Tell Me To Stay

Signed by the one and only Adrienne Hart.

The tips of my fingers are numb as I shove my phone into a wristlet. The sky is gray and rain is most certainly looming, so I dig through three boxes marked “closet” until I find one with a hoodie in it and head straight for the door.

I didn’t earn this. It makes me feel like I’ve missed something or the expectations they have for me are higher than I anticipated. Maybe this is what having Imposter syndrome feels like.

Trish has already called three times, so I call her as I head downtown, searching for a place to eat or grab a drink. I look like shit; feel like it too. But this is New York. You can look like whatever you want here, and as long as you can pay the bill, no one gives a shit.

As the phone rings, I start thinking more about drinks and less about food.

Because that’s what I really need, a giant chill pill at the bottom of a martini glass.

“You’re freaking out,” Trish tells me the second I say hi.

“Yeah.” I breathe out the word, feeling the energy of the fast-paced city move around me. It’s dark, getting darker by the second and it’s true what they say; the city comes to life at night.

“What’s going on?” Trish asks and I can hear another question lingering, but she doesn’t voice it completely. With cars beeping and everyone else on their phone all around me, it’s hectic, but I love it. In this city, it’s easy to blend in. A person can get lost here in the crowds.

I like fading into the background. I prefer to go unnoticed.

“It just seems like so much pressure, or…” I pause, making a left as I quicken my pace so I can cross before the green man on the crosswalk sign changes to a bright red hand. “It just happened really quickly and it seems like too much.”

“You don’t think you’re worth it.” Trish’s voice carries through the phone with equal amounts of hardness and insight.

I almost stop in the middle of the street, even as the green man symbol starts to flash, a warning that the mean red hand is coming.

“You are worth it. If you can find someone willing to pay you an obscene amount of money to do what you love, you’re worth that amount. Period.” Trish’s self-assurance comes from a different upbringing than mine. She lived here too, three years ago. Two different family lives though. I imagine Trish could have grown up on these very streets.

The posh shops and chic cafes with macarons would have been her favorite shops at only five years old when she wore lace and learned how to behave in boarding school.

She and Brett would have ruled these streets. Thinking about Brett makes me smile. Being the younger of the two of them, he got away with bloody murder and loved how it riled her up. He’s a goofball who can also fit in with high society.

Trish is high society. She is whatever she wants to be.

She was salutatorian in her high school, and she graduated with a double degree by the time she was twenty-four. She wanted to leave NYC and make a name for herself as an artist in San Francisco. When I asked her if I could come with her, I wasn’t sure what she’d say. It was last minute and I wasn’t in the best of places back then. We weren’t particularly close either. I was just one of her brother’s friend’s ex-girlfriends – sort of, not even an ex really – she’d seen me come and go throughout the years. But I was also someone in desperate need that night to get away from here and everything else. The same night I left Madox.

Oh, how things have changed.

“Hey, turn right, right here.” Trish’s tone changes and her words catch me off guard.

“Are you tracking me?” My voice reflects the ridiculousness of the situation. “When I gave you permission to see my location it was to help me when I get lost… Not to track me like a stalker,” I joke with her and she only laughs. I’m prone to getting lost. In life and on city streets both. My inner bitch shrugs and keeps filing her nails.

“Trust me, there’s a bar right around the corner I’ve heard good things about. Are you wearing something cute?”

I glance down at my hoodie and lie, “Yes.”

“You are so full of shit.” I can only laugh as she tells me, “When you look good, you feel good.”

Staring at the bright lights to a bar called The Tipsy Room, I breathe in deep, feeling her confidence. “I see it,” I tell her, although she probably already knows because of her app. “You can turn that thing off now, you creeper.”