“Sure.” I take a pen out of my apron and write the name of the sweet shop, handing it back to the customer…just in time to catch a young man snapping a picture of me with his cell phone as he passes the booth. “Good luck. Enjoy your Santa and those calories,” I say, with a tight smile.
If the lady notices the impromptu photo session, she doesn’t say anything, rejoining her husband mid-aisle and moving on to a hand-painted scarf stall. I wave to Ricky and Kyle who are posted up in the corner of the market, close enough to reach me if anything happens, but not close enough to intimidate potential customers. Ricky gives me an apologetic smile, so he must have noticed the curiosity seeker taking my picture. I shrug back. Market security has managed to keep members of the media from approaching me inside the market, but there isn’t much they can do about cell phones. Based on some of the snaps I’ve seen online and in newspapers, either the media purchases pictures taken inside the market. Or they’re just breaking the rules and taking the pictures themselves.
Not headache inducing at all, right?
I almost made it through a full day without looking myself up on TheTea after Elijah told me about the stories. Big mistake. They managed to make my innocent girls’ night out with Lydia look like a drunken orgy, finding certain angles of me in the vicinity of men—men I never even spoke with or acknowledged but “witnesses” claim I pursued. Mayor Arrives in a Jealous Rage to Collect His Naughty Party Girl. It only went downhill from there. Everything from the length of my morning running shorts to speculations about my relationships with my bodyguards…it’s never ending. It’s probably never going to get better, either, as long as I’m dating the mayor.
Leading up to the inauguration tomorrow morning, Elijah’s time at home has been rushed. He’s overworked and exhausted, but he’s still nothing short of amazing. He walked in the door last night, threw me up in his arms and carried me to the bedroom. God, he took me like a savage, rocking the bed against the wall so hard, I thought we might take it down. His fingers left bruises on my thighs, my backside. Whisker burns decorate every inch of me that’s hidden by clothes. Dinner sat forgotten on the stove until we dragged ourselves downstairs around midnight wrapped in blankets, eating a picnic on the kitchen floor.
I’m so in love, I wonder if I spread my arms and wished hard enough, flight would be possible. Impossibilities don’t exist when my whole being can be taken over by hope. This incredible man is my very best friend. He’s my lover. My protector and ally. I can live without him telling me he loves me, can’t I? I can live without him reaching that final level of feeling for me. In exchange for being held in his arms at night and getting his silly text messages, I can endure almost anything.
He still hasn’t told me whether or not he’s aware of Naomi being back in Charleston. Every day, I will him to bring it up, to get rid of the elephant in the room. I want to put my master plan behind me, once and for all. To trust that this relationship between Elijah and me will grow and get stronger. But the longer he pretends as if her presence doesn’t linger, the longer I leave the end game I devised boiling on the back burner. If I’m not meant to be with Elijah, there’s a way to leave everything how I found it, but better. For him.
I sense someone entering my stall and turn to greet them, drawing up short when I spot the customer. It’s Elijah’s mother.
“Mrs. Du Pont,” I say, resisting the ridiculous urge to curtsey. “I didn’t expect you to…”
“Hello, Addison. And please, it’s Virginia.” She gestures to a petite woman with graying blonde hair I didn’t notice before but know very well. My mother used to point her out to me in public, before she left and never came back. I was so young, but it’s impossible to forget the hatred in my mother’s tone as the woman passed. “Have you met Mrs. Clemons? Naomi’s mother.”
Cold fingers creep along my skin until I’m shivering. The woman betrayed by my mother and her current husband is standing right in front of me, her sharp gaze starting on the tips of my ratty sneakers and ending at my ponytail. Looking for a resemblance to her husband? “Hello, Addison.” She holds out a brisk hand, her blue eyes unreadable. “It’s a pleasure. You may call me Della.”
I’m half frozen but still manage to complete the handshake. “Hi.”
Virginia taps a bell and smiles, mouthing a filthy rhyme she reads off a decorative wooden sign. When she rears back a little at the dirty joke, I bring my chin up. I’ll never be ashamed of my grandmother’s legacy, even if it consists mostly of dick jokes. “Um. Did you come here to buy decorations?”