Not Your #Lovestory

by Sonia Hartl

  Gigi chuckled. “You mean since last week?”

  “As much as I hate to break up this wonderous meeting of the minds,” I said, plopping into Iris’s old chair, “the dryer is broken. Elise will fix it, but I need to go to the laundromat.”

  Gram flicked her cigarette over the overflowing ashtray. “Ask if her momma needs any sewing done. And bring up a few jars of jam and canned tomatoes from the cellar.”

  Elise would fix the dryer for free, but Gram would never allow it. We didn’t have any money to pay her, so Gram would pay in labor and canned goods. She’d give away everything that wasn’t nailed down before she’d accept help. Pride kept her from doing otherwise, and she’d hoard that pride with her dying breath.

  In a town like Honeyfield, some people clung to their hate, some clung to a misguided sense of superiority, and some clung to their religion. And then there were the people like Gram, who clung to their pride. Because when you didn’t have anything else, you held on to the one thing no one else could take.

  The Today show came on over the little TV with a coat hanger antenna that Gram had set up in the dining room. Eric’s cocky grin flooded the screen and I groaned. It didn’t even surprise me to see him, considering the evening news bit. It would only be a matter of time before the other networks followed the story.

  He told the anchor how some events had gotten misconstrued, but he still had feelings for me, as he turned all sorrowful. “If you’re watching right now, Macy, I really want to see you again.”

  “We hope you see her again too.” The news anchor placed a sympathetic hand on his arm, all smiles for the beautiful, lovesick boy at her side.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Donna cleared her throat, shooting a tentative glance at Gram. “He certainly is a catch. If I were a few years younger, I’d be tempted to let him feel me up in the back of a van.”

  “Gross.” I threw a balled-up piece of thread at her. “He doesn’t even know me.”

  “There are worse things in life than having a pretty boy trying to win your affections on national TV.” Gram waved her hand, causing smoke to dance on the air.

  I quirked an eyebrow. “Don’t you want to rip off his skin and feed it to wild animals?”

  “That woman who took your pictures, yes. But he’s just as much a victim as you are and look at that face.” Gram turned toward the TV with a soft expression I found deeply unsettling. “He has an honest face. Maybe you should give him a chance.”

  The most honest faces told the best lies.

  I didn’t have the energy to point out that he was still lying about the fly ball. At least he’d been nice enough to say we didn’t have sex in the bathroom, and that was how far my expectations of human decency had fallen in just a day. I’d become pathetically grateful for him simply telling the truth about one thing.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  Peg gave me a smug grin, which I ignored as I texted Elise to let her know what was going on, and went to go dig up enough quarters to finish the laundry. After going through the junk drawers, between the couch cushions, and behind my dresser, I came up with just enough to maybe finish two loads. If I could shove them both into one dryer. I’d bring along four nickels and five pennies, just in case I needed that extra eight minutes of drying time. I loaded up my baskets and soap into Peg’s car.

  I hated going to the laundromat. It sat right in the center of town, with wide-open windows to reveal all the people who couldn’t afford a washer and dryer. Even though paying to do laundry weekly cost so much more money. Being poor was damned expensive.

  I pushed the door open with my butt, a basket under each arm, and nodded to Gina, the woman in her late forties who owned the place. Her bangs were teased with so much hair spray, the ozone wept. Monday afternoon meant I had my pick of washers. I threw my dirty clothes into the one in the back, farthest away from the windows, and passed the time doing BuzzFeed quizzes on my phone. I’d finally gotten my fill of Twitter for the day, though I had no doubt I’d be back on there later. Once my clothes finished washing, I hauled them plus the ones I washed at home into a single dryer and fed it every last quarter I had, praying the fifty-six minutes I’d been able to buy would dry two loads.

  With two minutes left on the dryer, I opened it up to check on my clothes. Warm steam blasted me in the face as I shoved my hand into the pile. Damn it. I needed more time, and trading my nickels and pennies for a quarter still wouldn’t buy me enough. I couldn’t bring my clothes home wet. The last time I’d done that, everything I owned had dried stiff and crunchy. I could barely stand to let those clothes touch my skin.

