Part Three: Nora & Elliot
Chapter Eighteen: Nora
One Year Later
A lot can change over the course of a year. People you were friends with no longer exist in your life. Someone you thought you fell in love with has now disappeared. People get married and have babies, or divorce and go their separate ways. Life never stops despite the need for it to sometimes. It can be overwhelming and heartbreaking, but it can also be exhilarating and wonderful.
Buy a house, take a new job, fall head over heels in love, lose yourself for a minute, but find yourself exactly where you should have always been.
Over the last year my life has been a whirlwind of almost all of these and maybe even more.
Now that I’ve finally sat down to breathe, I can actually begin to enjoy it.
Maybe.
When I woke up this morning, there was this nagging, pulling feeling in the back of my mind. The kind that keeps coming back to you. You get distracted but then it reappears and reminds you that something is off.
It’s a huge day and I keep reminding myself of that every time I feel the nervousness stir in my belly. Two hours ago I signed a three book deal with a large New York publishing company; something that only existed in my dreams.
It wasn’t like everything happened overnight, but right now it is all coming together so quickly and while I’m excited, I can’t get rid of this strange feeling.
My hands shook as I signed the paperwork with my agent seated next to me, and the entire time I sat unnaturally quiet, unsure of what to say next. It had been my dream for so long and to have it finally happen is far more overwhelming than I expected.
It took six months for my book to get noticed. With Alice’s help, I decided to self-publish, just needing an opportunity to have my story told, even if it was only read by a few people.
Alice became a one woman PR machine, seeking out people to read my book, researching how to market it and with her connection to the media through her photography job, she was able to get my book into the hands of some serious readers and one person, who I owe more of a thank you than anyone, a reviewer for People Magazine.
Shortly after taking her job as the photographer’s assistant, Alice began making connections and booking freelance work. Her personality has always been her biggest asset and all her sucking up and schmoozing landed her some pretty high-end clients.
Right around the time I published mine and Elliot’s story, Alice landed a job with People Magazine to photograph their book reviewer and an author for an upcoming article. Alice saw this as an opportunity to kindly, but forcefully cram my book down this woman’s throat. And while I was mildly upset with her and her lack of boundaries once again, I have to be grateful to her, because without her big mouth my book would still be unknown.
My phone rings next to me as I finally sit down and exhale the breath I have been holding since I woke up this morning.
Taking it from the end table, Alice’s name lights up the screen.
“Hello, Alice,” I say and she laughs. She’s been calling and texting me non-stop for the last three hours.
“All done?” she asks.
“Yep. It’s final. I’m a writer. A legit writer.”
“You were a legit writer a year ago, too,” she says, annoyed with my humbleness. “You were a legit writer last week when your book made the USA Today bestseller list. You’ve always been a legit writer.”
“Thanks, Alice.”
“Now come out and meet us so we can celebrate,” she shouts down the phone and I pull it away from my ear.
“How come you’re not panicking?” I ask and she laughs again.
“Because I’ve had several glasses of wine and I’m the queen of procrastination.”
“We sure know how to pack a weekend full of overwhelming shit, huh?”
“Yep.”
Alice is having the grand opening for her photography studio tomorrow night. After spending the year working as someone’s assistant, she found she’d much rather be on her own. She also found that she amassed a large group of high-end clients who are willing to pay top dollar to have her photograph their kids. So in the end she opted to open a family and lifestyle photography studio after her work had been featured in numerous family and pregnancy magazines.
“Where are you?” I ask so I can meet her.
“At the studio. James and Ryan are here doing the set up.”
“I’ll be there in a few.”
I walk into Alice’s studio and it looks amazing. It takes my breath away to see how far she’s come in the last year. Both of us finding something we love and pouring our heart and soul into it.
She has organized a grand opening event, inviting all her clients to attend and asking them to spread the word. As of right now she has at least one hundred people confirmed to attend and from the looks of it, she is pretty much done with the set up. I’m sure that was courtesy of James and Ryan.
James greets me with a kiss on the cheek as Ryan finishes up moving a table while Alice orders him around.
“James, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you not smelling like a dirty crotch as Alice so eloquently put it,” I say as he pulls away from me.
James and Alice kept in touch after we left Astoria and to my surprise, their relationship turned serious about six months ago and he left his fishing job and moved to New York. Unbeknownst to Alice, James actually has degrees in biology and chemistry and quickly landed a job as a research assistant with a pharmaceutical company.
I have to say when he first said he was moving to New York I was skeptical, thinking back to all the losers Alice has hooked up with in the past, but James has exceeded my expectations and Alice seems sublimely happy. Happier than I’ve ever seen her.
“She just has a way with words,” James comments back and Alice smirks at him from across the room before he stalks over and pulls her in for a kiss.
Ryan smiles at me shyly from where he’s standing in front of the table Alice asked him to move. It’s still very new, but I like him. We met about eight months ago and after far too much internal debating, we ended up together.
It was one of those hook-ups that seemed destined to happen and after what went down with Elliot, I decided not to let this one pass me by. Every morning for at least a month, Ryan would be in line either behind or in front of me when I stopped at a local coffee shop. Sometimes the line would be long and we’d chat and it eventually turned more than friendly and I began to look forward to flirting with him in line. I even found myself feeling letdown when he wasn’t there some days. One morning, I got in line to find Ryan missing and my heart sank. But as the line dispersed, Ryan was waiting for me at the front with my order and a cheeky smile on his face. After that it all kind of came together and we’ve been together ever since.
It’s simple and easy and comfortable, and although I’m happy, I still have thoughts of Elliot. It’s hard not to, the constant comparison is always present no matter how hard I try to push it aside. Ryan knows about the situation, but not the full extent of it. He opted not to read the book and it’s not like I could’ve kept it from him anyway. There was no way to hide it given the story is what catapulted my career beyond my dreams. But now it doesn’t control my life and with Ryan, I find my memory slowly losing what I thought it once needed. And although it has faded, Elliot will always remain a part of me.