way,” I said. “I think I’d pick up on it if she was. I mean, come on, the girl was my best friend.”
Beth gave me that look that implied she knew what she was talking about. “Don’t be so sure. Sometimes people hide things well. Maybe she’s always secretly compared herself to you and you never realized it.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. So what’s the second reason?”
“Well, the second reason is that maybe she’s in love with him. And I don’t mean some sort of sexual infatuation, I mean serious love, as in marriage. If she doesn’t have jealousy issues with you, then that’s the only thing that would make sense. I can’t picture her ruining a friendship, especially a friendship like the one you guys had, unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life with this guy.”
That was the more logical explanation, the one I had been leaning towards all along. But the thing that bothered me even more than the thought of Justine and David getting married was the fact that Beth used the word “had” when referring to my friendship with Justine. The friendship you guys had.
And even when I returned home later that evening, I still couldn’t get those words out of my head.
I’m not sure who came up with the brilliant revelation that college freshmen are mature enough to choose their own majors and career paths because – and I can pretty much guarantee this – eighteen-year-olds do not have the mental capacity to make such a life-altering decision. And in the city of Los Angeles, if you decline to enter into the world of wanna-be model/actresses, that doesn’t leave you many job options.
Five years and three major switches later, I didn’t find my calling. It found me.
I was browsing the classifieds for internships when I saw it.
“Pace Magazine is looking for interns to assist with our new music column, ‘Sound Bites.’ Responsibilities will include article fact-checking and assisting with weekly music reviews. Journalism and Communications majors only. All interested candidates should send their resume to [email protected].”
The words danced before my eyes. Bright lights and heavenly choir music engulfed me.
A music writer. Why the hell hadn’t I thought of this before? For all the years I’d lived and breathed music, it had never occurred to me that there were other professions inside the music industry besides those solely performing music. I’d long since come to terms with the fact that, in light of the many things I was good at, singing was not one of them. Writing, however, was something that had always been a passion of mine.
My eagerness had clearly shown through on the day of the interview, when the entertainment director hired me on the spot. I’m not sure if she hired me because no one else had applied for the job or because she saw the undying love for music glowing from my eyes, but either way, I was told to report to the lobby on Monday at nine and bring two forms of ID.
When my first day arrived, I was sitting in the lobby, pretending to be engrossed in the latest copy of the L.A. Weekly, when I noticed him. He strolled across the room steadily, his white polo hugging him just tightly enough to show off the outline of his biceps.
“You must be Renee Evans,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m David Whitman, Pace’s sports editor. It’s nice to meet you.”
I stood up and shook his hand, still stunned by the beauty of his dark, deep-set eyes and perfectly chiseled frame.
“The HR team is in a meeting, so they’ve asked me to bring you up to the conference room to get started with your new hire paperwork,” he continued. “Follow me.”
I grabbed my purse and followed him down the corridor. I had to increase my speed to keep up with his brisk pace. One of my college professors had taught us that, when in a business environment, there were three things you should always remember: make eye contact, have a firm handshake, and walk with confidence, “with a purpose,” as he’d called it.
David Whitman walked with a purpose.
After recovering from the initial intimidation of his beauty, I felt instantly at ease with him. By the end of my first day, the budding feeling of lust had already started to form in the pit of my stomach, and I found myself humming on the way home from work like a smitten teenage schoolgirl.
By the end of the second day, he had already asked me out.
I can remember our first date as clear as you’d remember anything else of significant importance in your life: your first kiss, your first love, your first heartbreak. He picked me up in a black Lexus RX, wearing a white baseball cap and a light-green shirt that showed off the tanned tone of his skin. He took me to dinner at Bandera in Brentwood, then for a walk down the Santa Monica Pier. When he leaned in and kissed me, all I could think of was how long it had been since I’d felt like this.
Naturally, at first, I thought it was love, as everyone does when they’re blindsided in the initial relationship stages. I even withheld sex for as long as physically possible, because I was “waiting for the right time.”
“What the hell are you waiting for?” Justine had asked. “Singing angels to come down from the sky?”
“Hey, we don’t all put out on the first date like you,” I’d joked, but in truth, I really did want it to be perfect, just like everything, up until that point, had been.
But after the honeymoon stage fizzled out, a few concerns emerged. For one, if things didn’t work out between us, I knew the inter-office romance drama at work wouldn’t go over well, and could possibly cost me my newfound dream job. And I had also slowly started to come to the realization that David and I didn’t have a hell of a lot in common.
I had just been assigned my first research piece at Pace, where I was instructed to review the album charts for the past decade and compile a list of the most popular rock bands of the twenty-first century. After coming up with a pathetically weak list of bands not even worthy of mention – it was of no comparison to the bands like Nirvana and Radiohead that had severely impacted the music world a decade prior. I began to wonder if the entire music scene had gone downhill in the last ten years.
When I presented my frustration to David, his lackluster attitude gave way to the realization that we were definitely lacking in the common-interest arena. David’s only passion in life was sports, which was like a foreign language to me. For the first time since we started dating, I began to question our relationship’s shelf life. Common goals and passions may not be important to some people, but they were to me.
“Cornell is still around,” he’d argued when I vented about my article.
“My point exactly. Cornell was one of the talented artists who evolved in the nineties. Name at least one of your favorite bands