  Midnight was at work. She might have a few quarters in the cup holder of her car. If I offered her a few popcorn packets from home, maybe she’d be willing to trade me. Glancing at the dryer still spinning my clothes, I told Gina I’d be back in a few minutes. She ignored me and kept thumbing through the pages of her year-old copy of People magazine. Which was whatever. It’s not like I had the kind of clothes worth stealing anyway.

  I went outside and stopped short. Someone had dropped three quarters, and I nearly started crying at the sight of them. Jared—last year’s graduate and future Creeper Feature of the Week in Mug Shots magazine—and his buddy Brett hung out in front of the hardware store. Farm boys. They’d been raised on corn and testosterone, and their idea of a fun night consisted of PBR and beating the hell out of each other. Most of us in town avoided them.

  I ignored Brett’s snickering and dropped to the ground next to a crushed Styrofoam cup, an undecipherable pink puddle, and old cigarette butts. My fingers slipped right over the quarters, and I tried again. They didn’t budge. Brett and Jared started laughing. At me. I couldn’t grab the quarters because they’d glued them to the sidewalk.

  “Problem?” Jared asked with a bite in his tone. A shadow fell over me, and the steel toe of his farm boot stopped right under my line of vision. “Look at the famous Macy Evans, crawling on her hands and knees for a couple of quarters.”

  Tears gathered under my eyelids as the deeper fire of humiliation burned in my gut. I kept my gaze on the sidewalk, refusing to look up, refusing to give them what they wanted. “Don’t you have a sheep you should be fucking right now?”

  He placed the tip of his boot under my chin and used it to lift my face. He smirked at me, and it took every ounce of my willpower not to claw his eyes out. I had no doubt he would’ve been more than happy to stomp that boot against my throat. “There’s a bathroom in the hardware store, and I have more quarters in my pocket. Or are you only interested in fly balls?”

  I willed the tears back—pushing against that voice in my head that told me I’d never get out of this town and away from these people. I’d never escape this life. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. “Fuck you.”

  Jared bent down, beer already on his breath, even though it was just past noon. “I was willing to be a gentleman. But now—”

  “Hey. What are you doing?” Brady marched up the sidewalk from the pharmacy and shoved Jared. “Leave her the hell alone.”

  Jared sized up Brady, the sheer mass of him, and I had a brief glimmer of satisfaction as Jared backed up a step. Brett had disappeared into the hardware store, no doubt worried about the handful of people who had stopped to gawk. Not to do anything or help me in any way, but to watch it all go down.

  Jared shook his head. “Forget it, man. We were just having a little fun.”

  Brady stood next to me, staring Jared down. With a last sneer, Jared turned around and went back into the hardware store.

  “Thank you,” I said, too quietly.

  “No problem. I can’t stand those guys.” Brady held out his hand to help me up, and as much as I hated every second of crouching on the ground, I needed those goddamned quarters. I pulled my phone out and slammed it against the glue holding them to the sidewalk, breaking them free so I’d have just enough money to finish my laundry.

  I put the quarters in the dryer and foun
d the darkest corner in the laundromat to curl up against.

  I loaded the rest of my clothes into my laundry baskets as soon as the buzzer went off. Somehow I managed to get out of there without making eye contact with anyone who passed me on the sidewalk. As soon as I got home, I dragged the laundry through my front door and then checked YouTube. All of my videos had now gone over a hundred thousand views. Depending on how many clicked the ads, the two hundred dollars I’d been earning would increase to somewhere around three thousand. In a month.

  I bit down on my fist. I’d never had that kind of money in my life. For the first time I’d be able to open an actual savings account without paying fees, instead of using my dresser. I’d be able to afford the rent in Chicago. I’d never have to scrape another quarter off the sidewalk again. All because a stranger had wanted to tweet about a meet-cute so bad, she invented one where it didn’t exist.

