Trade Me

by Courtney Milan

She must feel my body tense beside her, must know the direction of my thoughts.

  “Blake. Just because we’re not talking about how fucked up this is doesn’t mean it’s not fucked up.”

  “I know.”

  She turns to me. “I don’t know if I should be shoving chocolate bars on you or getting you a food tube. I’m completely unqualified to deal with this.”

  It takes me a moment to respond. “I haven’t exactly managed to deal with it well, either. When I came up with the circumference scrolling solution for Fernanda, it took me months. We looked at hundreds of possibilities. We’d actually decided on something else. And then I just had this idea when I was driving after a run—it just popped into my head. I thought this would be like that time. That if I got far enough away, I’d just figure it out one day.”

  “Not all problems get solved in an instant of understanding. This is completely over my head.”

  “I know.” I take her hand. “Just…don’t let go of me yet, okay? I have two weeks. That’s all I can ask for.”

  Her fingers squeeze mine. “I think you should see someone.”

  A sudden panic takes me. “Ah, well,” I joke. “Since I have five dollars and sixteen cents, that’s not exactly happening right now.”

  “Blake.” She sits up. “No.”

  I’m not looking at her. “We had an agreement. A deal. If I break it, this ends now, not just two weeks from now. Besides, I don’t have time to see anyone. Mr. Zhen is counting on me.”

  “Blake.” She turns to me and puts her hand on my chest. “Don’t you dare use me as an excuse to avoid getting help.”

  I shut my eyes. That’s exactly what this is: an excuse. There’s another reason I’ve never wanted to see anyone. How could I look my father in the eyes, knowing that I’m keeping this from him, and yet telling a stranger? If I find a therapist, it’ll be real. Right now? Right now, at least I can pretend. I can pretend it’s a distant visitor, hanging out at my place for a short spell, but one who will be leaving any day.

  My heart is beating hard against her palm. But she reaches up with her other hand and turns me so I’m looking in her eyes.

  You know, all along, deep down, part of me thought that if we ever got to this place—if Tina ever found out what was truly, deeply, most screwed up about me—that she’d know that our lives aren’t any different. Mine’s not any harder or easier than hers. Everyone has problems.

  And this is the moment when I realize that’s complete shit. Yeah, everyone has problems. Somewhere else on this planet, there is someone just like me—someone who’s fucked up and confused and who doesn’t want to tell anyone. Someone who needs help. Someone who wants out of his head. And the only difference between me and him is that I have the money to do something about it.

  There never has been a trade. I’ve never been able to give away pieces of myself. I carry them all with me no matter what path I take.

  “I don’t know what is going on with you,” Tina says, “but I think anyone who can do this…” She runs her finger down my tattoo. “…Can do this.” She sets her finger on my forehead.

  And maybe that’s what I needed to hear, because this time when I kiss her, there’s no urgency. No overwhelming need. For now, there’s no danger. There’s just me and her. Just a silent stillness, a space where there’s room for both of us.

  17.

  BLAKE

  It takes three days, but I do it.

  First, I tell Mr. Zhen that I have to quit. He sighs heavily, and tells me to come back and say hi any time I have a chance. And then he calls one of the twenty applications he’s been storing and replaces me in fifteen minutes.

  I find someone who specializes in athletes who have eating disorders. I call. We set up an appointment. I go to her office and shake her hand and sit in the comfortable chair in front of her desk. By the time I’m sitting there, I must have had this conversation with her a million times in my head.

  “Hi,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t act like she knows all about me, even though she probably does. She doesn’t raise an eyebrow. She just folds her hands and tells me about patient-client confidentiality. And then, even though I already filled out a lengthy intake form, she asks me, “So, Blake. Why are you here?”

  I take a deep breath. “I’m here,” I say, “because I have a problem.”

  By the end of the day, I don’t just have a therapist. I have a nutritionist. A food diary. And I have something else from her: a promise that this has happened to other people, but that they have gotten better.

