by Sonia Hartl
I checked again. He hadn’t texted me all day. I couldn’t think of the last time I’d gone a whole day without talking to him in some capacity. It threw off my whole equilibrium. I debated texting Elise to see if she’d talked to him today. Though that might’ve been more desperate than just texting Paxton myself.
“You should’ve seen the picture I got of that guy’s jump. The ball sailed into his glove. I couldn’t have planned that hit any better,” Eric said.
It took me a few seconds to realize he had stopped talking and now expected me to respond. “Oh. Wow. Cool.”
He leaned back in his chair with the kind of smugness that would’ve ended a regular date for me. “I’m going to be bigger than Barstool Sports one day. When Mizzou went to the NCAA Tournament, I …”
I tuned him out again and went back to checking my phone. It’s not as if he’d stop talking about himself long enough to ask me any questions anyway. Maybe after dinner I’d stop by work to tell Elise what was going on with Eric. I should’ve told her about it already, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear all the reasons why it was a bad idea.
The waiter stopped back to take our order, saving me from trying to pretend like I was listening to the one-sided conversation. “We’ll both have the salmon,” Eric said.
My back immediately went up. He hadn’t bothered to ask if I had an allergy or if I even liked salmon. It was one thing to bore me to tears, and another thing entirely to order for me. Just like he’d put his hand on my back to steer me at the game. A big part of why we were in this mess. As if he didn’t think I could do anything on my own. Or maybe he just moved through life like that, thinking he knew best, because the world had always rearranged itself to accommodate the whims of a pretty boy with a perfect smile.
“Excuse me.” I held up a finger. “I’ll actually have the stuffed chicken.”
Eric’s lips thinned and I shot him a look that dared him to challenge me. After a beat of uncomfortable silence, the waiter left and Eric took out his phone to check how many retweets we’d gotten on our picture.
“Two thousand RTs and it’s only been up for about ten minutes.” He turned his phone to me, beaming. “I had a manager for the Royals contact me today. He said he might be able to get me into the locker room for the next game.”
“I’m happy for you,” I said with all the enthusiasm of getting a root canal.
“Maybe you can drive down next week.” He brightened as he sat up straighter. “Hey, you could even take a video and post it to your YouTube channel.”
“That’s not really my brand.”
“What’s wrong? You don’t seem into this.” He set his phone aside. “And you keep looking at your texts. Are you talking to another guy?”
“Would you really care if I were?”
He leaned forward, his voice low as he hovered over the candlelight on our table. “I’m not seeing anyone else right now.”
“Are you telling me that we’re exclusive?” I laid a hand over my heart and batted my eyelashes. “Will I get to wear your class ring, too?”
He huffed out a breath through his nose. “All I’m saying is, it wouldn’t be a good look if you got caught on camera with another guy.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I rolled my neck, trying to loosen the tension building in there. I motioned to the quiet and stuffy dining room with the fancy wall art and linen tablecloths. “This is a little out of my element.”
“Yeah, I know.” He frowned at his water glass as he twirled the stem between his thumb and finger. “But it’s public enough to be a story, and private enough for us to control it.”
For him to control it. I hadn’t done anything other than show up. “Do you have a PR person or something? Because it sounds like you’re trying to maneuver me.”
“I’m not.” Eric paused when the waiter brought our drinks and salads. “I thought we’d come to an agreement, that you wanted this too.”
“I don’t know what I want.” The subscribers were nice, but there was a huge difference between sending out some cheesy tweets and meeting this guy in person. Like we’d stepped into something that would eventually pull us under.
“It’s not so bad, sharing a meal with me, is it?” He turned on that charming grin, and when he tilted his head, light reflected off his shiny teeth.
“It’s still too early to tell.” I picked at my salad, which had orange shavings on top that might’ve been carrot and little boiled eggs that probably belonged to a snooty bird, like a quail or something equally pretentious. “But either way, doesn’t this feel kind of gross?”
“Whoa.” He sat back in his chair. “I’ve been called a lot of things. Never that.”
“Not you.” This guy and his ego. As if all his new Twitter fans didn’t coddle him enough. “I mean this thing we’re doing. Doesn’t it feel like we’re being manipulative?”
“I’m on a date with a cute girl—what’s manipulative about that?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, here’s the thing.” He reached across the table for my hand. “If this hadn’t blown up, I still would’ve wanted to have dinner with you. Maybe not someplace this nice, but I would’ve wanted to see you again.”
But he hadn’t. He hadn’t texted me, other than to give me the address of this restaurant. He tweeted at me, but he hadn’t DM’d me since that first time. He’d had the perfect opportunity to get my number at the game, when we were still unknown strangers who happened to be sitting next to each other. While I probably wasn’t any better, especially since I’d spent a good portion of his monologue checking to see if Paxton had texted me, it still made me feel sick.
Sick of Eric, of me, of this entire thing.
He kept his gaze on me, like he was waiting for me to tell him I wanted to see him again too. And maybe I had the morning after the game, but that felt like forever ago. I wasn’t even sure if I was still the same person as I was then.
“Have you checked your YouTube numbers since you posted about having dinner with me?” he asked.
“No.”
He hadn’t given me the address until last night, and after we’d done our hashtag date tweets, I’d spent all night scrolling through the comments. I didn’t get out of bed until almost one in the afternoon and had to rush to get our barters done, shower, do my makeup, dress, get a lecture from Mom. All of it had been exhausting.
“I tweeted that we’d be posting a video of us to your channel right before I got here. You’re up to two hundred thousand subscribers,” he said.
“Fuck.” I’d barely whispered it, but a few nearby diners turned to give me dirty looks.