  I opened my DMs. Sucking in a deep breath, I pulled out my phone and FaceTimed Eric.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  ERIC’S FACE FILLED THE screen, just as chiseled and perfect as it had been at the game and on TV. The snake. “Macy.” He said my name with the kind of awe reserved for the church we never bothered attending. “I’m so glad you called.”

  “Why? Because you’re hungry to extend your fifteen minutes?” He came off as all sad and sincere, but I wouldn’t bend. Not on this.

  “It got a little out of control, but I really did want to see you again. I missed you.”

  “You don’t even know me.” Or maybe he did? My stomach rolled at all the pictures I’d put on Instagram and personal details I’d shared on Twitter, thinking no one would care because I’d kept them separate from R3ntal Wor1d and my Misty Morning persona. “Were you in on it?”

  “No.” He put enough bite in the word to have me considering. “I had no idea Jessica was taking our pictures or that it would go viral, or any of it. I swear.”

  “But you had no problem playing along.” My voice was like ice, and I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to be the stumbling and awkward girl he’d met at the game, or whoever he expected me to be after he’d rifled through the images of my life online. I was an Evans. I came from Gram. Fire and steel. And today I’d let Eric see that the monster crawling within her heart also lived and breathed within mine.

  “Didn’t you also play along by following me on Twitter?” A careful smile, like he was teasing me. “Jessica isn’t a bad person. We’ve sort of become friends through all this, and she had no idea it would go viral either. She’s catching a lot of shit for it.”

  “Boo-fucking-hoo.” I had zero sympathy for Jessica. She’d fully brought the shit she caught on herself when she’d decided to make a sideshow attraction out of two strangers. “People in my hometown are talking about me.” Just thinking about Jared and his quarters again made my hands shake. Eric’s face went temporarily blurry. “Everyone thinks I had sex with you in a public bathroom. Thanks for not setting the record straight on Twitter, by the way.”

  “I said we didn’t have sex on Today.” He frowned. “I’ll fix that. Right now. Hold on.” His face paused, then a moment later he was back. “Done.”

  I opened Twitter, which paused FaceTime on my end.

  @baseballbabe2020: Talking to @MacyAtTheMovies and need to say again that we did NOT have sex at the Royals game. Carry on. #baseballbabe #flyballgirl

  I closed Twitter. “Okay. Good.”

  “It’s been wild.” He continued on like he hadn’t even heard me. “Me and Jessica have both gone on Today; we’re scheduled to go on Entertainment Tonight. I think if you agree, the two of us together could get a spot on The Tonight Show.”

  “Why? What’s in this for you?”

  He went somewhere faraway in his mind, taking on the dreamy expression that had sent the Internet swooning over this pretty, sun-kissed boy. “I want to be a sports reporter.”

  Whatever I had been expecting him to say, that hadn’t been it. “Go to college. Major in journalism or something. You don’t need to be famous to do that.”

  The dreamy expression vanished. “I have a blog. I had a handful of hits before this whole thing took off, but now I’m competing with guys who have been doing this for years. As for college, I’m already going. I have a baseball scholarship, full-ride at Mizzou.”

  “And?” It’s not like he’d shown off his reporting skills with all the strutting he’d been doing on various TV circuits, but at least that explained why he hadn’t told the truth about the fly ball. The type of people who followed a sports blogger with a baseball scholarship probably wouldn’t be impressed that I’d caught that ball right out from under him.

  “Don’t you get it?” He leaned in so close to his phone, for a moment he just became a single deep brown eyeball. “With my recent numbers I can get more access, locker room interviews. Thousands of people go into journalism, but only a few make it. This is how I’ll stand out. It’s the edge I need.”

  No wonder he had no problem telling everyone we didn’t have sex. He needed to stay in my good graces. One post from me would cause enough doubt to ruin his chances. And here I thought he was just being a decent human being. Silly rabbit.

  “And you need me too,” he said.

  “W-what do you mean?” I stumbled over my words, knowing exactly what he meant.

  “Your YouTube channel. I know you’ve seen your numbers. Imagine how high they could go. Imagine if you didn’t have to work at the rental store anymore or live in that shithole town. You think I don’t know you’re scraping by? That the whole damn Internet doesn’t know, with all those pictures you’ve posted on Instagram? They’re dying to crown you and make you a queen. They want your Cinderella story.”

