Since the accident, I had hardly seen anyone other than family. I can’t describe how it felt to have so many people come together that night to show me and my family how much they loved us.
CHAPTER 13
Strange Black Cloud
Lauren
During the summer after my internships in New York, I traveled a bit, celebrated my twentieth birthday, and interned for a short time at an inner-city ministry in downtown Dallas.
All that summer I stayed on my mountaintop. The internship at the shelter was wonderful. It was the same place where Brittany and I had volunteered in high school, and some of the same kids were still there, just older now. I tutored and served meals and played games with the kids. In a way the culture in the shelter was the polar opposite to what I’d experienced in New York, but in another way it was very similar. The similarity was mainly that working there made me feel independent and powerful. Like my life had a strong sense of purpose.
That fall I enrolled at Dallas Baptist University (DBU) to finish my bachelor’s degree. I didn’t want to return to Texas A&M, and by then I’d taken nearly every class I could at community college. My first choice was not to be in college at all, but I knew I needed a degree. The big plan with my schooling was to sprint to the finish as fast as I could and then return to New York, where I’d dive headlong into a career.
It made sense to go to DBU. Brittany had already been there for a year—she’d transferred straight from Texas A&M. The university was nearby in Dallas, about thirty minutes from our house. Brittany and I decided to live in the townhomes on campus. We didn’t live together this time (we were only two doors away from each other), but it felt good to have my sister so close again.
I decided on a major—communications. I’d started a blog right after I’d come home from New York. Blogging helped me figure out more of my writing voice, and I began loving the writing process. My blog was titled simply LoLo, and right away it started to receive some good traffic. It quickly became a random collection of writings and pictures about the things I loved most—fashion, color, style, meeting new people, cooking healthy foods, and finding delicious places around town to eat.
I also started freelancing for a number of online fashion magazines. I’d met some good contacts in the industry, and one of the editors, Molly, took me under her wing and showed me the ropes. I started writing for Fashion Reporters, SMU Style, MyItThings, and PR Couture. Some of the articles were interviews with fashion industry insiders, and other articles were my reports from various shows and events. I loved the writing. When I wrote, I still felt connected to New York City, my second home. I felt like I was doing something purposeful, and I liked that a lot. Because, truthfully, I didn’t want to be in Dallas just then. Nope. Not at all.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love my family and friends back home. Everyone was great. But returning to Plano after being in New York felt like coming back to earth after I’d been to the moon. DBU was an even smaller world within Dallas. Only about two thousand students lived on campus, so I started feeling like I saw the same faces every day—a definite change from New York culture. I felt like I was treading water. Not that I hated DBU. It was a good school, and in addition to our studies, we always found time for fun. We’d gather a bunch of girls and cook dinner and hang out. Or we’d meet up with a group of guys and play sand volleyball on the courts on campus. But after being in New York City, I had to admit that DBU felt cloistered to me. I had a hard time articulating it to myself. I liked the people I hung out with, but I wanted to be somewhere else. I wanted to be back in New York.
I wasn’t dating anyone seriously, though I did enjoy spending time with Brandon, another student at DBU. Brandon was highly intellectual and philosophical. He would take an idea and toss it around, examining it from every possible angle until my head nearly exploded. He became a good friend—though never more than that. He asked me out a few times, but I was fairly sure I wasn’t interested in anything romantic with him.
Brittany and I had a conversation about relationships one day toward the end of that school year. It was one of those rare moments after class when I was alone in my townhome, and Brittany came over. We curled up on the couch and kicked off our shoes. I poured us tall glasses of ice water with lemon wedges. Brittany was experiencing the normal ups and downs of the dating world, like we all were.
“Lo, how come when you like a guy, he doesn’t like you back?” Brittany asked. “Or if a guy likes you, you can’t stand him? Or if you both get along with each other, you don’t have any romantic feelings for each other whatsoever?”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I sighed. “I don’t know why it can’t just all work out for once.”
I hadn’t dated anyone seriously since Tim, a few years back now, and I was beginning to wonder if I would ever find that special someone. Brittany and I certainly didn’t have any answers that afternoon.
In the early part of the spring semester in 2009, the itch to be back in New York City was stronger than ever. An incredible opportunity came in early February when I got a call from an editor. Would I like to come to New York with her and cover Fashion Week?
Would I?!
Fashion Week is the term given to the prestigious, twice-yearly, international trade show where all the top buyers in the world preview the next seasons’ line and buy merchandise for their stores. The main Fashion Weeks are held in four cities: Paris, London, Milan, and New York. Other shows are held in Montreal, Sydney, Seattle, Los Angeles, and several other cities worldwide. I’d always dreamed of going to New York’s Fashion Week, but I never thought I’d get the chance to cover it as a reporter.
When I landed in New York, I went straight from the airport to the show. Wow, oh wow. People were taking pictures all over. Models were walking in and out. Huge names in the industry were everywhere. The whole experience was so intriguing to me. I felt overwhelmed with thankfulness to be there, and just buckled down, worked very hard, and wrote my articles. I absolutely loved every minute I was there.
