by LJ Evans
Music started up, and all of a sudden everyone was cheering and dancing. “Come on,” Derek said, grabbing my hand and leading me into the thick of things where we laughed at our failed attempts to learn the Indian dances even as those around us encouraged us to continue to try.
Eventually, the traditional music was replaced with standard wedding fare. Derek wrapped me into his arms as the music turned slow.
“I like weddings,” he said with a smile.
“You’re probably the only twenty-something male who does.”
“Wait. You don’t know how old I am?” He laughed.
I blushed. “It hasn’t exactly come up in conversation.”
“I thought you were the Google mastermind.”
“You’re on Google?”
“My own Wikipedia page and everything. You’ll find it says I’m twenty-five.”
My feet stopped. “That’s crazy.”
He pulled my hand back up to his heart. “Ouch.”
“Not because you’re twenty-five, moron, but because you have your own Wikipedia page and yet you’re here with me.”
“Little Bird, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
He kissed me, and people around us whistled and hooted.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
Even though it was only a hotel room, I knew that for tonight, while he was there with me, it would be home. And that thought shook me to the core again because what would happen when I was home in Tennessee and missing my other home?
“Let me use the ladies’ room before we head back.” I said so I could collect myself.
In the dim lighting of the bathroom, I looked at the girl in the mirror who was supposed to be me in a bright dress that I never would have picked out without him. With my straight hair, and makeup, and a smile that Good Girl Mia wouldn’t recognize. Whatever happened, it was good to see this New Mia emerge from her cocoon.
As I exited the bathroom, my phone buzzed. I glanced at Derek waiting across the lobby for me with a smile and then looked down at the phone.
Hayden.
I sank to the nearest chair.
Why in all that was holy was Hayden texting me now?
“Little Bird?” Derek was immediately at my side.
I waved him off. “I’m okay. Just surprised.”
“Who is it?”
I showed him the phone. Hayden’s name scrolled across the top and the words that read, “Hey Mia, thinking of you.”
Derek glowered at the words. I started to type back, and he looked floored. “You’re going to respond to the asshole?”
“I can’t just ignore it.”
“The hell you can’t.”
He looked pissed. And he was right. I stared at the phone. It wasn’t like I really wanted to text Hayden. It was just a bad habit built over four years of dropping everything the minute he crooked a finger.
Derek saw my waffling and a range of emotions crossed his face that I wasn’t sure I could read. He grabbed the phone from me.
“If you answer at all, tell him to leave you the fuck alone.”
He stuffed my phone in his pocket, caught my hand in his, and led me out to the taxi line. We were both silent. I felt guilty for the first time that day because I knew that I’d hurt Derek. Like I hadn’t wanted to. Like I was afraid of being hurt again myself.
The truth was, that when I looked at my emotions for Hayden, there weren’t any there. They’d been left somewhere along the road as we drove from Oklahoma to California. The emotion I did feel was anger at myself for not seeing Hayden and the whole thing for what it was sooner. It had all been so wrong.
Yet, I also couldn’t help but want, ever so slightly, to shove it in Hayden’s face that he couldn’t have me anymore. Was that wanting revenge? Or was it closure?
In the taxi, the silence continued, and I couldn’t stand it. I pushed Derek’s shoulder. “Hey,” I said.
He smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He was thoughtful.
“You’re being a moron.”
“Am I?”
“Yes,” I said, and I grabbed his wrist, the one tattooed with forgiveness and sanity, and I rubbed my finger over it. I took a deep breath, and took a plunge that I was afraid to take but was the only way that I knew how to reassure him. “You said I was your girlfriend. That makes you my boyfriend, right?”
This caused his face to light up with that smile that continued to stop my heart. “I like it when you say it like that,” he responded.
I put my finger on his cleft. He growled and bit my finger. My stomach melted. I rested my head on his shoulder to stop myself from devouring him in the taxi.
The quiet settled over us once more.
“You still want to know what he wants.” Derek said it as a statement not a question.
I shrugged.
“Why would you want to give him any more time or energy or space?” he asked.
I struggled to find the right words. Words that would reassure him that I didn’t want Hayden. That the only man that could shake my world now was him, and that, truthfully, he shook my world more than Hayden had ever been able to, because Hayden hadn’t known the real Mia. He’d barely acknowledged her existence. But it also felt like my past needed a door not only shut but obliviated before I could stop giving it energy.
“I think I just want him to know that he can’t have me anymore.”
He took this in.
“Sometimes, before you can shut the door, you have to tell the person to fuck off,” I told him. His eyes widened at my swear word because I didn’t use them often. They became more powerful that way. When you used them sparsely, they actually had meaning.
I didn’t know if Derek would understand what I was saying, because Derek had never told his dad to take a flying leap. Instead, he’d tried to seal the door even as the blood and puss still oozed through. Derek looked like he was reading my mind, because instead of being angry at the thought of me texting Hayden, he handed over the phone.
“Tell him your boyfriend has forbidden you from texting any exes,” he said with a grim smile.
“He really wasn’t an ex.”
“But you slept with him.”
