I changed this scene from The Bounce Back, but I also liked the original, so I’m sharing it with you! If you haven’t read it yet and you don’t want spoilers, maybe tuck this one away in your “later” file.
I ended up cutting this scene from The Bounce Back but I really loved writing it. Believe it or not, when I originally wrote The Bounce Back, Neale was even messier. And, her break-up was too. As a refresher, after Neale’s parents tell her it’s time to grow up and that she needs to move out, she hopes she can move in with her boyfriend, Darin. Of course, that doesn’t go well either and we all know that she ends up on Dylan’s couch until she lands a job (and, eventually a new boyfriend!). After going through edits, Neale got *a little* less messy, and so I changed the scene to reflect her growth.
Fair warning this is unedited, so please forgive my typos. Hope you enjoy it!
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Neale pulled the parking brake on her 2003 Honda CRV but didn’t get out right away. The silence of her car was the perfect place to think. Not that she could sit and think for too long, otherwise Darin would see her lurking in his driveway and that wouldn’t help her case. Since she’d had The Talk with her parents, Neale had hoped, prayed, cried, and tried to reason her way out of finding her own place. Truly, she believed that this would work itself out. Her horoscope had said so. As had that little slip of paper crammed inside of a fortune cookie at Panda Express. The whole move-out thing should have been resolved by now. Only it wasn’t and with five days to go, she was starting to get nervous.
Pushing the rising panic down inside of her, she tried to focus on the task at hand. Asking her sort-of kind-of boyfriend if she could move into his house sounded bad. But, really when she thought about it, it worked out perfectly. Darin rented a room in a house jammed with other artists, so it wasn’t like she was asking to live, live with him. Really, she just needed him to vouch for her so she could snag a couch in the living room until someone else moved out. It would be the perfect environment for her to get on her feet. Very La Boehme and all that. She just hoped she wasn’t Mimi in this story.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and got out of the car. Keeping her head held high she marched towards the front door, refusing to acknowledge the fact that several people in the house probably watched her try and burn down a gallery last month.
Neale knocked, then pushed open the door, knowing that it was unlikely anyone would actually answer. The smell of weed, sweat, and spray paint washed over her like a tidal wave and Neale instinctively began breathing through her mouth. It had been so long since she had been here that she had sort of forgotten about the smell. It was fine though. When she lived here, she would open a window and institute an only spray paint outside rule.
“Hello,” Neale called to a lump on the couch that she was pretty sure was a person sleeping under a pile of sweatshirts. When the person didn’t stir, she began carefully making her way towards the staircase. The shades in the living room were drawn, probably owing to the person sleeping like the dead on the couch, which made navigating the odd tables and broken down chairs a bit tricky. Neale could hear the thumping of a bass and several animated conversations coming from the other corners of the house, so she was fairly certain other people were awake. Plus, it was 2:35 pm.
Making her way down the hall, Neale reached Darin’s room and pounded on the door. In theory, he knew she was coming over. But, in practice, Neale was never really sure how much he was keeping track of time.
“Who is it?” Darin called over the vibrations of the music.
“It’s Neale. We were going to talk today, remember?”
Neale heard a thudding and a scraping sound and wondered if he had fallen out of a chair or something. But then Darin opened the door partially, offering just enough space for her to slide through.
“Hey, Neale,” Darin said, standing in the middle of the room holding a stack of laundry that he had clearly just yanked off a chair.
“Hey. How have you been?” Neale decided it was best to skirt around the obvious for a moment. She hadn’t seen him since the show because she hadn’t been up for fooling around, and he hadn’t been up for moping with her. But, he had a good excuse. The Collective took up a lot of an artist’s time. Or, at least that is what he texted her.
“So what’s up?” he asked, closing the bedroom door and chucking the pile of clothes in a corner.
“Well. After leaving Wootherford, I started thinking—”
“Weren’t you kicked out?” Darin asked, interrupting her carefully planned speech. Of course this is the one detail he would remember.