Two hundred thousand subscribers. It was more than I’d expected, more than I’d ever dared to hope for, and the cost … Dinner with a good-looking guy who talked about himself too much. I’d had worse dates, with zero return.
Eric leaned across the table. “I like you. I really do. But there are other perks to this thing between us, and not just for me. We’ve both been given a chance. Shouldn’t we take it?”
He knew exactly what to say to get me, and I didn’t even mind that much. This was my chance. Never again would I have to crawl on the sidewalk for quarters, the Bees could keep their winning quilt this year, Mom could afford to explore job opportunities outside of Honeyfield. It wasn’t just about me.
I linked my fingers through Eric’s. “I get to post the next picture to my timeline.”
He let out a laugh. “That’s fair.”
Our food arrived, and because Eric was a specific type of jerk, he wanted a picture of him feeding me a bite of salmon, just to prove it was better than my stuffed chicken. He held the fork to my lips. I shook my head, and he kept pushing the fork at me, to the point where the other diners kept one eye on us as they ate. The waiter shifted his stance while he held my phone, poised to take the picture and clearly hating every second of this. Since we had an audience, I couldn’t exactly say no. Not when that picture was going on my timeline.
&n
bsp; After I took the bite and the waiter gave me my phone so he could make a quick exit, I held a hand to my throat. I coughed and waved my hands around, opening and closing my mouth like a freshly hooked fish.
“What are you doing?” Eric’s eyes widened to the size of our dinner plates.
“Allergic.” I feigned a gasp for air. “Salmon.”
“Oh God. I didn’t know.” His gaze darted around the restaurant and I half wondered if he’d just make a run for it and let me choke to death. “Should I call 9-1-1?”
I’d held my breath long enough to make my face turn red. “EpiPen.”
“Do you have one with you? Where is it?” He flailed his limbs, and he looked so ridiculous, I nearly lost it. “Tell me what to do!”
“Purse.” I pounded the table with my fist and pointed at the ground by my feet, even though I hadn’t brought a purse with me.
The other diners weren’t even pretending to eat anymore. They full on gaped at the spectacle. Eric leapt to his feet, rocking the table as he dug his fingers into his scalp. The centerpiece candles flickered.
I relaxed my breath, took a bite of chicken, and smiled. “That’ll teach you to shove food in a girl’s mouth without asking.”
The other diners gave me looks of disgust, but I didn’t care. A hundred percent worth it.
Eric paled as he sat down with a hard thud. “You’re one twisted bitch.”
“We’re going to have so much fun together.” I raised my glass and clinked it against his.
Eric, to his credit, looked like he’d made a deal with the devil. Good. It didn’t hurt to keep him on his toes. I knew he’d been manipulating me, especially when he brought up my subscribers after I’d told him I hadn’t checked. He thought this small-town backwoods girl would just let him run the show.
He didn’t think that anymore.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
DURING DINNER ERIC AND I staged a video, with an actual script. We took turns going back and forth over what we’d say, how cutesy to be, and how long we wanted to make it. I let him post the third and final picture to his Twitter timeline: our linked fingers on the white tablecloth next to our shared plate of sugared raspberry cake, which I didn’t actually share. We agreed I’d get the video for YouTube. By the end of dinner he’d dropped all pretense of trying to woo me. We had become a business arrangement, and I only briefly wondered how my mom would feel about me having gone on a date with a coworker.
The valet brought my car around. I let Mom know I was on my way home, but I’d be stopping by work first. It was still early, and my not-date had left me feeling as empty and alone as I had on those nights when I scrolled through Twitter. If I were lucky, I’d be able to catch Elise before the end of her shift and see if Paxton had texted her about how I blew him off when he asked me out, and then again when he almost kissed me. That had to have been why he hadn’t texted me all day. We’d never gone this long without talking before.
I parked in front of the store fifteen minutes before close and called Mom to let her know I’d made it back to Honeyfield. As I went inside, Brady passed me on his way out the door. I stopped to say hi, but he looked so uncomfortable, I let him go without a word.
Elise stood at the counter with Midnight. She froze mid-laugh as she turned toward me and crossed her arms. “Look who it is. The girl who used to be my best friend.”
Uh-oh.
“I’m just gonna …” Midnight pointed at the closet door before disappearing behind it.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I mimicked Elise’s defensive posture.
She flipped through the DVD rack. “I don’t know. Seems like best friends would talk to each other about upcoming dates.”
Damn it. I should’ve texted her last night. Even if I didn’t want to deal with her calling me out, it’s not like it could’ve stayed a secret with the way Eric and I had been playing footsie on Twitter. People in town had nothing better to do than gossip, and our little rental store was the hub of Honeyfield’s favorite currency.
“But instead I had to find out about it from people coming in here and telling me to look you up on fucking Twitter. I hate Twitter,” she said. Maybe a small part of me had hoped she wouldn’t find out right away because she hated Twitter. And Instagram and Snapchat. If it wasn’t TikTok, she had no use for it. “Please tell me this is all an elaborate joke and you’re not dating a guy who is using you so he can capitalize on hashtagging your public humiliation.”
Yeah. Well. He wasn’t the only one. “Gram thinks he has an honest face.”
“Yes, so honest. Like how he told everyone you really caught the fly ball. Oh wait. He didn’t do that, did he? And you’re seriously dating him?”
She had the same look on her face as that time in grade school when I’d borrowed a few of her Barbies and painted their outfits green and given them all buzz cuts so they could be my army against Gram’s Vannas. Disappointment, annoyance, frustration. Check, check, and check.
“Not seriously.” I chewed on my bottom lip.
“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 tou
ched 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.