I nodded, and this made his smile disappear again.
“To be honest, that doesn’t seem like you,” he said.
He was right. It didn’t seem like even the old me. It didn’t seem like any version of me. To be fair to my old self, I hadn’t known that he was going to dump me when we got back to campus.
“When I went to UTK, I was trying to escape my brother and… well, just all of it.”
“I get that.”
“And I found Hayden. He was golden, and dynamic, and smart. He sucked me in. He had this idea of starting a co-ed business fraternity, and we made it happen. I did the footwork behind the scenes, and he was our face to the world. We worked well together. We spent so much time together that I thought maybe it was more.”
“But?”
“But he found Marcie, who was much more like him. They were a power couple. Both from wealthy, powerful families. I was just the invisible girl from nowhere who, like always, helped from the shadows.”
“Little Bird, you are not invisible. You’re fuckin’ anything but. You are so beautiful that it stops my heart.”
I stared at him. He’d said those words before. Or similar, and I was collecting them in my heart and soul. They were slowly taking the place of that torn up note that I’d carried around with me for so long.
“Derek.”
“Hmm.”
“I…” I chickened out. I was good at chickening out with him. I just couldn’t say it. I wanted to say it. I wanted him to know I loved him. I wanted him to know that he had shown me that what I’d felt for Hayden was just infatuation and not love. A little girl chasing after what she thought was a dream. But it wasn’t fair to say those words. Not when we’d be leaving each other to go
back to our realities so soon.
“You’re such a moron,” I said instead.
He kissed me, and I forgot all about Hayden, and my past, and the people who had made me feel invisible. Instead, I felt alive, and seen and like I mattered.
♫ ♫ ♫
The next day, Derek left early for the venue with the band, and I went out to the mall nearby to try to pick up some eye-liner in hopes that I could imitate Haleema’s lovely kohl from the wedding. I also needed a new pair of jeans because the pair I’d bought in Oklahoma were pretty messed up after their dip in Dylan’s pool.
Then, because the guilt always hit me when I was alone, I spent the afternoon texting Cam, and my mama, and even Wynn. I checked in on my Instagram feed and the pictures I’d been posting along my journey with Derek. Not many of them had Derek in them. There were quite a few of Jane the Kitten that made me ache. There were pictures of the caves, and Dylan’s pool, and Seth’s art. There were a couple of the band. The last was of the lobby of our current hotel, where I’d posted something sarcastic about how many people it must take to keep the marble sparkling.
I tried not to let myself scroll back farther than this trip. I didn’t want to run into the picture of Jake and Cam that would cause me to hyperventilate with grief and guilt. I was ignoring it, and I knew that I was ignoring it, but I just had a couple more days to ignore it before I would be faced with it every day looking at Mama’s sad eyes.
While I was scrolling, I got an Instagram message. I clicked over to it. It was from Hayden.
HAYDEN: Hey Mia, looks like you are in SF. I’m here too putting together a business deal. Let’s hook up.
Hayden was in San Francisco? How ridiculous was that? Old Mia would have loved to meet up with him. Old Mia would have read too much into it and thought he had flown all the way to the West Coast to find her. She would have fixated on it and twisted it all up, but instead, I didn’t.
A part of me still wanted to let him know that his hold over me had gone the way of the dodos so that I could securely slam that ugly door on that depressing chapter of my life, but I didn’t. Instead, I ignored the message because I knew that it would hurt Derek if I didn’t. And I didn’t want to hurt him any more than I already would when I went home and he continued touring.
As it neared the time to go to the club and meet Derek, I got dressed in my new jeans, a different blousy tank, and my polka dot sandals I’d worn to the wedding. I played around with the kohl eyeliner I’d picked up earlier. When I looked in the mirror, I liked what I saw. The eye-liner made my mosaic eyes—Jake’s eyes—stand out in a different way, and the green in my top reflected the greens in the pattern shining there.
I was running later than I’d planned because I’d taken so long with the new makeup, but it was worth it. I wanted to see Derek’s expression when he took me in. I knew he’d like it too, and that made me tingle all over. I texted Derek that I was on my way so he wouldn’t worry. His response of, “About fucking time,” made my heart beat like the wings of a little bird. The little bird that he claimed was me.
When I left the elevators and started toward the lobby doors, I heard my name and froze.
I turned slowly, shock spreading through my veins.
There was Hayden. Normal, perfect, golden boy Hayden in his typical uniform of dress slacks and a button-down shirt that he had tailor made for him even though it was easy enough to buy one at the mall. His Rolex flashed when he pushed a hand through his tawny hair as he got up from the stool he’d been perched on at the hotel bar. There was a smile on his face that made me think, for the very first time, of the sleazy car salesmen we avoided like the plague at our dealership.
It was then that I realized it. I’d fallen for a sleazy car salesman! That made me smile at myself because I knew better. Hadn’t my daddy warned me off of just this kind of person my whole life?
I realized my mistake instantly because Hayden thought the smile was for him as he made his way toward me. The whole time, he was taking in the entirety of me in my twenty-something outfit with my straightened hair and kohl eyes. His smile widened at the New Mia.