“I mean, in a manner of speaking. However, I think—”
“Because the video makes it look like Dr. McMillan kicked you out.” Neale went completely still, watching Darin’s brown eyes scrutinize her. After a moment, he said, “You know there is a video right?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Oh.” Darin said, his lips drawn into a perfect circle and his shoulders bunching towards his ears in an uncomfortable-looking hunch. “I wouldn’t have brought it up if I’d known you didn’t know.”
“What’s in the video?” Neale hated that her voice sounded like she was afraid. She wasn’t afraid. She was terrified.
“You can look it up later. We don’t have to watch it right now.” Darin said, rocking his shoulders back and forth before dropping himself on a corner of the bed and patting the space next to him.
Neale ignored the invitation and took out her phone. “Better to know now. What do I google?”
“Fire fail art girl.” Darin sucked a noisy breath through his teeth and hissed, “Or, you could just google your name.”
“Oof” Neale said, shaking her head as she typed. “Someone really doesn’t like me.”
“Might be a couple someones,” Darin mumbled, then caught sight of Neale’s face. “Sorry. There are some remixes out there, too.”
“Good to know,” Neale said, as several iterations of her horrified face popped up on YouTube. Exhaling, she leaned against the edge of the desk, pointedly ignoring Darin’s meaningful glances at the spot next to him on the bed. Pressing the play triangle, Neale held her breath.
Her first thought was that if she ever saw Jenna again, she would beat her ass into the ground. Neale’s second thought was that Jenna must have put tremendous energy and a considerable amount of schadenfreude-based glee into creating this video. If it weren’t one of the worst moments of her life, Neale would be impressed by the graphics, sound effects, and the voiceover that accompanied her shouts, the screams of patrons, and Sarah’s loud sobbing. As it was, it made her want to cry, or be sick. Maybe both.
It was also a pitch-perfect, humorous recap of performance art gone wrong. No wonder so many people had watched it. Jenna had edited her work so that it looked like every awful scene from a movie with a stereotypically pretentious artist.
“How dare Jenna?” Neale blurted out as the video finished. Shutting the app before the next video could play, she added, “I’m not pretentious.”
“No…but, the piece was a little—”
“What a betrayal! And you want to work with her after she posted this?” Neale asked, consciously shouting over whatever opinion Darin was going to level about her piece. After all, his big idea had been to wear a jumpsuit, hold a tray, and see how many patrons tried to hand him their trash. Like some basic commentary on American capitalism and the Black man. As if that one hadn’t been done before. He was just smart enough not to use fire in his piece, otherwise, he’d be in this video and she’d be way nicer to him.
Darin looked uneasy for a moment, then said, “Well, it isn’t as if the piece is about anyone in The Collective.” Catching Neale’s death glare he rushed on, “Think of it more as a commentary on art…that just happens to feature you.”
“It did feature me. And she filmed it before I left The Collective.” Neale said, gesturing around the room as if this was obvious.
“Technically, you were kicked out,” Darin said, again.
“I know how I left,” Neale snapped. Darin shrugged, and she realized that her opinion didn’t matter because the Collective’s well-being was no longer her problem. That stung just as much as realizing that 1.7 million people had watched her in a stupid majorette’s uniform slowly turn into a rust-colored mess and get fired. Sighing, Neale said, “Whatever. That’s not why I’m here.”
Darin looked up, a gleam in his eye as he patted the bed again. “Have a seat.”
Neale looked at the spot next to him, but decided it was better to sit in the chair that had only recently been serving as a dirty clothes hamper. Flopping into the chair, she leaned back, stretching her long legs out in front of her so she could see her scuffed-up combat boots with the fraying sparkly laces. She had worn these shoes specifically because they made her happy, and if going viral for an epic fail wasn’t a reason to need happiness, Neale wasn’t sure what was.
Eyeing Darin, she cleared her throat and forced herself not to back away from her intended topic. “So anyway, before we got sidetracked, I was going to tell you my new life plan, and uh,” she paused as Darin quirked a perfectly manicured eyebrow at her, then powered through, “and, to ask for a favor.”