  It was like he’d sliced me open and looked directly into my soul. All of my hopes and wants and fears spread out before him like a buffet to pick over, to decide which ones he could use to manipulate me. But at the same time …

  He wasn’t wrong. I wanted that picture he’d painted. I wanted it so bad, it was like a living thing inside me. A twin I’d absorbed in the womb. The kind that still had its teeth, gently chewing away at those useless things like pride and honesty. The things that hadn’t gotten me anywhere except a dead-end job in a dead-end town with a future so eerily like my mom’s. A future of working until every muscle in my body ached, and it never being enough. Of always being one emergency away from utter despair. Of not even getting the peace of living paycheck to paycheck because those never stretched as far as they needed.

  “What, exactly, are you suggesting I do?” Every word on my tongue tasted like the bitter aspirin my mom had never quite been able to mask with syrup. From the gleam in his eye, he knew he had me. And I’d never hated myself more.

  “We should make a public appearance. Nothing too obvious, but I know the perfect place. We could meet halfway on Wednesday or Thursday. I’ll handle the reservations.”

  “You want to pretend we’re dating?” I shook my head. Too far. This was going too far. It was one thing to tweet and play coy on the Internet. That wasn’t really real. Seeing him in person though. Driving to see him. That was completely different territory, and not one I was equipped to navigate.

  “It doesn’t have to be fake.” His voice softened. “I really do think you’re cute, and I’m sorry I didn’t get your number.”

  “Yeah. Why is that?” I gave him a coltish bat of my lashes. He thought he was running this game, but I knew how to play too.

  “I’m—” He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m not so good at talking to cute girls. My buddy Rod called me a dumbass the whole way home, and I felt like it too. I was so scared you’d say no that I left before I could ask you.”

  What an absolute load of bullshit. I’d seen his Instagram. He had no problem in the confidence department, nor did he appear to have trouble talking to cute girls. Unless he had a lot of cousins who he routinely took shirtless pictures with.

  “Even if this isn’t the
way we expected things to go, I’m really glad I got to see you again. I mean that.” Nothing but sincerity in Eric’s voice, and I … just didn’t buy it. He was too good. Too smooth. It set off all the warning bells in my head, even if he was dateable on paper and tried very hard to seem like he was into me.

  But he was right about one thing. We needed each other. If Jessica’s thread got me over a hundred thousand views on my videos, I couldn’t imagine how many I’d get if I let this fauxmance play out online. Half the Internet was rooting for us to get together. Granted, the other half thought I had crabs, but I wouldn’t think about them.

  “You have my number now,” I said. “I have to work on Thursday, but I have Wednesday off if you want to make reservations. Just let me know where, and I’ll be there.”

  “Sounds good. See you, Macy.”

  His face faded from the screen and I sat down hard on my bed. On a scale of one to ten, I had no idea how gross this made me. We were lying. For clicks and retweets and blog hits and subscribers. The whole thing was deeply disturbing. But Eric and I both had things we wanted, and could maybe get with whatever happened between us.

  Thanks to Jessica, I had nothing left to lose, and I was tired of letting her and Eric reap all the viral benefits. They got spots on the Today show, while I spent my nights in an anxiety-soaked black hole, scrolling through Twitter in incognito mode and absorbing every nasty comment.

  I was so done with that.

  After I tossed my phone on my bed, I put on a blue shirt to complement my eyes—light enough to bring out the glow of my summer tan, plain enough to avoid ending up on any more Ugly Clothes of Twitter lists. I took an hour getting ready, fixing my hair until soft blond curls framed my face, then did my makeup. Smoky eye shadow and bright red lips. I could’ve been a darling or a demon, and I honestly didn’t care either way.

  In front of my green wall, I smiled at my phone, already recording from my makeshift pedestal. A smile big enough to show all my teeth. “I’ve been thinking about you for days, Eric. Can’t wait to see you soon.”