That made coming back to Dallas Baptist even harder. As the semester progressed, I knew I definitely wanted to be back in New York again for a second summer. I prayed about it. I talked to my parents about it.
But—and here’s where things got strange—the answer was always no. No. No. No. Not from my parents—they were okay with it.
But from God.
That’s a funny thing to describe if you’ve never felt it before. I so strongly wanted to go back to New York and live there for another three months, but I had absolutely no peace about going there. Anytime I prayed about it—which was every day for several weeks—every answer was absolutely, definitively no.
And I couldn’t make sense of that answer. Why would God say no to a good thing like New York—and say no so strongly within my spirit? There was nothing morally wrong about me going to New York. There was nothing specifically in the Bible that addressed the subject. It wasn’t that I was like Jonah, the Old Testament prophet, who strongly felt God calling him to go one direction and then ran the other way to escape that call. I didn’t know what else to do that summer other than go back to New York. I didn’t feel pulled to Dallas necessarily either.
So I decided to go to New York anyway.
At first, everything lined up perfectly. Kristin, my roommate from my first stay in New York, would be coming to the city again too. We planned to share an apartment, although we’d be in a different part of the city, in an apartment owned by New York University. My immediate goal was to land a job. I didn’t really care where. I’d worked retail in high school, and I figured I could find a similar job in New York. I wasn’t seeking an internship this time. I just wanted to be in the city.
As the plane’s wheels touched the tarmac at JFK International Airport, I couldn’t help but remember one of the first Bible stories I’d ever learned as a kid: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When Eve looked at that fruit, she may have seen a perfect apple. Juicy and red. Pleasi
ng to the eye and delicious to the taste. What would be better than taking a bite? But God—knowing something that Adam and Eve didn’t—had told them no. New York was like that fruit to me. There was nothing wrong with this apple, at least nothing that I could put my finger on. But for whatever reason in his infinitely wise mind, God didn’t want me eating this apple either.
I shook the thought out of my head, willfully walked off the plane, and caught a cab to my new apartment in the city.
CHAPTER 14
Forbidden Fruit
Lauren
Kristin was not coming to New York after all. Her plans for the summer had fallen through. That meant I was living in my apartment alone.
The day after arriving, I scoured the city looking for a job. I applied to store after store, but nobody was hiring. I couldn’t figure it out. My résumé was strong. I wasn’t looking for anything glamorous. I had plenty of retail experience. Finally one store said they had an opening for me, but they needed some paperwork from my insurance company. The store said they’d get it for me, and the wait wouldn’t be long. But a day went by and then another. And then a week and then two weeks. Still no job. Time was running out, and nothing was working out as I’d hoped. I had no good reason to be in New York.
To compound the problem, the weather in New York was horrible for the first ten days or so. Just cold, cloudy, rainy. It was a disappointing start to what was supposed to be a summer of fun. I loved being outside, and it was harder to be out in crummy weather. I felt depressed. Lonely. Emotions I usually didn’t struggle with—at least not for very long. It’s a funny thing when you say no to God. At first God’s voice is loud in your heart. Then it begins to get quieter, and you start to think he’s okay with your rebellion. I stopped reading my Bible every day. I still wrote in my journal, but my entries became much less prayers and much more my worries about not having a job or not knowing what I wanted to do in life.
Eventually the sun came out. A family friend lived in the city. She was about the same age as me but already married. Her husband was in college, so she had a lot of days free. We went to Central Park together and lay out on blankets on the lawn. Ah, this is more like it, I thought.
Two weeks after arriving in New York, I got a call from an editor I knew. She’d heard I was in the city and asked if I’d cover a charity event set for that weekend. There might be more freelance work for me that summer, she added. I jumped at the chance. Finally things were starting to click.
Another reporter and I went to the charity event that weekend. We got our stories, then stayed to mingle with the guests. I spent much of the evening talking to this guy in his late twenties named Jordan, who asked for my phone number at the end of the night. I said okay, even though I don’t think I’d ever given out my phone number to a guy I’d just met before.
Jordan was a member of the New York Yacht Club, and the next day he asked me out to an opening of the club’s new river dock, so I went. It was a big party and really cool, and I felt almost like I was in Florida, seated outside on a terrace in the warm summer evening. I wore a short black dress, and I felt tanned and pretty as my hair hung loose around my shoulders. A lot of Jordan’s friends were there, and I felt fairly safe. Jordan and I went out a few more times after that, and he kept calling me, but I didn’t reciprocate much. He was funny and respectful of me, but I sensed our values weren’t quite in sync.
A day or so after meeting Jordan, I went out with the other reporter to explore the city. We ended up in the Meatpacking District, which is one of the cool and trendy parts of town. A kid our age invited us to a pool party on top of the hotel where he was staying, so we went. The view up there was really impressive, and we looked out over a beautiful panorama of the city as the sun was setting. Since we didn’t know anyone well, we decided to leave early. But before we could walk out, we met another guy, Mason, who I swear could instantly make any girl feel like the most beautiful woman in America.