“What kind of favor?” Darin’s second eyebrow joined the first as he spoke.
“Nothing big. It’s just that I’ve been reflecting and I’m ready to move out of my parent’s house. Now that I don’t have the Collective scaffolding me, I realize how important independence is to my artistic process,” she said, doing her best to channel her oldest sister. Dylan would be so proud to know that Neale retained at least a sixth of whatever consultant-y things she talked about. And, to her credit scaffold sounded way better than, “my parents pay for me to live.”
“So you are moving out?” Darin asked, drawing out the vowel in “so” as if he wasn’t entirely sure where Neale was going with all of this.
“Exactly.” Neale said, excited that he put two and two together. Perhaps this whole thing was going to be easier than she expected. Maybe he would ask her to move in with him. Neale gazed at him, trying to telegraph thoughts into his head then waited. It would be so convenient for their arrangement. Not that Neale wanted to stay in a room with the kind of guy who slept with his shoes in the bed. Then again, she could fix that when she fixed the weed and spray paint situation.
After a moment of intense blinking, which made Neale wonder if he was trying to send her an SOS with his eyes, he said, “Are you asking to borrow my hand truck?”
“What? No… I mean, that might be useful,” Neale said. So much for her telepathy. “But, I was wondering if there was room in the house? You know. For another artist.”
“Oh.” Darin said, drawing out the “O” vowel again. Shifting uncomfortably on the bed, he reached out and put a hand on her knee, attempting to look into her eyes from an odd angle, like an actor in a B-level holiday movie about to have a heart-to-heart with his aging grandma who was secretly Mrs. Claus. “Look, Neale. I like you. I thought we were on the same page about this not being serious. I just have too much going on with my art. And, I’m starting a DJ business. Now really isn’t the right time for—”
“Oh God. No, I don’t want to live in this room with you. I want my own room in the house.” Neale said, pushing his hand off her knee. She really had intended to let him finish the let-her-down-gently speech before clarifying what she meant. But the whole, DJ thing was simply a bridge too far. Neale was desperate, but she was not about to start siphoning rent off a guy who had just googled free DJ software twenty minutes ago.
“Ah. I see. Okay good. Phew!” Darin said, leaning away from her and visibly relaxing.
“Gee, thanks.” Neale sort of wanted to punch him. She was a catch, even in her unemployed and nearly homeless state.
“Aw Neale, don’t be upset with me. That’s not what I meant.”
“Isn’t it though?” Neale let the words slide out of her mouth, tilting her head to the side.
Darin sputtered for a second, the relief melting off his face. “I mean, I did mean it, but not like, in a bad way. More like—”
“Is there a good way to mean that?” she asked, feeling slightly like her mother when she studied a painting. Flinching at the idea of turning into Bernice, she righted her head and refocused on the task at hand. “Never mind. Can you help with the house?”
Forehead wrinkling, Darin said, “I don’t think anyone is moving out.”
“Yeah, but people crash on the couches all the time. I could just throw in for couch rent like James does until something opens up.”
“But where would James go?”
“Nowhere. Y’all have had multiple couch surfers at one time. In fact, isn’t that why you have like 65 couches down there?”
“Ah.” Darin stopped and scrubbed a hand over his face for a moment. “Well, the thing is…” He paused, widening his eyes and shrugging like the gesture should mean something to Neale.
She was tempted to tell him that she had recently tried the meaning full gaze method of communication and could 100% confirm that it was deeply ineffectual. Instead, she let her eyes go wide and shrugged back at him like they were in a grade school fight.
“I mean, this house is really for people who are, uh. You know.”
No. Neale didn’t know. That was part of the problem. She tried the eyes-wide-and-shrug-method again, mature adult that she was.
Darin looked around the room hopelessly as if searching for some sort of communication lifeline, before sighing, “The house is for people showing their work. You know, serious people.”
