Chapter 76 The New Me
Chapter 76 The New Me
"He thinks……" Elise starts slowly, with confused quiteness . The delivery of a woman assembling something in real time, "that your complete and total disinterest in him is a romantic strategy."
"He thinks I am performing indifference to make him want me more." I say. "Yes."
"Sera. That’s crazy!" Elise says.
"I know." I say.
"That is the most narcissistic thing I have heard since the last narcissistic thing and I work in publishing." she says.
"I told him I simply do not want him." I say. "That it is not a strategy. That it is just true."
"Good." Elise says.
"Good.” she repeats.
“ That is exactly right. That is the only correct response to that question and you gave it perfectly."
"Thank you." I say.
"Now." she says. Her voice shifts. From the warmth of a friend receiving information to the specific energy of a friend who has received enough information to have an opinion and is ready to share it. "Can I say something?"
"You are going to say it whether I say yes or not." I say.
“Sera, listen to me. Callum is going to keep doing this. He is going to keep reframing your indifference as a game because the alternative, which is accepting that you genuinely do not want him, costs him something his ego cannot afford to pay. So he is going to keep performing the version of events where you are the one playing a game and he is the one who is confused and hurt by it”
‘’Hmm. I expect as much" I say.
“And every time he does that he is going to try to pull you back into the version of yourself that engaged with him, that cared what he thought, that needed him to see her."
"Do not let him." she says.
"The best thing you can do, the only thing that actually costs him anything, is to keep being exactly what you already are. Indifferent as the truth." She pauses.
"I know I said you should channel your energy into hating him, but after seeing you work and gain happiness through it, your method is completely better. Focus on yourself! Focus on the competition! Thrash him in the process. I did a little scouring and discovered that you won’t be in groups forever, so thrash him with your amazing skills In the room where the judges look at what each of you produced and make a decision. That is the area that matters”
I am quiet for a moment.
"Thrash him." I say.
"Comprehensively." she says. "And when they announce the results I want to be on the phone."
"You'll be on the phone." I giggle
"First ring." she giggles back
“In fact, I will give the phone to your favorite judge and let him talk to you directly.”
She is quiet for a moment.
Then, "How are you actually? Underneath all of it."
I think about that.
About the question underneath the question.
About what I actually am underneath the competition and the group and Callum and the square and the van and the café and two syllables in a voice I am not going to think about.
"I think I am okay." I say. "I think I am more okay than I have been in a long time. Which is strange to say from a hotel room with a half demerit point and a seventy two hour submission behind me and whatever Stage 5 is going to be in front of me."
"It is not strange." Elise says. "You are competing an international architecture competition on your own merit and you built something extraordinary last night and you told Callum Weston you simply do not want him and you mean it."
She pauses. "That is not strange. That is the Sera Calloway I have been waiting to get revived for a long period of time."
“Welcome back, bestie”
I look at the ceiling.
My throat burns with tears and I sniffle quietly.
This is me returning back.
Not a new me.
This is the original me!
"I miss you." I say.
"I miss you too." she says. "Go do something nice tonight. You have been inside that hotel for too long."
"I'll think about it." I say.
"Do not think about it." she says. "Do it. Go outside. Eat something that is not room service. Talk to a person who is not Roe or Callum or a judge."
"Goodnight Elise." I say.
"Go outside Sera." she says.
She hangs up.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
I look at my phone.
I look at the window.
At the Paris evening doing its thing outside, the light going orange at the edges the way Paris light goes orange in the evening in a way that makes everything look like it was painted by someone who had strong feelings about golden hour.
Something in my chest that has been tight since the square, since the working room, since the corridor at midnight and the café and the submission and the apology that was not an apology, loosens.
Elise's voice has that effect.
The specific effect of someone who knows you well enough to say the thing that unlocks the thing, without ceremony, without making a production of it, just saying it because it is true and true things said by the right person at the right time have a specific kind of weight that nothing else has.
Focus on yourself.
Thrash him.
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The street outside Hotel Beaumont is doing the thing it does in the evenings, busier than the afternoon but differently busy, the people moving with the particular energy of a city that has finished its working day and is transitioning into its other self, the self that exists in the cafes and the restaurants and the narrow streets where the light comes from windows rather than the sky.
I am three blocks from the hotel, walking without a specific destination but with the general direction of the boulangerie street in my feet if not in my head, when my phone vibrates informing me of an incoming message.
I pull it out to check.
It’s from Jean-Pierre.
Are you free tonight? I have something to show you. Meet me at the bakery at eight if yes. No pressure if you’re busy. - Pierre
I look at the message.
I look at the street.
I look at the message again.
My fingers fly over my keypad in fast motion.
Eight pm works for me. See you then :)