7Pumping Blood || NONONO
MOLLY
I’m not going.
I send the text off to Justine. Her reply arrives a few seconds later: just a simple and resigned ‘okay.’
I groan and lean against the wall in the almost-deserted hallway of a McGill building; Friday classes at eight in the morning aren’t a popular choice. Dragging a hand down my face, I use the other to type out a second text.
Fine. I’ll go.
She sends the same reply.
We’ve been having the same discussion all week, so I don’t blame her for her lack of enthusiasm. I’ve been waffling between going to the interview at Metro Records and ignoring it altogether for so long that my brain is basically just one big conflicted waffle house.
On the one waffle, there’s the fact that doing graphic design work for a record label is my own personal definition of career porn. More than one fan on Sounds of the Station has said the stuff I make for the site is good enough to be professional, and it’s a thought that haunts me every time I’m fighting to keep my eyes open in a sociology lecture. I know it’s a naive and unrealistic thing to dream about, but it’s not like anyone really has control over their fantasies.
On the other waffle, I don’t have the time to take on more than averypart time job, and my mom would kill me if she found out I was letting anything distract me from school—the school she’s paying for. Also, discussing my work with an actual music industry mogul sounds akin to entering the ninth circle of hell.
I kind of just want to sit in my room and eat waffles tonight.
I find myself wishing I had atruclike JP as I sit in my lecture, staring down the clock. I have to sit on my hands to keep them from tapping against the edge of my laptop, which means I’m screwed as far as taking notes today goes.
I find myself thinking about the little shoulder punch JP gave me before he left on Saturday, the one that gave me the same kind of tingles as my fingers brushing his palm.
Une vraie artiste.
I looked the meaning up after to be sure: a true artist.
He said the poster was good before he even knew it was mine, so he isn’t just being nice about it. He really believed my work was good enough to bring it up with the label, and I know Metro Records wouldn’t be wasting their time interviewing someone they weren’t seriously interested in.
If I’m being totally honest, I know my design work isn’t bad. I’m not a pro by any means, but shapes and colours always arrange themselves for me in a way the words that come out of my mouth don’t. The interaction between textures and lines is instinctive to me in a way humaninteraction never will be. I could be good at this job if art was all there was to it, but the inevitable ‘talking to people’ part would be my downfall.
By the time I’m done with classes for the day, I’ve texted Justine to say I’ve changed my mind three more times. It’s just after one in the afternoon, and I treat myself to some Indian takeaway on the trip home. I hear voices behind the door when I pull out my keys at our apartment and brace myself to say hello to one of Stéphanie’s friends, but when I open the door, I find her sitting on the couch while a familiar man-bun-sporting figure digs around in our kitchen cupboard.
“Oh, hi!” Stéphanie calls out. “Don’t mind JP. I got him hooked on protein bars, and he came by to sample all my flavours so can decide which ones to buy.”
“Hello, Molly,” JP greets me, his head still basically shoved inside the cupboard.
“By the way, I saidsample, JP,” Stéphanie admonishes.
She says something in French so fast I don’t have a hope of understanding, and JP extracts himself from the cupboard, both his hands full of foil-wrapped bars.
“Sample,” he repeats. “Got it.”
“Molly, can you keep an eye on him?” Stéphanie asks me. “I’m hanging out with Ace for a bit before class tonight.”
My heart still lurches reflexively at the reminder that she gets to ‘hang out’ with my ex-fantasy, but I mumble my agreement. JP tosses a protein bar at me as soon as she’s gone. I’m not fast enough to catch it, and it hits me square in the face.
I let out a string of swear words and clutch my eye. JP drops a few curses of his own and vaults over the couch to reach me.
“Tabarnak. Fuck. I’m sorry.Esti.”
His hands flutter from my shoulders to my elbows and back, like he’s not sure what to do with them.
“Uh, do you want...ice?” he asks, sounding panicked.
The edge of the wrapper hit me right in the eye. Tears are now streaming down my cheek, but I can’t help laughing at the way his accent turns ‘ice’ into ‘hice.’