  For the first time, when I tell myself that I have a problem but that I’m going to fix it, I believe it.

  TINA

  I try to call my mother. I figure that I can tell her that Blake’s my boyfriend now, that she was right and I was wrong. I want it to be an olive branch. Something to try and put us back where we used to be.

  But she’s stiff and formal when she answers the phone.

  “Tina.” Her voice sounds disapproving.

  “Hi, Ma. How are things going?”

  “Well,” she says. “Very well.”

  “How is work?”

  “Fine,” she says. “No need for you to worry about it, okay?”

  I exhale. “And is everything okay otherwise?”

  “There’s nothing for you to do,” she says stiffly. “I’m responsible for myself. So don’t worry. Go be a student.”

  I hang up, dissatisfied. Isn’t that what I wanted? For her to take care of herself? For me to not have to worry?

  I pull up the utilities website anyway. But when I try to log in, an error message appears. Email and/or password is invalid or incorrect, the site tells me in red letters.

  I try again, and then again. But I can’t get in. My mother has changed the password, locking me out.

  I never realized that the thing I most wanted would feel like a slap in the face.

  “I think I’m dating Blake.” I set the plates on the kitchen table later that night. It’s a dark glass table, round, big enough for two. It’s not dark yet, but the sun is beginning to set over the Bay, coloring the view with hints of pink and purple. Dinner tonight is simple—rice, steamed fish, spicy green beans—but the scent of almond oil and fresh ginger, combined with a generous handful of cilantro, still feels luxurious to me.

  Maria does not look surprised by this revelation. Instead she pulls her plate toward her. “Duh.”

  “No, I mean…” I fumble for words. “I don’t think we’re just hooking up, okay? I think we’re dating.”

  Whatever that magical division is between having sex and having a relationship, we crossed it. We crossed it a long time ago; I just wasn’t willing to admit it. And more than anything, that scares me.

  “I’m sorry,” Maria says. “Am I supposed to be shocked?”

  “Yes. You could at least pretend.”

  She turns to me and widens her eyes. “Oh my God, you’re dating Blake Reynolds? How is that even possible? It seems so unlikely, what with you two lusting after each other and spending all that time in each other’s company. I would never have imagined it, especially after you spent an entire weekend with him and then boned him all night. Who would have thought that two people in their early twenties would have functional hormones?”

  “I think you could be more sarcastic.”

  “You’re right.” She eats a forkful of fish. “Let me try harder. To think that this happened on a college campus, of all places. Nobody ever gets horny in college. I’m shocked. This is my shocked face.” She gestures to her nose with her chopsticks. Unsurprisingly, her shocked face looks dryly amused.

  I throw a green bean at her.

  “Show off.” She frowns. “You know I can’t throw with chopsticks.”

  “I’m being serious,” I say. “I’m dating Blake Reynolds and I’m freaking out here. We don’t make any sense. This is going to be over in a little more than a week, and what am I doing? I’m letting myself get all wound up in him. It�
�s getting worse.”

  “Okay,” Maria says with a roll of her eyes, “is there a real reason this is going to be over in a week, or is that just dramatics on your part?”

  He’s going back to his father’s company in a week. He won’t have time for me. He won’t be here. I look over at Maria—and I realize that this is not yet public information. Dating Blake Reynolds, absurdly wealthy college student, is ridiculous. The prospect of dating Blake Reynolds, interim CEO of Cyclone Systems, is unfathomable.

  “Okay,” I say. “Remember how I had to sign a huge stack of papers to get Cyclone prototypes? I have this vague memory of something that said something like, ‘WARNING: YOUR CONDUCT IS BLAH BLAH LAW BLAH BLAH SOMETHING SOMETHING TWENTY YEARS OF JAIL.’ This is the point in the conversation where I think I need to talk to a lawyer before I tell you anything.” I don’t know what constitutes material, non-public information, but the fact that a twenty-three-year old is about to take over for his father is probably material. And it’s certainly not public.