“Wow,” he said as he leaned in to kiss me, but I turned my face so he got a cheek. “You look fabulous.”
I was still stunned. I didn’t know why he was here, or how he’d found me. Had he found me? Had he come here for me? To this hotel? Or would he say it was just my crazy imagination? It didn’t seem like my imagination, and it didn’t quite seem like a coincidence either.
“How?” I puzzled, my astonishment evident.
He laughed. The laugh that used to draw my eyes and hold them. I realized now that, instead of sounding confident, his laugh actually sounded fake. Haughty. There was another laugh that I loved now. One that was always honest and real. Not this hollowed out falseness that was the golden boy’s in front of me. I wanted to thunk Old Mia’s head for falling for this.
“I hope you don’t mind. I saw that you were here, so I thought I’d see if you wanted to have dinner.”
“You saw that I was here?”
“Your Instagram post.”
It hit me then. I had posted the hotel lobby.
“So you just decided to show up? Like some stalker?”
He chuckled. He didn’t think I was serious. But I was.
“You didn’t respond to my text.” His tone scolded me as his eyes raked my body again.
“What do you want, Hayden?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest which, unfortunately, just dragged his eyes to my size E’s. I rolled my eyes inwardly.
“Come have a drink with me.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the bar, but I dug my heels in and pulled away. He turned to me with a frown.
“I have plans.”
He took me in again. “I can see that.” His smile was so slimy. Almost as bad as Derek’s dad. Holy macaroni, how had I thought I loved this man?
“I can’t be late,” I told him.
As if Derek could sense my thoughts and discomfort over the few blocks that separated us, my phone buzzed with a text.
DEREK: You almost here?
ME: Still at hotel. Hayden showed up.
DEREK: What the fuck?
ME: Getting rid of him.
No response from Derek. I put my phone in my back pocket and looked up at Hayden.
“You look different. Good. But different,” he said with that same squalid smile that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen before.
“I am different,” I said.
He seemed perplexed by my attitude. This really wasn’t his fault. I’d always caved to Hayden. I’d always done whatever he wanted and dropped any plans to be with him.
Somewhere inside of me, a lightbulb went on. I saw it so clearly. My shrink from long ago probably would have nailed it in two seconds if I’d continued to see her. I realized now that I’d never trusted myself to be anything more than someone’s sidekick. I’d wanted to be out of Jake’s and Cam’s shadows, but I’d run right into someone else’s. I’d never been willing to stand in the sun on my own. I guess I hadn’t believed that I could be anything more than invisible. But not anymore. Now, I wanted to be seen. Especially by one man.
“Come on, one drink? You can be a little late,” he said with that knowing smile that had always won him everything he wanted.
“No, I really can’t.”
“Jesus, Mia, don’t make things difficult. Have a drink with me. I have a job proposal for you.”
He grabbed my elbow and tried to steer me toward the bar again. I pulled away one more time. “Stop pulling on me.”
I said it louder than I meant, and I realized we were starting to draw eyes.
“You’re making a scene,” Hayden said with a hiss because he hated that kind of attention almost as much as Good Girl Mia did.
Hayden looked around us and shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked like Dylan Waters a bit. They were both men who were used to getting their own w
ay and didn’t like it when anyone upset their perfect vision of the world.
Regardless, he seemed to sense that I wasn’t ready to tag after him yet, so he tried a different tactic.
“I’d rather talk about this over a drink—or dinner—but I have this great opportunity at my company that I wanted to offer you.” He meant his dad’s company. It wasn’t his, but he always acted like he was CEO when, in fact, he was just a director on the way to becoming a V.P.
I just waited. I wondered if he expected me to say yes already. Probably because I would’ve in the past. I would have jumped at the opportunity to be near him.
“Do we really have to do this standing in the lobby?” The irritation in his voice was becoming more and more evident.
“I didn’t ask you to come find me.”
He waited as if I’d beg him for the information, and when I didn’t, he continued.
“It’s director of advertising. We can give you an easy six-figure salary with bonuses and stock on top.” He smiled again. The smile that usually closed his deals without a handshake or a contract to back then up.
“I have a job.”
“Sure. But this could give you way more money and exposure than running your dad’s dealership.”
“I like running the dealership.”
That was the truth. I liked running the dealership, just like I liked baking, and reading, and spending time with my family. I liked simple things that others thought were boring, but to me, just meant that I was home.
I could tell that Hayden didn’t believe my response. Which was mostly my fault because, in all the four years that Hayden and I had been friends and I’d drooled after him, he’d never seen the real Mia. The Mia that loved all these simple things that to him meant nothing.
“But it’s a car dealership,” he said with shock.
His response brought out sassy New Mia. Mia who got angry.
“That my family owns. That I’ll own when my dad turns it over to me in September. It’ll be my company. I’ll be in charge,” I said, trying to rub in the fact that he wouldn’t be in charge of his dad’s company for a long time, if ever.
He hadn’t expected this. That Mia Phillips would own a company at twenty-two.