Six Letter Word [Kaylor]

January 2017 (Part 2)

Author's note: this was supposed to be a fluffy filler chapter but these things take on a life of their own and I may have made myself cry in a Starbucks writing it so use caution deciding where to read this one. Actually, be cautious with all of February too.

It seemed Karlie wasn't supposed to go to my fourth chemo infusion of any cycle. She'd missed number four from the first cycle going to Germany, for an extremely important work thing. And now with the fourth infusion of the second cycle, she got a call Sunday night asking if there was any way she could do a last minute shoot for Calvin Klein. She hadn't signed any new contracts since I'd gotten sick, but this would give her a chance to maybe be part of a big campaign for them. She'd walked in their runway shows in the past, but this would be printwork for sure, maybe a commercial as well. It was a big deal and I wanted her to continue to grow her career. Life didn't stop for my cancer. And I didn't want it to. Ed was in town, in the music room with me actually, getting ready for a bunch of American promo for his new album, so when Karlie burst in, unsure what to tell her team about her availability to do the shoot, he immediately volunteered.

I questioned if he was ready to handle it. Chemo isn't pretty, especially for me. We're like brother and sister, but even Austin hasn't had to deal with that mess. But he reminded me of that night after the Grammys. One of the nights I gave in to curiosity about pot. And also possibly the drunkest I have ever been in public. It was a bit of a rough night, though we laugh about it now. He was, in fact, possibly the most prepared of anyone outside of Karlie or my mom to deal with the side effects when they came. I didn't want her to miss the opportunity, and there really wasn't time to get someone else to come into town, so I reluctantly agreed, but only after he promised that nothing he might witness would damage our friendship. He actually did the Boy Scout salute and said "scout's honor" so I guess he meant it.

Karlie was excited about the possibility of expanding her connection to Calvin Klein, and the shoot gave her a perfect opportunity to get her foot back in the door there. She would only be on the shoot for the day, it just happened to unfortunately be a Monday. It was going to be an all-day affair, fly out early Monday morning for a west coast shoot, return home in what would probably be the early morning hours of Tuesday. At least she didn't have to worry about flight schedules, since the jet would go wherever and whenever she told it to. Mom and her *gulp* boyfriend were using the small jet for a trip to some Caribbean island, but I put in the call for the large one to come in to Teterboro and be on call for Karlie when she was ready. She'd always been reluctant in the past to use what she thought of as MY jet for travel when she could just as easily fly commercial, but she couldn't win against my two main points. One, we were married, and that meant it was OUR jet. And Two, using the jet meant she could get back to me faster than if she had to wait for a commercial airline. If the shoot finished early, for example, she could come straight home. And if it ran long, she wouldn't miss her flight, it would just leave when she was ready.

She called Derek to see if she could count on him to step in if we needed something, and discovered that he, too, had business on the west coast. Nick was staying in the city though, and would be more than willing to step up, in his duty as brother in law, if Ed and I ran into something we couldn't handle ourselves. Although Derek was staying out west for a few days rather than just a matter of hours, he decided to take Karlie up on her offer to share the jet flight, even though it cost him frequent flyer miles. He couldn't pass up the chance to just chill on a private jet over being crammed into an airplane seat. He did have to be careful to cancel only his outgoing flight, though I promised I would send the jet back for him and wouldn't leave him stranded. It seemed a lot of our friends were going to be out west, for various shoots and television appearances and the like. I guess they were getting all the LA stuff out of the way getting ready for fashion week NY in February. Made me happy to know I could keep Ed for a few days at least.