“Holy fucking shit.”
It was her first night back in New York City after seven months on the road as the makeup artist for the popstar Jandonna’s world tour and she was having a panic attack. She fell to her knees and sprawled out on the cold tile floor of her apartment bathroom, knocking over her makeup bag in the process. Her RCMA foundation palette skidded behind the toilet while her MAC eye shadows burst free, cobalt and champagne dust scattered over the white tile like a Jackson Pollock painting. A compact mirror shattered and she saw herself in the cracked reflection. She looked like she just came out of a failed audition for the Blue Man Group. Right now, she had to focus on breathing. Four in, hold for seven, out for eight, it should have worked. It always worked, but the intrusive thoughts multiplied and fractured like the broken makeup mirror next to her. Seven years of bad luck. Her pulse quickened. She didn’t even know what the next seven minutes would look like. The rest of her life began now, and she didn’t think she was ready for what came next. Then, like the first sound of thunder silences the sky, the phone rang.
She could only manage movement on her hands and knees as she crawled over and picked up the phone, her hands shaking.
“Babe, I saw Pluto hit your Ascendant and had to call. How are you?”
“Well, I think I broke my MAC kit, and I’m fucking pregnant, Andy.”
Thirty-two minutes later, Andy was at the door. Andy was dressed in her magenta penny lane coat, with butterfly clips in her hair. The sound of Andy’s Steve Madden boots walking up the stairs to her apartment brought her panic to a pause and she felt a small sense of comfort. Andy burst into the room, looked at her on the floor, makeup now smeared all over her face, hair, and somehow inside her ear and said, “I’m loving this new look, babe. Are we workshopping ideas for Jadonna?”
Andy placed her bags on the floor and gave her a big hug. She smelled like lavender essential oil, incense, and leather.
“I missed you so much,” she said.
“I missed you too, mama.”
Her smile dropped. “Girl.”
“Too soon?” asked Andy. Andy reached into her bag and pulled out two very large crystals, a deck of tarot cards, and a new MAC palette. “Those are for you,” she said. She reached back into her bag and pulled out two bottles of white wine. “And these are for me.” Andy helped her clean up, ordered pizza, and the two best friends settled in for a long night. Andy looked over at her and took her hands. “Now,” she said, “tell me everything.”
Hugh
She was on her way to the after party with some dancers from Jadonna’s sold-out show at Wembley Arena in London. They were in the final month of the world tour, and by this point she had adjusted to not being adjusted. She was looking out the window on the train when she noticed a man in a grey suit looking at her in the window’s reflection. Normally, she would turn away and keep her head down, but Andy had been encouraging her to get out of her head and stop overthinking. So, she decided to face forward, look towards the man, and give him a smile. His beard was well manicured and his suit was well-fitting. She noticed he had an eyebrow piercing, and the juxtaposition of the shiny metal on his face and his perfectly knotted tie made her feel something between her legs. She introduced herself.
“I’m Hugh,” he said.
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Listen, I know this might be forward, but we’re headed to Samantha’s off Regent Street, and I think you should come.”
At the club, he bought the first round of drinks, and she bought the second. She knew nothing about him besides his name. Tonight, she liked it that way. Lights were flashing, techno was blaring, and she couldn’t tell where her body ended and Hugh’s began. Their sweat mixed as they kissed each other. She rubbed her hands over his muscular chest. She felt free, she felt electric, she felt alive, and she didn’t want the night to end.
Andy took a sip of wine. She placed her glass on the coffee table, next to the taper candles melted onto the pewter tray. “Okay,” she said. “Hugh.”
“Hugh.”
“Fun! Tell me more. What was his last name, how was the sex, and when and where was he born?”
She reached for another slice of pizza. Cheese was her favorite, simple, uncomplicated, completely unlike her current situation. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“It never came up.”
Andy smiled at her. “Not even the birth time? What did I tell you! Names don’t matter; birthdays, times, and locations do. Girl, what if he's a Capricorn?”
“I’m sorry!” she laughed. “I was caught up in the moment, I was living my life, I don’t know… I love eyebrow piercings. I was distracted.”
“And did you have fun?” Andy asked.
She smiled. “I had fun.”
“Okay, Hugh. Hugh the father. I like Hugh.”
She took a bite of pizza. “Um, so, it actually might not be his.”
Andy set down her glass and tucked one leg underneath herself. “Okay then, let's continue.”
“Do you remember Jacques and Dennis?”
“Of course.”
“Well…”
Andy waited.
“Both of them.”
Andy sat back mouth agape. “The dancers?”
“Yes.”
“The gay dancers?”
Her hands still covered her face. Maybe if she kept them there, she could completely disappear. She could forget the last month, turn into a ghost, and ignore the future. She felt Andy’s eyes on her and whispered, “Yes.”