Mason talked to us for some time, then invited us to a club down the street from the hotel. His job was in marketing. Specifically, he looked for attractive young girls and invited them to nightclubs at the owners’ request. The theory, Mason explained, was that any nightclub with a bunch of pretty girls in it would attract more people and develop a more exclusive reputation.
Mason wasn’t kidding. The first nightclub he took us to already had a huge line outside the door—at least an hour’s wait. Mason escorted us straight to the front of the line. The bouncer smiled broadly, pulled back the velveteen rope, and whisked us inside without ever checking our IDs.
A table was already set up for us. Our drinks, we were told, would be free. I was only twenty and didn’t normally drink, but I didn’t want to insult Mason, so I sat sipping a vodka cranberry as the music pounded in my ears. Lights flashed all around us, and everybody I saw looked young and beautiful. I felt a wild daring rise inside me as I took it all in. Mason snapped his fingers, and a waiter brought me another drink. Ten minutes later a third drink mysteriously appeared. That was soon followed by a fourth. My body mass index isn’t that high, but even with that many drinks in me I didn’t feel completely out of control. Just foggy. The dance floor appeared hazy, and I felt a strange pull between wanting to dance like no one was watching and finding a quiet corner so I could lie down.
That’s when the most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen walked up. He had tousled blond hair and deeply innocent gray-blue eyes, like a puppy that’s just been brought home from the pound. The guy held my gaze for at least twenty seconds, then touched me lightly on the arm and leaned in close. “You are so beautiful,” he said over the music. That was his exact opening line. A bold move, I thought, yet he completely pulled it off. His name was Brooks. He modeled for Abercrombie, and he was ditching this nightclub and heading to an even better one down the street. “Come with me,” he said flatly. It wasn’t a request.
“No, I can’t,” I said. The alcohol spun through my head. “I don’t even know you.”
“What does it matter?” Brooks said.
His smile was so incredible. His shoulders were so broad. What girl could ever be unsafe with him? I didn’t know how to answer his question.
“Give me your number then,” he said.
I nodded.
A few nights later Brooks called and asked me to go out with him and his friends. We went to the Meatpacking District again. He was wearing a stylish, short-sleeved rugby shirt, and I wore a chartreuse dress that was open at the shoulders. Brooks could get us inside anywhere, no questions asked about my age.
At the first club we danced and each had a few drinks. Then we went across the street to a restaurant, and he bought me dinner—sliders and fries with another couple of drinks. Then we hit another club and kept dancing. Every place we went was the utmost in chic. Sometime just after midnight he yelled in my ear over the blaring music, and I found out that he was originally from Fort Worth, which is only about thirty minutes from Dallas. We even knew some of the same people. A hometown Texan boy, I thought. That seals the deal. When the last club closed, it was four in the morning.
“Uh, I live kind of far from here,” Brooks said.
“All right then.” I took his hand with a smile.
We went back to my apartment. My mind was foggy from too many drinks. A little voice told me I was on slippery ground—and dangerous, too—to bring a guy I barely knew back to my apartment. But Brooks was so cute. So perfectly beautiful. Any girl would swoon over him. What was I supposed to do? Send the poor guy away in the cold?
Late the next morning I woke up, hopped in the shower, brushed my teeth, and got dressed. All I could think about was how much fun we’d had. Brooks had been a perfect gentleman. In the midst of kissing, he’d sort of given me that raised eyebrow like he was hoping for the next step in the game. But we didn’t have sex that night. I was still a virgin, and I was committed to keeping things that way.
We went out for breakfast, and after that both of us had the whole day to
ourselves. Brooks’s modeling schedule was irregular at best, so he had a lot of free time on his hands. He went home to change, and then we met up again later that afternoon in Central Park.
Brooks and I spent every day together after that. There’s a section in Central Park called Sheep Meadow. We’d meet around one in the afternoon, head to Sheep Meadow, and lie out in the summer sun. He wasn’t a Christian, and whenever I imagined our futures together, logic told me that it would be very hard to have a deep relationship with a person who didn’t strongly value the same things I did.
But I wasn’t thinking very logically just then. I’d ignored the voice of God and gone to New York that summer. I’d been hanging around in questionable places where people were influencing me, not the other way around. And I’d fallen head over heels for a guy who I clearly shouldn’t have been with, a guy who was expecting me to do things I didn’t want to do. Deep down I knew it wouldn’t be long until I succumbed to Brooks’s expectation to go further.
On the one hand, I didn’t want to have sex with him. It wasn’t that I was a prude. To me, sexual purity isn’t a rule to be followed—it’s a gift from God. I see it as his way of freeing me from painful emotional entanglement now so that one day my husband and I can experience all the joy that sex was created to bring.
So I truly didn’t want to go further with Brooks. But then again, I did. I truly did. I’d say my willpower had about two weeks left. Maybe one. Maybe it was only a matter of days. I felt a twinge of darkness somewhere deep within me, almost like a wave of nausea.
One afternoon a few days later, my editor called and asked if I could do one more freelance story for her. That made a grand total of two stories for the summer. Two whole stories. The sum total of my work in New York City, summer 2009.
Still Lolo Page 11