  Her eyes widen.

  I spread my hands. “Now do you understand why I’m freaking out? I’m dating a guy where, if I tell you what’s going on, I might go to jail. His family puts their private business up for public consumption to sell products. Tell me honestly, Maria. Do you think this is going to last?”

  She blows out a breath. But she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to.

  Some things are obvious from the start. I knew this; I knew I had to protect myself.

  I didn’t. And the fact that I know that this will hurt Blake as much as it hurts me? It doesn’t make me feel better. Not one bit.

  BLAKE

  Hope is a curious thing.

  Sometimes, the reason you can’t figure out the solution to your problem is that your problem and your solution are all tangled up, knitted together so firmly that you can’t excise the problem without blowing the solution to bits.

  It’s exactly five days before the launch when I figure this out. My therapist asks me the one question I don’t want to answer. I look into her eyes and I know—I know—why this is a problem, and why I’ve been so stymied. I know why I haven’t been able to find the answer.

  I go to Tina’s—my house, I suppose, although I don’t know what it is anymore—afterward. She waves at me when I come in. She lets me kiss her. And then she goes back to reading over the launch script one last time. I can see it over her shoulder. I’ve read it myself a dozen times now.

  All this time I’ve been telling myself I can find a solution, that now that I’m seeing someone, I can fake it once I get back. I’ve been telling myself that I can actually be the person that my dad needs me to be and still not disappear. I’ve even been telling myself that maybe I’ll figure this out—figure out how to keep Tina, too.

  Tina reaches out and makes a tiny change to the script. I put my hand on top of hers.

  “Hey,” I say.

  She looks up. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  For a second, her eyes widen. She moves back, ever so subtly.

  “It’s about Peter.”

  “Peter Georgiacodis?”

  At this point, she’s read every launch script. I don’t know how much she’s managed to infer. His comments are all over the scripts before his death. She’s seen our last launch. She knows—she has to know—that he wasn’t just a coworker. That he mattered to me, to Dad.

  I sit down next to her. “I must have met him for the first time when I was a kid, even though I don’t remember it. I don’t remember when he started meaning so much. Maybe it was because he never suggested to Dad that I should be in daycare instead of wandering around a major corporation. Maybe it was because he was always there. He would stop whatever he was doing to walk me through my algebra homework when my dad didn’t know the answers. It’s fucked up, I guess, to say that one of the most important people in my life was my dad’s CFO. But…he was.”

  She looks over at me. “There’s nothing fucked up about love.”

  “No?” I can’t even look at her now. “Do you know what it’s like to run a place like Cyclone? Peter and my dad… I can’t even guess how much time they spent working. Eighty, hundred-hour weeks, again and again without ending. Year after year. Peter was the strongest person I knew. He was the only person who could make my dad back down when he was wrong. Peter was twenty-eight when he took over as CFO.” I take a deep breath. “He died of a heart attack at forty-five.”

  “I know.” She stands up and runs a hand down my shoulder. “I know, Blake.”

  “Since then, even my dad has begun to lose it. He doesn’t say it, but I know it. There’s only so much he can take.” I look over at Tina. “If this broke Peter, if it’s breaking my dad…what chance do I have?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “All this time, I’ve been telling myself that once I fix this little problem, once I figure out why I’m so fucked up, I’m going back. I’m taking over. I’m going to be there for my dad. But that’s why it’s not going away. Because I can’t let myself go back.” Every time. Every time I thought it was going so well. Every time, I’d talk to my dad, and he’d tell me to come back, and it would all get fucked up again. “If I take over,” I tell her, “I really will be killing myself. At least this way, I choose how I go.”

  She folds her arm around me and pulls me close. It’s fucked up. I know it’s fucked up.

  Tina inhales. “Blake. You have to tell your father.”

