I'm Not Your Toy, Harry

Chapter 2

Jules leaned over, putting her head on Harry's shoulder in a companionable way. Her head was too fuzzy with the vodka, and all feelings of self-consciousness had dipped away as well. 

She had spent an hour and a half getting ready earlier - changing frantically from one outfit to another. Her legs had always made her self-conscious but in a burst of liberation, she had worn a tiny black jumper. With a plunging V-neck and tiny shorts that ended right after her hip bones, she had agonised about this choice.

Now, sitting next to Harry, she was too blissed out to think about how fat her thighs were looking. She took another drag of her cigarette and looked out at the night sky, at the amazing view her new apartment gave her.

It had taken so long to get here.

***

Are you ever afraid that you're living on the promise of some fake potential? That maybe you're not as good a writer as everyone says you are, not as talented, not as funny, or smart, or any of those things? That if you actually do the thing, people will sigh and say, well, we expected THAT to go better. 

Jules had lived in that awful, self-doubting space for years. She had spent five years working for a dead-end journalism job, where she did 500-word articles on Why Millenials Love To Waste Money, and Why Is Everyone Getting Divorced Lately.

Finally, at the age of 28, crying about her weight and an ex who told her "she'd be pretty if her thighs were smaller", she had sat down, opened her laptop, and started typing.

One day of rage-fuelled typing turned into two, which turned into three, which turned into six months. At the end of it. Jules was emotionally exhausted, and her computer had an MS Word file that stretched on for 789 pages.

Sonia, her beautiful, intelligent, highly vulnerable best friend, scolded her for two months about those words lying, ignored, in her computer. "Julie, you have something real here," she would type furiously over chat, ignoring her work at the huge law firm she worked at. "This is what you've been waiting to become your entire life. It's right here. Stop being so fucking scared!"

She didn't stop being scared. But then one day, she went to her editor at the newspaper to pitch a new idea she wanted to write about.

"It's this newspaper for blind people," she said, her voice rising in excitement. "They're making a news magazine in Braille, meant just for disenfranchised, visually challenged people, and it's going to change their lives. I mean, can you imagine-"

Her editor cut her off. "Jules, who's going to read that?" she said. "I mean," she looked down at her desk and back at Jules. "I mean, maybe blind people, but they can't even read our paper, can they?"

Jules stared at her boss, and her expression didn't change. But she went back to her seat, packed her things, send an email saying she was unwell and went home. She never came back to the office.

That day, Jules didn't go home. She went to a publisher's office and sat there till someone spoke to her about publishing her new book.

***

Jules' head jerks up with a start. She realises that she has been half-asleep, with her head on Harry's shoulder, for 20 minutes now. She looks over at him. His face is in darkness, but when he takes a drag of his cigarette, she sees his face illuminated by the flame - angular, pale - and totally gorgeous, says a voice inside her head. She shushes herself sternly. Stay in your league, girl.

She pokes at his shoulder. "Harry, come on, let's go inside. Sonia's gonna figure out I was smoking!"

She gets up and extends her hand out to him. He stubs out his cigarette and takes her hand, stumbling slightly, and they walk back in together.