Page 173 of ClickBack

Bellamy follows my gaze. “I was. People had plenty to say about it.”

“I imagine they did.”

She glances toward me. “You got quieter at Jawn when the audience came in.”

“You were hosting a show.”

“I can do two things.”

I push a melting roll of ice cream around the bottom of my cup. “It’s strange meeting people who’ve already been talking about you. You can’t tell which version they think they know.”

“Sometimes they’ll tell you. Like they’re doing you a favor.”

I look at her, and she gives me a small, knowing smile. Her own name has been in rooms she wasn’t invited to enter.

“They don’t talk about Jarrett and me the same way,” I say. “He made an unusual choice. I’m the unusual choice. His age is interesting. Mine is evidence.”

Bellamy puts her cup down.

“People like a story where a woman has to explain why somebody wanted her,” she says.

I stop moving my spoon. “Exactly.”

She doesn’t ask me to quote anything I read. I am grateful for that. I have already given those words more attention than they deserved.

“A woman at my first station told me to stop wearing a red suit I loved,” Bellamy says. “She said I already came into meetings talking like I owned the place. The suit wasn’t helping.”

“Was she trying to help?”

“Yes. She knew the room. She knew how quickly they would decide I was too much.”

“Did you stop wearing it?”

“To those meetings. Then I stopped wearing it to other things.” She looks down at her cup. “Eventually I didn’t need anybody to tell me.”

I know that part. I can put back a dress faster than anybody can object to it.

Brandi used to straighten my clothes before I left the house. Sit right. Watch how you laugh. Don’t give them a reason. She would say it while she checked a hem or fixed a strap, already moving on to whatever else needed doing. I thought she knew how to keep people from hurting me. I tried to learn the instructions exactly.

In the borough building, after the pageant committee called her in, I kept waiting for her to know what to do. She sat beside me with her purse on her knees while a woman explained the standard of conduct. My mother’s fingers tightened around the handle. I hadn’t told her I was pregnant. Until I saw her hand, I hadn’t let myself understand that she was finding out in that room.

I remember being angry that she waited until the woman finished before asking, “Are you done?” I wanted her to interrupt. I wanted her to take me out of there while someone was still speaking.

Now I think about the time it took her to get to the building, whatever ordinary thing she had put down when they called. She couldn’t have prepared an answer for a room she didn’t know she was walking into.

Bellamy checks the time. “We have a while before we need to go back.”

I look at her. “I was thinking about my mother.”

She waits.

“I expected her to know how to handle everything.”

“I still call mine like she does.”

I laugh, then look down at the empty cup. “The crown picture. You saw it?”

“Yes.”