“And what about you?” I ask. “What do you believe? You personally, I mean. Not them, but you.”
She sits on the bed beside me, hands propped behind her. The bed is high enough and she’s short enough that her toes don’t touch the ground, and she bounces her foot off the side of the bed. “You know, funny you should ask.” A sniff of a laugh. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. My beliefs are…complicated. I’ve spent a lot of time in oncology wards, as you can imagine. And I’ve seen…some incredible things. Miraculous healing—literally, a girl I know was stage four, terminal, and she just…one day, was healed. No cancer. No surgery, no chemo, no radiation, no treatment of any kind. It just vanished without explanation and last I knew, never came back. But then I’ve seen someone go from a benign tumor to dead in weeks. There’s…more, to life. More than just what we see. I have no doubt of that whatsoever. What I struggle with is the question of…is it God? And does he care? He, she, whatever, I don’t know. It’s God, maybe gender doesn’t apply. And if it is God, and if God cares, why am I dying? Why me? Why anyone? It’s impossible to figure out.” A slow sigh. “Not the question you were asking, I know.”
“No, this is the stuff I want to know, want to talk about. Not just surface stuff.”
She nods, but her eyes see nothing, staring into middle distance. “What do I believe? I believe in love. Mom and Dad are proof. They love each other, and that love has gotten them through…well, everything with me. And when I was little, Mom miscarried at twelve weeks. I remember her being sad for a long, long time. It was before I was sick. So she went from that to me getting sick, and Dad just…he was there for her. Loved her through her sadness. So I believe in love. What else do I believe?”
A long pause. I don’t rush it.
“I believe a certain amount of modesty is necessary. I think there’s a little too much emphasis in our culture on provocative, overly revealing, overly sexualized clothing, and it just seems unnecessary. Like, keep some of that private. But I also believe that’s an individual choice. I wouldn’t walk around half naked like some girls I see, but then again, I posted that video of me, and it’s obvious I’m not wearing a bra. Some people might think that’s immodest. I know Mom said something about it, after I showed her the video. But I almost never wear a bra so I didn’t even think about it.” She shrugs. “I think…I think my life experience has made it kind of impossible for me to say I know what I believe regarding sex before marriage. I honestly never really imagined it’d be an issue for me, so why bother worrying about it?” Her eyes cut to mine. “I guess maybe it does apply, now.”
“Doesn’t have to, Jolene. I want you to really understand that this is all about you. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
She smiles. “Thank you. And I guess I need to figure that out, huh?” Another pause. “I guess…I think…I feel like…it should mean something. Sex, I mean. It shouldn’t just be…whatever, you know? Like, something to do, for fun or just because it feels good, or…or whatever. It should be meaningful. Maybe it doesn’t have to be within the context of legal marriage, though. That feels a little backward to me. Or, archaic, maybe. But it definitely shouldn’t be casual. To me, at least.”
“I feel the same way,” I say.
“You do?”
I nod. “Yeah, for sure.”
She bites her lip. Glances at me. “Can I…can I ask you a really personal question?”
I smile at her. “Of course.” I know what the question is.
“Are you a virgin?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not.” I hold her hand. “You can ask me anything, you know.”
She frowns thoughtfully. “I think…for me to ask anything more would feel like I’m prying. Like it’s not my business.”
“Well, then, I can offer the information. It was my first girlfriend, back home in Vermont. We’d known each other since, like, kindergarten. I’d had schoolyard crushes, right? Like holding hands on the bus and stuff like that. But she was my first real, serious girlfriend. We started dating exclusively sophomore year. We were both virgins, and we waited until we were seniors to be together like that. We dated until the Swan Song thing happened, and everything got crazy. I barely managed to graduate, and then I immediately moved to LA. She actually broke up with me.” I can’t help a smile. “She said—I remember very clearly—she told me she didn’t want to hold me back, and she knew I’d be too worried about hurting her to break up with her, so she was doing it first, for me. And…she wasn’t wrong. I knew it was my chance, and I couldn’t deal with a long-distance girlfriend and all that, and she was going to college anyway, so…” I shrug.
“And that was…it? With her?”
I roll a shoulder. “No, not exactly. This isn’t public knowledge, but I actually secretly dated Alessa Howell. We kept it secret from everyone, even our management teams. So…there was her. But media pressure was too much and we mutually decided to call it off. It was just too much hype. We got photographed at dinner together, once, and the world went apeshit. That was too much. We didn’t want our brands, our images as actors and artists, to become conflated with who we were dating.” I pause, sigh. “I was sad about that, actually. Alessa was sweet and really funny. But it just wouldn’t have worked.”
She nods. “Mmm-hmmm.”
I smirk at her. “What? Jealous?”
She laughs and shakes her head. “No, of course not.”
“Then what?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing.”
“No, say it.”
She winces. “I guess I had some false assumptions about you.”
“Like what?”
“Well, you’re so good-looking and so famous that I figured you could snap your fingers and have any woman on the planet.” She rubs her head. “And I guess I assumed you would have…you know, taken advantage of that. You’ve only been with two people?”
I bump her with my shoulder. “It’s an easy assumption to make, and I think most people would assume the same. And, I guess there’s some truth to the basis of the assumption, in that I probably could find someone to date or…you know, just sleep with…pretty easily. But that’s not who I am. And I’ve set out to try to make sure being a star or whatever doesn’t change me as a person. I want to be the same person I would have been had I not gotten discovered. I wouldn’t be sleeping around with every girl who batted her eyes at me, and I’m not going to be that guy now that more people know who I am and maybe would want…I don’t know, just me, I guess, simply because I’m famous.”
She nods. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
I shrug. “Of course.”
She’s restless, foot kicking in a relentless rhythm. Abruptly, she slides forward off the bed and stands up, crouches by her suitcase and opens it, prods at the tight rolls of clothing, and pulls one free. A shirt, it looks like. She stands again, facing me. Gnaws on her lower lip, gazing at me. Considering.