Page 5 of Square Waves (Big Fan #2)

IV

I resist waking up for a long time. Being conscious means I have to remember how to be a real person again. Someone who thinks about words like consequences and the future .

When I finally admit to myself that it’s time to roll out of bed, I open all of the curtains to let what sunlight there is spill into the house. Then I take a long, hot shower. My skin is tender from Leon’s touch, even though he didn’t leave a single mark.

It’s Monday, and I feel compelled to do something that at least resembles work.

Getting dressed, I still can’t quite believe that I need a sweatshirt, especially since the fog hasn’t entirely burned off yet.

It was almost ninety degrees in DC yesterday, humidity so thick it felt like dew against my skin. But in the Bay, it’s downright chilly.

Driving to the bar last night, I felt like it could have been anywhere, the city anonymous in the dark. But in daylight, it’s inescapable: Here I am again. Back where I started.

I pack up my laptop and head to a newer coffee shop, the kind of hip, minimalist-modern place that didn’t exist yet when I was growing up.

I’m glad to have the shame factor of being in public to keep me from looking up Leon to see if he’s on Instagram.

Instead, I open a blank Google Doc and type the words Game Plan .

Then I stare at them while my coffee gets cold. What the fuck do I do next?

That question has been answered for me basically ever since Cooper Abbot appeared in Senator Knight’s campaign office for the third time in a week and said, “Cassidy, right?” I was twenty-two, about to graduate college, and scared out of my mind about the lack of direction I had for my future.

I had thought DC might be a good place to be ambitious, but I didn’t actually like working on the campaign all that much; I hadn’t especially liked any of my previous internships either.

What I did like was the way I felt when Cooper—polished, successful, charismatic—looked at me like I was worth paying attention to.

So I followed that impulse straight into a national scandal that landed my name on the front page of The Washington Post .

From there, my options were practically nonexistent.

Who would hire me? I spent a miserable nine months depressed and underemployed in DC, scared that fleeing to California would only cement my banishment.

On a day when I was sure I had already hit rock bottom, I went out for coffee and ran into Maya McPherson—Cooper’s by-then ex-wife, the woman he’d been cheating on during our affair.

I’d braced myself for the private version of the lashing I’d been given publicly, but it never came.

She was profoundly, almost radically, empathetic, and ultimately she was the one who turned my life around.

A few months after our run-in, Maya connected me with KIB, and the nonprofit hired me as an ambassador: a spokeswoman who could share authentically and openly about my experiences with cyberbullying.

At first it seemed cynical. And if I’d had any other opportunities, I wouldn’t have taken it.

I didn’t want to make money off something that I shouldn’t have done in the first place.

But the more I actually did the work, the more meaningful I found it.

Even if I couldn’t forgive myself yet—that would take years, or is still taking years, honestly—I felt deeply for the people I met on the job: people who would approach me to tell their stories.

Say that my bravery had made them brave.

I never felt brave, but for them, I could at least make believe. And the pretending felt worthwhile.

Ironically, continuing to put myself in the public eye meant that I would never stop being cyberbullied.

I learned to turn off comments where I could and not read them when I couldn’t.

I deleted all of my social media the day a photo of me from a college party, looking very blonde, round-cheeked, and scantily clad, was pulled from my own Instagram account, published in the newspaper, and subsequently attached to my Wikipedia entry.

Still, snide remarks and stand-up jokes managed to leak in around the edges.

That combined with the vulnerability required to work with the vulnerable wore me down, like metal corroding over time.

Lately, that exhaustion had started showing up in my performance on the job, until finally, my boss gave me the nicest ultimatum she could: “I think it’s time for you to decide if it’s still worth it to you to do this work. ”

I know which way I’m leaning, at least in theory. The problem is that if I don’t have this, I have no idea what I have.

I pull my chair closer to the café table and rest my fingers on the keyboard.

Just start. In desperation, I list out jobs.

Not ones I want, just ones that exist. Doctor.

Lawyer. Barista. Professor. Bike messenger.

But all this does is remind me that I’ve never been clear on what I wanted to be when I grew up.

It’s the same disorienting feeling I’ve gotten perusing LinkedIn job listings.

Companies want administrative assistants with master’s degrees or communications specialists with decades of experience.

People who know what they’re doing. There are no requests for someone in their late twenties with a bachelor’s in political science whose main area of expertise is being themself.

I’m in a truly black mood when I drive home for my virtual therapy appointment. I’ve been seeing Dr.Tilly Renolds once a week for the past six years, and she’s not about to let me skip a session just because I’m on the other side of the country. Sometimes, I wish we hadn’t all learned to use Zoom.

When I log on, I try to keep my face neutral. “How’s California?” asks Tilly—yes, we’re at the Call me Tilly phase of our relationship.

“Good.” I shrug. I know I should tell her about Leon.

But I also know that she would want to go down a whole rabbit hole about how he and I know each other, how I felt about him back then, what motivated me to fall into bed with him, and why I’m not interested in pursuing anything more serious, with him or anyone.

