Charlotte
I was watching Netflix on my laptop in the motel room, waiting to see if Jayce would text me, when my phone rang. Momma was the only person who had been calling me, and it was about that time in the evening, so I answered without looking at the number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Charlie.”
Hearing his voice, and his nickname for me, made me freeze. Something crawled around in my chest and then settled back down. The grinding of ignored emotions reawakening after a few days of slumber.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, “Scott.”
“Is now a good time?”His voice was soft, almost a whisper. Like he was trying too hard to be soothing. “Can we talk?”
I never want to talk to you again,I thought bitterly.
“Sure,” I answered, trying to sound nonchalant. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Did you get my voicemail? I left you a voicemail.”
“I listened to it. Most of it.”
He let out a sigh. “I’ve been so worried about you, Charlie. At first I didn’t blame you for not answering your phone, but I got more and more worried, and then I called your parents and they told me what happened…”
I snorted. “What’d Momma have to say to you?”
“Nothing good.”
I laughed with more humor than I felt. “Sounds about right. What do you want, Scott?”
“It’s about the truck.”
The knot in my gut tightened. “If you’re under-staffed, maybeshecould help you.” I couldn’t bring myself to say Tammy’s name. Not out loud.
“Business is fine,” he said. “It’s really good, actually. Lots of people visiting for spring break. I’ve had to restock the condiments twice in the last week alone.”
“Oh, wow,” I said, biting back my resentment. “That’s great.”
“But I still want to pay for an ad in the food magazine,” Scott went on. “The meeting we had, the one you walked out of, went really well.”
“We talked about it before the meeting,” I replied. “The cost was too high.”
“It’s a little steep,” he admitted. “But it’s what we need to do. You have to spend money to make money, right? Nobody can buy burgers if they don’t know our truck is around town. Anyway, if you’re okay with it, I’ll send you the invoice so you can pay half.”
I sat upright in bed. “What?”
“It’s more than I can afford on my own. And we don’t have enough cash in the floating account. It’s only fair to split the cost since it’s an expense.”
“Fair?” I asked.
“Sure. Just like the truck cost, and the supplies, and all the other little things we had to pay for along the way…”
“We,” I repeated. “You keep sayingwe. You wanted to take a break from our relationship, and then you started seeing Tammy behind my back. I’m gone now, Scott. We’re done. So why do you keep sayingwe?”
There was a pause of silence on the other end. “I don’t know. I thought you’d come back eventually.”
“And what?” I said, voice rising. “Continue on like nothing ever happened?”
“We worked together for the last month…”