, anyone?
I had thought we would just eat dinner at our hotel’s main restaurant Tuesday night, but Dustin suggested we stop at this new place he had heard about that was halfway between our client’s building and our hotel... which were only four city blocks away from each other. So at least we didn’t have a long walk to the client’s offices and then back, especially now that Chicago was starting to get a little bit chilly in the early mornings and then again very soon after twilight gave way to night. I just answered his dinner suggestion with a detached “uh-huh” or “okay” or something like that; I was so numb from this first day there that Dustin probably could have suggested that we walk out to O’Hare, have dinner at the food court after sneaking through security, and then walk back downtown... and my response would have been the same numb “okay” or whatever.
I didn’t pay attention to the name of the restaurant when he steered me left off of the sidewalk and opened the door for me, and I didn’t really pick up the name when the host mumbled “Welcome to...” as he distractedly greeted us and showed us to our table. But when I sat down and took a look at the front of the menu, and I saw that the name of the place where Dustin had taken me was Solazarse, I so much wanted to break down into a frustrated crying fit!
When Zack and I had met at the restaurant with the same name less than a week ago on Hollywood Boulevard, shortly before we had sex together for the first time, I hadn’t given much thought to the name itself; but now I did.
Solazarse, I remembered from high school Spanish, meant to relax; to enjoy yourself.
How I wished I could relax and enjoy myself as I had with Zack that night, but as I sat here on a Tuesday night in Chicago, my boyfriend across the table from me, it felt as if I would never relax and enjoy myself again.
* * *
I thought about telling Dustin that I was way too exhausted to spend the night with him, but the truth was that I was so miserable I needed to be with someone – honestly, almost anyone – this Tuesday night. Okay, the blunt truth here: I really needed to get some endorphins going to pull my emotions away from this dark place I was now wallowing in and for me, a couple of orgasms would be the fastest way to make that happen. I suppose I could have gone back to my own room and quickly taken care of my own “endorphin release” two or three times before fading off to sleep, but given how shitty today had been and knowing that the same was waiting for me tomorrow, I wanted to be held; to have a man inside of me; to have real sex.
We stayed in my room this time – I figured I might as well get some use out of it, right? – and as soon as we walked in, I steered Dustin over to the bed and began kissing him as I eased us both down onto the bedspread, with me landing on top of him.
But it wasn’t working.
I hadn’t had that much to drink, just two beers. But my mind and body weren’t responding at all to him as he undressed me and touched me and then moved his head between my legs. For the first couple minutes I felt as if I were an overhead light on a dimmer switch, and was only on the lowest possible setting. You know, barely turned on; nowhere near as bright as possible.
My mind started wandering, and of course it wandered to thoughts of Zack. And sex with Zack.
And then I did something I hadn’t done during sex with Dustin on Saturday night or Sunday morning, or last night.
I pretended it was Zack’s face and tongue and fingers, not Dustin’s, pressed up against me.
I came in about thirty seconds.
I shut my eyes when Dustin slid upwards and entered me and the whole time he was thrusting, I pretended it was Zack inside of me.
Now my “dimmer switch” had been slid all the way upwards to fully turned on.
But a little bit later, as I drifted off to sleep, I felt so guilty about what I had just done. My thoughts were all jumbled, but I felt like I had just cheated on Zack with Dustin, and Dustin with Zack, both at the same time. I was cheating on everyone... including myself!
Everything in my life was so messed up! That was my last thought as this first full day in Chicago slipped away into the temporary safe haven of sleep.
* * *
From 7:00 A.M. Wednesday morning until 1:00 that afternoon, more than twenty of us were basically locked into a large conference room. It was a nice conference room with a gigantic oak table and really comfortable chairs that weren’t too close to one another, so we each had plenty of work space. There was a little popup box with a couple of power outlets and USB connections in front of each person’s workspace around the table so we could all plug in our laptops and cell phones and tablets all at the same time. Whiteboards covered the walls of the entire room, and we even had one of those fancy single-serving coffee machines right in the conference room, so there was no need to have to walk to a nearby kitchen area for one of the seven or eight cups of coffee every single one of us seemed to drink this morning.
In fact, if someone had taken a picture
of all of us in that room sometime that morning and if I had seen that picture on a brochure or on the firm’s website back when I was still at ASU, I would have thought something like “Wow! What a great job that must be!”
Of course, a still photograph doesn’t tell the whole story about what was really going on.
Basically, we were changing almost everything that Dustin and the original team had decided on for our client’s strategy during the first three weeks of long hours and working weekends. I mean everything. Some senior executive at our client had flown into Chicago from New York late Friday, taken his first look at what our guys had delivered right before Dustin left for O’Hare Airport Friday afternoon, and over the weekend had decided he didn’t like anything about what we had proposed they do. It wasn’t that Dustin and the others were wrong, or had come up with bad recommendations. In fact, they had worked for weeks with dozens of other managers and executives at the client, over and over and over, and their recommendations had eventually been approved by everyone so far after going through all of the modifications that Dustin had worked on.
But this one guy didn’t like any of it, so just like with a college term paper, our firm’s work came back with a big red “F” but also with a chance to do it all over again to get a better grade. (Actually not a “chance” to do all the work over again; it was more like “an order.”)
Like I mentioned earlier, our firm’s senior partners actually loved how this was all turning out. Our team had done what they had been asked to do and it wasn’t like they did bad work or anything, so there was no reason the client could say that they weren’t paying for the thousands of hours our firm was going to bill them for just a couple weeks of work. Would you believe the bill so far was close to one million dollars for twelve people working really long hours for three weeks straight, including a couple of weekends? And now, with ten more of us working on the project now probably for another month or two, even more would be headed into our firm’s partners’ pockets over the next couple months.