Andy took another sip of wine. “Geminis.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything.”
Jacques and Dennis
The next stop on the tour after London was Amsterdam. They had one show before a three-day break, and then it was on to the next stop. On her rare days off, she liked to rest and explore the city, but compared to London and New York City, Amsterdam felt small. By the second night, she was bored. She grabbed her makeup case and a bottle of wine and walked two doors down to Jacques and Dennis’s room. Dennis answered in sweatpants, his hair wet from the shower.
“I need faces,” she said.
He looked at the makeup case in her hand. “No.”
“Come on. Jadonna wants something different for the last leg.”
“Then put it on Jadonna.”
“I can’t experiment on Jadonna.”
“Why?”
“Because she pays me, and I’m scared.”
Jacques called from somewhere inside the room. “Let her do it.”
She pushed past Dennis. “Thank you, Jacques.”
Twenty minutes later, Dennis was sitting on the bathroom counter while she blended an electric yellow-green shadow around his eyes.
She leaned closer and steadied Dennis’s face with one hand. “God, you have ridiculous eyelashes. Like really.”
By the time she finished, they had also finished the wine.
Jacques inspected Dennis’s face and said, “You’ve outdone yourself, my love.”
She gave Jacques a kiss on the cheek.
Jacques held out his empty glass. “More wine?”
They ordered a few more bottles from room service. Jacques put Jadonna on and started dancing, but it wasn’t the choreography she’d watched him perform every night for months. He was barefoot, wine in hand, moving freely to the music while he talked. She had seen Jacques’s body nearly every day for seven months. She’d powdered his chest, covered bruises on his legs, and watched him change costumes backstage without thinking twice, but right now, she was thinking about it.
Jacques caught her looking. “Dance with me,” he said.
So, she did. Normally she’d be embarrassed, but something about the night felt so comfortable. She felt the stress wash out of her with the movement of her hips. She was smiling and laughing as Dennis got up to join them. Their bodies pressed together, heat building as the music intensified. Jacques was behind her, Dennis in front of her, and somewhere in the middle of it Jacques and Dennis started making out. Then she felt Jacques get hard against her. She pulled away.
“Oh my god!” she screamed through a smile. “What the fuck is happening?” She laughed nervously and turned toward the door. She felt like she was interrupting whatever was about to happen between them.
“No, wait,” Dennis said.
She turned around.
“We think you’re really beautiful.”
“Dennis, you’re gay,” she said, half laughing.
“Okay, most of the time.”
Jacques laughed.
“And” Dennis continued, “I saw how you were looking at Jacques.”
“I wasn’t.” She looked at Jacques. “Okay, that’s a lie, I was. But you’re both beautiful. I was… appreciating.”
“There was definitely some appreciation happening,” Jacques said.
She covered her face. “Oh my god.”
Dennis reached for her hand and pulled it away. “If you want to leave, that is perfectly okay. We love you no matter what, of course. But you could also stay if you want to, this could be fun for all of us.”
She looked at both of them. Her first instinct was to think, which was the problem. Her eyes moved from chiseled chests and happy trails to bulging muscles and handsome faces. She did a fantastic job on the eye look for Dennis and made a mental note to try it with Jadonna. She thought about her conversation with Andy, about how much of her life she had spent trying to figure out what she should do before she ever stopped to think about what she actually wanted. Right now, she knew what she wanted. She could leave, maybe she should leave, but she didn’t want to. She walked back toward them. Jacques grinned. Dennis opened his arms to her, and when she stepped between them again, she could feel the heat building all over her body. Whatever uncertainty had been there a moment ago was quickly being replaced by something much more exciting.
“When in… Amsterdam, I guess.”
Andy was sitting perfectly still. “So, Jacques.”
“Yes.”
“And Dennis.”
“Yes.”
“Good for you, girl.”
She burst out laughing. “That’s it?”
“What do you want me to say?”
Andy laughed. Then she grabbed her tortoiseshell fountain pen with purple ink. She started to write down details of the story so far. “Okay, so we have Hugh, just Hugh. Jacques and Dennis.”
“Yes.”
“That’s three. Let's see what the crystals have to say.”
“Andy, there’s more.”
“Girl… you just told me about getting Eiffel Towered in Amsterdam. What else could there possibly be?”
She threw her napkin at Andy. “You bitch! I had a lot of fun, okay?”
“Clearly, and I’m happy for you, but what are you talking about?”
“There are five. Five potential fathers.”
Andy looked at her, then looked toward the crystals on the coffee table.
“Don’t give me crystals right now.”
“They’re for me.”
Andy reached for the notepad beside the phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Dates.”
“Oh my God.”
“Dates, babe.”
“I told you I didn’t get their birthdays.”
“We’re thinking medically now. You were on a world tour, there was an itinerary, right?”