I’m too raw for that at this point, with the endorphins from last night still coursing through my body. Plus, it really was a hookup. She doesn’t need to know about every random sexcapade.

So instead I say, “It’s weird to be back here.

I don’t know, not bad exactly. But I’m still feeling really frustrated about job stuff.

I spent the morning working on it, and that just made me feel more defeated.

” Tilly is basically the only person who knows I’m lucky I was given this time away instead of straight-up getting fired.

“What do you mean, ‘working on it’?”

“I made a list of jobs.”

“What’s on it?”

“No, not like, jobs for me. Just... occupations.”

“You’re halfway to a Richard Scarry book.

” Tilly stifles a laugh, and I grin back at her, despite myself.

“But also, Cassidy, I want you to consider that maybe you don’t need to have a plan right now.

Maybe you can take this time in California to really be off and just unwind and recover for a little while. ”

Oh, that bit again. She said it when I first told her about all of this too.

I know she’s probably right in theory, but I can’t imagine how I could possibly do nothing for more than an hour at a time.

I’ve never been a go-with-the-flow person.

Getting stuff done is my love language. Basically my religion.

“Relaxing is not in my nature,” I respond a little petulantly.

“Can you think of the last time you tried it?” she shoots back. The problem with having seen the same therapist for this long is that I’m way past the bullshit stage. Tilly knows exactly how—and when—to call me on mine.

She cocks her head. “I know not working reminds you of a hard time in your life,” she continues, much more gently. “But twenty-eight is not twenty-two, and you aren’t who you were then either. It might be okay to loosen your grip a little bit.”

When she says it like that, it sounds simple. Like they always say in yoga classes, Surrender! Let go! But that would involve examining my body to see which muscles are tense. And then acknowledging that it’s all of them.

And that’s before we even get to what’s going on in my head.

I change the subject to my parents and their trip, and Tilly lets me, though we both know it’s filler. She also knows me well enough to know when the pushing stops being productive.

After we sign off, I look at my phone and see that I have two texts. One is from Willa, confirming that we’re still on for drinks tonight. The other is from Maya.

Maya and I aren’t exactly close, but we’ve stayed in touch over the years, and there’s an unspoken intimacy between us.

Less in a We’ve fucked the same guy kind of way and more in a Our names will forever be linked to the same misogyny-laden national scandal kind of way.

I run into her at fundraisers sometimes, and we’ve been able to confide in each other when Cooper’s in the news again, as he was during President Knight’s reelection campaign two years ago.

And again now that he’s about to get remarried in September.

According to the tabloid coverage that finds me whether I like it or not, his fiancée is a New York socialite a decade younger than him.

She’s from a family whose money is even older than his family’s political dynasty, and they seem to be nauseatingly well matched: gorgeous surfaces who exist mostly to reflect the light just so.

Maya is usually too diplomatic to talk shit, especially when the subject is a major political donor.

But when the news of their engagement broke, she described Kit Randolph to me as “decorative and hollow as a gourd.”

I slide open the message from her: Heads-up: Coop has a feature in GQ about becoming a new man. Apparently he had a near-death experience while sailing last year.

I laugh out loud. Typical. I write back, Thanks for the warning. It’s giving the Odyssey ?

She replies with a skull emoji. Then: How are you doing?

It’s not her fault that the answer to that question is a minefield. And of all the people I’m not about to take my problems to, Maya McPherson tops the list. So I settle for something that’s true but not revealing: I’m surviving .

I know the feeling comes back a few minutes later. And then, Take care of yourself, Cassidy.

Whatever tightened in my jaw at the sight of Cooper’s name relaxes just a little bit.

I have been lucky in a lot of ways—by the time my sex scandal broke, at least some people had learned their lesson about shaming very young women for getting involved with older, powerful men.

I always had defenders, even if they were sometimes hard to hear over the shouts of people suggesting I kill myself.

But it was hard to take any of them seriously until I had Maya’s forgiveness. And I never take that for granted.

You too , I send back.

The texts from her are a welcome reminder to get over myself. I’ve been fortunate in too many ways, supported by too many people, to sit around moping.

I remember something that a career counselor said to me at some point during my postscandal purgatory.

He advised me to start my job search not with titles or industries but instead with my values.

To think about what I liked and wanted generally before I got too specific.

So I open a new Google Doc and start a new list: Things I Like .

This is somewhere between working and relaxing, I tell myself as I type out phrases like Talking to people and Making connections and Having a flexible schedule .

It almost feels stupid. Who doesn’t like that stuff?

But as my fingers move, my brain calms, and the thoughts come faster and clearer.

Finding meaning in what I do. Forming real relationships.

Working with vulnerable people. Learning on the job.

By the time I have to leave to meet Willa, I have a messy, incomplete, and imperfect rundown of what matters to me. It’s not as much as I want, but at least it’s a start.