  “I know,” I say. I’ve never wanted to tell him the truth I’ve known deep down: that I’m not the person he thinks I am. That I can’t do this. “I know.”

  I try to tell him. Really, I do. I plan out what I’m going to say. I write it out. I visualize it. I use every trick my therapist has to get me ready to deliver.

  But there’s no time. When I call my dad a few days before the launch, he looks…relaxed, for the first time in months. That edgy energy, crackling around him, has subsided into almost softness.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hi, Blake.” He smiles at me. “How are you doing? Enjoying your last few days of freedom?”

  I can’t make myself smile at that. I can’t make myself joke. I just look in his eyes. I’ve imagined telling him a thousand times: Dad, I have a problem. Dad, we need to talk.

  But he’s smiling, really smiling. I haven’t seen him smile like this since Peter passed away. “You know, Blake,” he says quietly, “I’m proud of you.”

  That’s the thing. If Vader had really raised Luke Skywalker, this would be the moment when he could have asked anything of his son, and Luke would have done it. No questions asked.

  “I know.” My throat hurts.

  “I’m proud of you for telling me to go to hell because you wanted to go to school,” he says. “I’m proud of everything you’ve done. I’m proud of the launch you’ve come up with. And I’m really proud of Fernanda. She’s going to make a huge splash. The media is going crazy with speculation.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “I just wanted to say that. I’m proud of you, asshole.”

  It’s all I’ve ever wanted. And maybe that’s why I can’t make myself say it. Dad, I have a problem.

  I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to ever doubt me. I’m stuck between two things I cannot do, and in the end, my dad’s strength of will is going to win out.

  “You’re going to kick everyone’s ass,” he says. “Hell. Maybe I won’t bother coming back at all.”

  I manage a smile.

  And as soon as I cut the video, I go for a run.

  When I come back, Tina doesn’t ask me what I was thinking. She doesn’t berate me. She doesn’t tell me I’m an idiot. She doesn’t say any of the things that I’m thinking to myself.

  She doesn’t even look at me, as if she knows our time is already over and she’s just waiting it out. She bends over her laptop, frowning at the launch script.

  I’
m losing everything.

  I slide by her into the shower. I’m marshaling my arguments, getting everything in order. We’re good together, I should tell her. I’m only fucked up half the time. Chances like this don’t come along very often, and I’m not about to give this one up. Don’t make me lose you, too.

  The soapsuds sting my eyes. I can’t tell my father what he needs to hear. Maybe I can tell her.

  But when I come out of the shower, she’s sitting cross-legged on the bed. She’s wearing yoga pants, and she’s holding a single sheet of paper.

  “I have something for you,” she says.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Your life.” She swallows. “You promised me we’d trade lives through the launch, right? That means your life is still mine for the next two days. And I’ve realized the launch is completely wrong.” Her chin goes up. “The Adam and Blake show is not what it needs to be. You want a true construct? To hell with everything I’ve written so far.”

  She hands over the paper. “I don’t have a whole lot yet. This isn’t a script. But what I do have starts like this.”

  I take the paper from her hands.

  She’s right. This isn’t a script. It’s a single line of dialogue.

  Blake: Dad, I can’t take over for you. I have a problem.

  Fuck. I can’t breathe. I can’t do this. I can’t say those words to him.

  But Tina taps her watch as I’m struggling. I don’t know who she could be calling—not at first, not until the person on the other end answers.

  “Hi, Tina,” my father says, as if they video call all the time.

  “Adam.” Tina doesn’t look at her screen. She looks at me. “We need to come down the night before the launch. Blake needs to talk to you.”

  Dad pauses. When he speaks again, his voice is low. “Is this urgent?”

  “It is,” Tina says calmly. “It’s going to take a little time, too.”

  And this is my dad, so he doesn’t question. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t say that the night before a launch is always taken up with a thousand little details, all of which require his attention. He doesn’t ask to reschedule. He just says, “Fine. I’ll make it happen.”