The ground shifted beneath Neale’s feet and she gripped the side of the chair to remind herself that she was sitting down. Her ears began to ring and blood rushed to her face as soon as she watched Darin close his mouth with an uncomfortable grimace. Neale let the moments tick by as she tried to collect her thoughts and failed, then tried again. It was one thing for Dr. McMillan to think she didn’t have talent. It was another for her friend to think she didn’t have it. Those people hadn’t spent the kind of time with her that Darin had. He had watched her practice after the Collective meetings, and yet, here he was acting like he hadn’t seen her do the work with his own two eyes.
“Neale?” Darin asked, hesitation on his face.
“Uh, yeah,” Neale said, swallowing back the lump that had lodged itself in her throat.
“You understand right? Like, it’s about the integrity of the art.”
Integrity of the art. Something about the phrase jogged Neale’s mind back into gear. That was not something Darin would think of on his own. Neale doubted he even knew what the phrase meant. He probably took it from Dr. McMillan, or Jenna, or Sarah or one of those other pretentious jerks. What he was actually saying was that he didn’t want to be publicly associated with her. As if her failure was contagious.
Taking a deep breath, Neale attempted to force a lid on her hurt. Right now, the goal was just to get out of this smelly, frat-house in disguise. Screw Darin and his bullshit, borrowed vocabulary. “I understand what you are saying.”
Darin relaxed as if he hadn’t just gutted her. Leaning back on his elbows he smiled and said, “The house is a community and if I bring bad energy—”
“I said, I got it.” Neale held up a hand to cut him off. “I’m gonna go.”
“Oh,” Darin said, sounding surprised that Neale would want to leave after he just tried to distance himself from her. “But, did you want to…” He trailed off again, nodding at the spot next to him on the bed.
“Are you actually suggesting we have sex?” Neale blinked at him, debating whether he could possibly be implying what it seemed like he was suggesting.
“You said you wanted to talk in your text.” Darin seemed genuinely confused, and Neale became more convinced that he absolutely did not come up with the phrase integrity of the art.
“I literally meant talk. Like, we just did,” Neale said, standing up.
“I thought it was a euphemism,” Darin said, leaning off his elbows and throwing his hands in the air.
“When have I ever used a euphemism for sex? I am very direct about that,” Neale said, incredulity pushing aside her hurt for a second. She was vaguely aware that the volume of her voice was increasing, but she didn’t care. Now that she wasn’t feeling hurt, she had room for mad. And, as it turned out, she was incredibly mad. “Even if I wasn’t direct, why on God’s earth would I want to sleep with the guy who just told me I wasn’t talented and that you don’t want to be publicly associated with me?”
“I didn’t say that.” Darin sputtered.
“But that is what you meant.”
“You sure seem to have a lot of opinions about what I mean,” Darin said, his eyes narrowing up at her.
“So you are saying that you do want me in the house and that you think I am a serious artist with talent?”
“No. But, I wasn’t saying those things anyway. I’m saying other people think those things.”
“And yet, you agree enough not to stand up for me,” Neale said. She absolutely refused to cry over this. Or, at least she refused to cry while she was still in shouting distance of the house. Taking a deep breath, she pulled her shoulders back and started a semi-dignified march to the door.
“Neale, are you seriously mad?” Darin asked from behind her.
Leveling her very best Bernice glare at him from over her shoulder, she watched as Darin sunk back into the bed and closed his mouth. Satisfied that she had the last word, Neale marched down the hallway and stairs, before blowing through the living room, not bothering to acknowledge James’s grunt of a greeting from the heap of blankets on the couch. Wrenching the door open, she let the gray April morning wash over her as she fumbled to find her car keys in her numerous pant pockets. This had to be why people hated cargo pants. How did anyone remember where the important things were when they needed to make a quick exit, Neale thought before finally locating her keys down by her left calf.
Turning the key in the lock and wiping away a tear, Neale mumbled, “Turns out, I may actually be Mimi after all.”
*****
Hope you enjoyed this little look at Neale’s version one break-up. If you haven’t read The Bounce Back, you can pick up your copy at Amazon (both KU and Kindle available), Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, IndieBound, Ripped Bodice, Signed Copy, Target, Waterstones (UK).
Addie Woolridge 