“Are your wrists okay?” John asked. I was staring at the fork in my right hand.
“They hurt,” I said, and my eyes filled with tears as soon as I said it.
“Do you want me to feed you like a baby?”
I laughed. “No,” I said.
He took his own fork and fed me a bite of golden noodles, cupping one hand under my chin. Right now, there were hundreds of conversations happening that impacted my company’s brand, its leadership, my own brand, my reputation. I could force myself to detach, but it was going to get worse before it got better. I envied Khadijah, for whom Richual was just a job, separate from her personal life. Disconnected from her identity. How did she spend her evenings and weekends, all those hours of freedom from labor? I was only thirty-one, but already I missed my twenties, the decade of not knowing any better.
“Maren? Hello?”
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“You’re working right now,” he said.
“I’m not on my phone. I’m not on my laptop. I’m totally present.”
“I can tell you’re working in your head. You never take a break, even when you’re away from the office.”
I brushed away his hand, holding another bite. “You don’t even know what happened. Evan was accused of assaulting all these women.”
“I saw,” John said. “It was all over the news.”
“Devin thinks he’s innocent,” I said.
“Of course she does.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re best friends, right?”
A bolt of pain shot through my right wrist. That couldn’t be true. I was Devin’s best friend. I had an honorary doctorate in her social media footprint. I knew her better than anyone. Not Evan. Evan didn’t care about anyone but himself.
“Well, I think he’s guilty,” I said.
“He’s definitely a creep. But did you notice that the worst accusations came from the one source who wants to remain anonymous?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What if some woman made anonymous accusations against me?”
“Why, what you have done?”
“Nothing!”
“Then you don’t have anything to worry about!” I yelled. John put his head in his hands. He was like a stuffed animal, harmless, made to be squeezed. He didn’t understand what it felt like to be responsible, to carry the burden of making the women’s corner of the internet run like a well-moisturized machine.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I kissed his forehead so many times I lost count. “I don’t mean to stress you out with my work stuff. I shouldn’t take it out on you. It’s not fair. I’ll figure out how to handle it.”
I started clearing the dishes. My wineglass was empty. I didn’t remember finishing it.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Babe, at least sleep on it,” he said. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
Devin and Evan both grew up in New York City. They attended private schools, slept at the same sleepaway camps, and danced at the same bar mitzvahs. They knew the rules of lacrosse and where to get a fake ID on St. Marks. They had parents who understood the added value of Adderall and extortionate SAT tutors, letters of recommendation from notable alumni, paid internships at some corporation where a cousin sits on the board, don’t forget the thank-you note. Devin and Evan knew the same cast of characters, including the girl on Lexapro who jumped from the top of her apartment building on the Upper East Side at the end of senior year and no one would cop to being part of the rumor mill that led her to leap, but everyone pitched in to make an epic playlist for the funeral. I’d heard them talk about the aftermath of a violent hazing incident where the attorney explained to the judge his client didn’t realize how the alcohol would interact with the medication he took for borderline personality disorder, and about another guy who swore the anal sex in the coed’s dorm room was consensual because she let him spend the night, didn’t she?, and after he was expelled his parents hired a crisis management consultant to help him write another round of college applications (don’t forget the thank-you note).
You protected the people who were most like you. Devin had to defend Evan. That was the code. Their live-in nannies raised them to be Good People, to do the right thing and tell the truth about it, but if for any reason you couldn’t do the right thing, or if your idea of the right thing was different from mine, or if you did the wrong thing and there was no way you could tell the truth and still save yourself, then Mommy and Daddy had money for extravagant arbitration, crisis comms, an educational consultant, a spirit quest, a new diagnosis, sixty days in-patient, an affluenza defense.
But I wasn’t from their world. I didn’t have to follow their code.
After dinner, I strapped on my beige wrist braces from CVS. Then I searched through the weekend bag I hadn’t unpacked after Evan’s house, until I found the photos of the two women, one in the red wig, one blond. Neither was Kimberly Hartsong.
I googled Rachelle Tanaka.
Her LinkedIn came up. She had a sweet oval face that looked familiar, but it didn’t match either of the women.
One of them had to be the ex-girlfriend from the article. She wasn’t a nobody. She had a face, a body, a brain, a heart. And he was just going to get away with what he’d done to her? Because she was anonymous? I could post these images on the internet right now. I could say I had been inside Evan’s house and found evidence of his misconduct. I wasn’t afraid of him. He should have been afraid of me. I was holding a straight flush.
Are you home? I texted. There’s something I have to show you.
Foundress Summit
Power in 2017: Are We There Yet?
8:15 a.m. (Ignite session) What’s Your Story, Who’s Your Audience, and Why Should They Give a Shit? with Clementine Hopkins-Halloway of Dragg & Dropp
Are you telling your brand’s story or is your brand telling the story of you? Reclaim the power of storytelling by tapping into experiences that only you can share—let those experiences shed light on the universal truths that align with your core values and then communicate them. Find out which stories are actually interesting to people and which are actually not, from Clementine Hopkins-Halloway, the creator of EDM Sober House and Hit Me Baby: My MMA Fiancé.
9:00 a.m. (Keynote) Our Bodies, Our Selfies: A State of the Union of Wellness Address and Fireside Chat, sponsored by Richual