“And I,” I said out loud as I deleted the text, “will only answer when I’m good and ready.”
For the rest of the day, during my long shift at the store, chatting with my friends and working frantically to fill online orders, my phone stayed silent—nothing from Clive at all. No texts, no calls, just annoying silence until I realized that I hoped he would text me, just so I could tell him off again. It seemed…easier than admitting the hurt, I supposed. Just bite his head off and slam the door shut again until I was good and ready.
Instead of the hard work of holding him accountable for being careless with my feelings. Or telling my best friend—his daughter—what was going on.
And—maybe most painfully—instead of admitting to him that he had a point about the complicated parts. Acknowledging that both of us could be hurt. Other people could be hurt. And that maybe we were already in too deep to avoid any of it.
The phone rang again the next morning, this time while I munched on a blueberry muffin and Pete tried his best to swipe the crumbs from my plate. I set my muffin down and shooed him away as I picked up my phone and declined the call.
Phone still in hand, I looked over at Pete, temporarily deterred from muffin crumbs.
“Should I meet him halfway?” I asked. I set the phone on the counter and opened up the text messages.
I still need some space, I typed, sending it off before I could take it back.
And I didn’t hear anything for the rest of the day.
“Size eight, ten, two, four, twelve, sixteen…”
I muttered sizes under my breath as I sorted freshly cleaned garments into piles, ready for pricing, tagging and display. Keisha Blackwell stuff, which meant that we could charge a premium and move it fast, and we already had a waiting list of buyers ready to outbid each other for all of it.
“Frankie?”
Kresley’s sweet voice startled me back to awareness, and I shrieked at the unexpected surprise in the quiet of the stockroom. When I looked up, her hands were up in a gesture of apology, her sweet face twisted in a grimace.
“God, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Just…something is here for you.”
I sighed and stood up, brushing off my rumpled dress from kneeling on the floor. “I wasn’t expecting anything. Probably another misdelivered package for Frank at the liquor store down the street.”
She shook her head, blond waves bouncing with the movement. “I…don’t think it is.”
It wasn’t.
“Well, these are…a lot,” I said as I rotated the insanely expensive flower arrangement, fingertips gentle on the heavy crystal vase.
From the other side of the counter, Marcie raised an eyebrow and stared. “Anybody we know?”
Deep inside my chest, the raw wound Clive left behind with his careless words stung and burned, and I made a choice.
“No.” I hefted the vase off the counter and tucked it into my arms as I marched into the back, Marcie on my tail.
“Frankie, is everything—” she started, but her words trailed off as I chucked the whole thing into the trash. The vase remained intact, but the flowers looked—well, sad, as the water sloshed out of the thick vase and dripped into the papers and bags that filled the container below.
When Marcie spoke again, her voice was dry. “So it’s not okay, I’m guessing.”
Brushing past her, I just shook my head. “It’s nothing. It’s nobody.”
Out on the store floor, Kresley still stood, and as I stormed behind the counter to grab the tag gun, the sweet, comforting weight of her presence just tipped my fragile equilibrium, and before I could will away the tears with a deep, steadying breath, they spilled over.
No sobs, no theatrics. Just a silent, shimmering trail down my face.
“I can’t right now, okay Kresley?” I said, when she started to move toward me to offer a comforting hug. “I just need to work and come down a little bit.”
I wasn’t lying when I told Clive that I thought Marcie should hire more people. Her boutique, The Blind Hem, was taking off, but retail was a volatile business, and Marcie was still too nervous, too unused to her success to believe that it was the right choice. So for now, we all busted our asses every day. And I didn’t mind—I loved the work. I priced just about everything that came through our doors, running revenue projections and making recommendations for what we should buy for upcoming months and seasons. Back in college, my oldest brother asked me if apparel merchandising was like a degree in getting dressed.
“I don’t know,” I said at the time, rotating my laptop to show him the complex accounting homework on the screen. “Can you wear this, jackass?”
Nicky’s eyes widened in surprise, and he never made fun of my degree again. But once or twice, I did hear him bragging to my uncles about how smart I was.