“Did you at least knee him in the balls and steal his wallet?”
“Ha.” If only. I had to tell her the truth. If she somehow found out later, she’d never forgive me. “I’m going to tell you something you’re not going to like, but please hold your judgments until the end.”
Drawing in a deep breath, I told her the whole story. Why I’d FaceTimed Eric, what he had proposed, what it meant to me in terms of subscribers, how I avoided telling her because I knew she would’ve given me the verbal ass-kicking I deserved. Everything.
“Let me get this straight. You’re only pretending to date him?” She screeched so loud, dogs two blocks away started barking. At this point I didn’t know which she’d consider worse: my unholy alliance with Eric or dating him for real. “What the fuck, Macy?”
“I know, I know. It’s gross.” I didn’t need her to put me in the Box of Shame. I already had a standing reservation. “But it’s worth it to me. So. Can you put on your supportive best friend hat, and take off the one where you call out my ridiculous shit? Because I need those subscribers if I’m ever going to get out of here.”
Midnight poked her head of her office. “You need to tell Paxton.”
I glared at her. “Don’t you have closing duties to do?”
“We can both pretend like I haven’t been pressed against the door listening in the whole time.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t change that you should still tell him.”
“Agreed.” Elise traded a look with Midnight. I did not like that look. “He stopped by earlier,” Elise said. “I was checking out your date on Twitter and he saw the pictures over my shoulder. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing? You didn’t do anything wrong.” I did. Because now Paxton knew “the thing” I had to do tonight, and he hadn’t heard it from me. “I think I really fucked things up with him.”
Midnight gave me the same look she’d given that one customer who’d asked why our DVDs didn’t work in his VCR. “You think?”
“Why was he even here?” I asked. “I thought he had the day off.”
“If you want to check the trash on the repair side.” Elise kept her gaze on her feet. “Um, in there. He was going to leave them on the register for you to find tomorrow.”
I approached the metal can on the repair side and lifted the lid. There, buried under a stack of invoices, daffodils from Gigi’s garden with a ribbon tied around them. A note hung from the end of the ribbon, and my fingers shook as I turned it over.
I like you, and not just because you’re my favorite coworker. I like your passion for old movies and the color blue. I like how your right cheek turns just a little bit pinker than your left when you blush. I like how you wear red lipstick on days when you’re mad. I like the way you look when you look at me. I like all of you, YouTube videos and viral fame included, just the way you are.
My heart shattered on the concrete floor. His late-night texts, the way he always touched the ends of my hair, and the way his lips nearly grazed mine all flashed through my mind. Guilt—clawing, persistent guilt—squeezed at my lungs. He’d been making his feelings clear, and while I’d been feeling the same, I kept stepping back.
I put the lid on the trash and tried to will my face into not showing how bad everything hurt as I turned back toward the video side. “Is he mad at me?”
“No,” Elise said. “You could probably stab him in the chest and he wouldn’t be mad at you. He threw out the flowers after he saw all that staged romantic bullshit on Twitter. He thinks he misinterpreted things between you two, but I’ve known you my whole life, and I don’t think he’s misinterpreting anything, is he?”
I shook my head.
My throat tightened, and Elise wrapped her arms around me before I started to crumple. The last week, my whole life, everything had crashed into me all at once. Like those flowers and that note broke open the dam I’d been keeping sealed up tight. I burrowed against the thick braid slung over her shoulder. She rubbed my back and murmured words of comfort as I held on to the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks.
I’d made a mess of everything. My business partnership with Eric danced in front of me like a plastic bag on the wind, just as mocking and flimsy. Paxton had been open and honest with me, while I couldn’t even be honest with myself. It wasn’t just the desire to leave town that had me going all in with the Baseball Babe drama, and it wasn’t just the Baseball Babe drama that had kept me from taking that final leap with Paxton.
It was fear.
Stone-cold, bone-deep fear of retracing my mom’s history. Of becoming the girl she’d been and waking up as the woman she was now. I loved her, so much that it physically hurt sometimes, but I didn’t want a dead-end job in a broken-down town. I didn’t want my only escape to be a beach recliner and a kiddie pool and worn copies of romance novels.
“I don’t want to be her,” I whispered to Elise, hating myself so much more than I had when I’d agreed to playing these stupid Twitter games with Eric.
I’d never said those words out loud to anyone.
“I know.” Elise kept stroking my back, not even having to ask who I meant. “I know.”
She held me until I stopped trembling, until I could face what I’d finally voiced. What had always been in my heart. It made me feel sick and dirty. My mom had sacrificed so much to give me the best life possible. She’d raised me so I’d never know a day without love. While I’d gotten my spine and tendency to mouth off from Gram, every scrap of goodness and light I possessed had come from my mom.
Elise pulled back and cupped my cheeks. “It’s okay to feel that way. It’s okay to want a better life far away from here. She wants that for you too. Why do you think she works so hard and worries so much? She knows you’re built for something else.”
I knew that in my head, but it didn’t stop me from feeling as if I’d betrayed her. Like the sperm donor who’d knocked her up and breezed out of town without a care in the world. And here I was, trying my damnedest to leave too. Trying so hard that I was willing to sell out every decent bone in my body in order to accomplish that goal.
I’d looked up the man I shared DNA with only once. I found him on Facebook. He had a wife and two kids, who I had no desire to meet, and a nice big house in the suburbs of St. Louis. His parents had moved out of Honeyfield when the paper mill shut down, and he hadn’t been back since Mom told him she was pregnant.
I hated him. I hated his smile, so similar to my own. I hated his nice house and his new car and his family vacations. I hated that he posted the anniversary of when he and his wife went on their first date. I hated that it was a year before I was born. Most of all, I hated that easy life he got to have. The kind of life that could’ve, should’ve, would’ve been Mom’s.
If it hadn’t been for me.
Elise held my gaze, as if she could see my every thought. “Stop punishing yourself for the mistakes other people have made.”
Because I never talked about my deeper fears, preferring to push them down or handle things on my own, I didn’t realize what I’d been doing, and how bad I’d needed to hear those words. The tightness in my chest eased a fraction. “I don’t deserve you.”