She pointed her finger at Andy. “Right.”
The next hour was spent with the tour itinerary spread across the floor between pizza crusts, an empty wine bottle, and two enormous crystals Andy insisted were “just sitting there.” There was Hugh in London. Jacques and Dennis in Amsterdam. Then there was Luca, the lighting technician in Milan.
Luca
They shared champagne after the show, got stuck in a freight elevator, and while they waited for a rescue, got into an argument about whether New York or Milan had better pizza. Obviously, it was New York. They shared kisses in between their debate and eventually took it to a hotel room neither of them had intended to end up in, but he had a moped, pretty lips, and his voice sounded like butter.
Andy wrote “Luca” on the page. “And five?”
She hesitated.
Andy looked up. “Why are you making that face?”
“Ben.”
Andy stopped writing. “No. New York Ben?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he moved to L.A.”
“He did, and so did the tour.”
Andy stared at her. “Now you need the crystals, girl.”
Ben
Ben had been almost something for three years before he left New York. Not a boyfriend, but not exactly a friend either. She knew what he meant to her, but she never really knew what she meant to him until he picked moving to Los Angeles over her.
When he moved, they had said their goodbyes to each other, and she said her goodbye to what they almost were. Then the tour landed in L.A., and she wondered, and hoped, and ruminated on whether she would see him, and what they meant to each other.
She was walking back to her hotel after getting ice cream at Thrifty when she was stopped in her tracks. They spotted each other at the same time. His deep brown hair was a little lighter now and matched the shade of his leather jacket. He seemed older, but his eyes were still kind. She saw them wide with disbelief and then shrink as his smile scrunched up his face.
He ran over and gave her a big hug, and instantly she felt like they were back in New York, walking in Central Park with wet leaves under their feet. Her eyelids were gold and purple, his jeans faded blue. He always smelled like clove and mint, comforting like the promise of a holiday, but with a coldness that left her confused. Some of her mint chip ice cream got on his jacket.
“God, I’m so sorry, I…”
His finger met the drip of the ice cream, and he brought it to his mouth. He looked up at her. “Just as sweet as I remember.”
She felt her cheeks flush red and she felt an overwhelming sense of longing and disgust. She wanted so desperately to move on, but she couldn’t pull away from the thought of having just one more night together.
So, they went for a drink. One hour became four, and Ben told her she seemed different. She asked him if that was a good thing. He said he hadn’t decided yet.
She wondered if he missed her too, and then he leaned in to kiss her, and for once, she didn’t ask what it meant.
The next morning, she didn’t feel disappointed in herself, she just felt clear. He could never be what she truly wanted, and after that night, she didn’t miss him at all.
Andy wrote Ben beneath Luca. By then, the candles had nearly all burned themselves out.
They both stared at the page.
HUGH
JACQUES
DENNIS
LUCA
BEN
Five names, five possibilities, five potential fathers.
She looked at Andy, and suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore.
Her chest tightened, and she felt like she was waterlogged and heavy. The weight of the past few weeks started to press down on her all at once. “I fucked up, I really fucked up.” She stood and started pacing. “I spent months acting like nothing mattered. Like I could just do whatever I wanted because I was somewhere else and none of it was real.”
“That’s not what you were doing.”
“Yes, it was, Andy! I thought that maybe I could change myself. Maybe I could say yes to things and be confident and be the girl who is free and has fun and doesn’t overthink every little thing but look where I ended up. My career is over and my life is over. How am I supposed to take care of a child? I mean really, Andy? I always thought that I would have a kid but not like this. I’m not ready, but what if this is my only chance?” She was sobbing as the future passed before her eyes. She couldn’t feel her fingers. “I’m not ready,” she whispered. “I’m not ready, Andy, I’m just not ready.”
Andy hugged her and rubbed her back until the wave of anxiety passed, and she started to return to her body. They had been talking for hours, and there was only so much a moon-charged selenite wand could do. So, the two best friends got into bed and held each other like they always did, through breakups and retrogrades, and slept soundly until the sun came up.
She woke up with the sun shining on her swollen eyes, and she felt lighter. She realized her hand was on her belly, and in the morning stillness she imagined a different future. In one hand a MAC brush, in the other a small hand just big enough to grab her thumb. She saw princess dresses and suitcases. Plane tickets and Polly Pockets. She thought about her experiences the past few months. The nights she chose to have, the experiences she felt present in. She realized in those moments she felt most like herself.
She looked back down at her stomach. She still didn’t know who the father was, but she didn’t care. She didn’t know what motherhood would do to her career, whether she’d stay in New York, whether she’d ever go on tour again, or what her life would look like a year from now. She didn’t know if she would be good at this. As the sun moved down her face, she did know that whatever life she chose was the one she wanted.
“Holy fucking shit,” she whispered.
This time, it wasn’t panic.
