My mom would have disowned me, now that I thought about it.
I had never felt more like an imposter than I did working at the shop though.
Today, someone had asked me about a wade trip, and I’d literally stared at them blankly for so long, trying to figure out what they were asking about, that they had told me not to worry about it.
Fishing. They’d been talking about a fishing trip, Clara had explained to me with a pat on the back.
An hour later, someone asked for recommendations on tent hammocks. There were different kinds of tent hammocks?
I’d had to run to ask Clara to help them even though she was busy with another customer.
What kind of fish are there around here? Little ones? I had no idea.
Which hikes could a sixty-five-year-old woman handle? Short ones maybe?
Was it too late in the season to go rafting? How should I know?
I had never felt so useless and dumb in my life. It was so bad that Clara had finally told me to work the register and run to the back if Jackie—a fifteen-year-old who was clearly more capable than me at everything—asked me to get anything from the storeroom.
And that was what I was doing, standing at the register, ready to check someone—anyone—out as Jackie handled some fishing rod rentals and Clara helped a family with some camping gear purchases—I’d been eavesdropping a ton and considering bringing a notebook with me to work to take notes I could go over at home—when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out.
The notification wasn’t for a phone call or a text but for an email.
Then my hackles rose.
Because it wasn’t just some spam email or a newsletter from a company.
The name of the sender was K.D. Jones.
The man who had called me his wife in private and around loved ones.
The man who had promised to really marry me one day when his career was just right and a relationship wouldn’t hurt his wittle fanbase. “You understand, don’t you, beautiful?” he’d reasoned time after time.
That fucker.
Delete it, some part of my brain instantly said. Delete it and pretend you didn’t see it. Nothing he says is anything you want to hear.
Which was true.
His last email was an example.
There was literally nothing I needed to hear from him. Nothing that would benefit me. Nothing I wanted other than to possibly hear him admit that he had gotten to where he was, at least in part, thanks to me. But honestly, I would have gotten a hell of a lot more satisfaction hearing those words from his mom’s mouth than his.
Everything that needed to be said between us had been laid out almost a year ago.
I hadn’t heard from him until recently.
Fourteen years and he’d dropped me cold turkey from one day to the next.
But the nosey motherfucker that lived in my body said, Read it or you’re going to wonder what he wanted. Maybe someone had cast a curse on his dick that made him impotent and he wanted to see if it had been me so I could remove it. (I wouldn’t.)
Then the smug inner voice inside of me that had reveled in how poorly his last two albums had been reviewed, reared her pleased face up and said, Yeah, you know what he really wants. I knew damn well what the most important thing in his life was. The voice in my head had a point. I did know. I’d been imagining this happening, even while we’d still been together, when he had first started to pull away. When I was pretty sure his mom had decided to start phasing me out slowly.
They had no idea what they’d done, what they’d almost completely taken from me, even though I didn’t feel any grief over it.
Delete it.
Or… read it first and then delete it?
Maybe get mad if he was being an asshole? If that was the case, it wouldn’t be unexpected and it would only be a reminder that I was better off now than I had been. I was a winner anyway, right?
I was here. I was without people who hadn’t contributed to my happiness in too long. I had my entire future ahead of me, ready and waiting for me to take it.
There were a lot of things I wanted and nothing stopping me from them but patience and time.
But…
Before I could talk myself out of it, I clicked on the message and braced myself, pissing myself off so that whatever he said couldn’t make me angrier.
But there were only a few words in the email.
Roro,
Call me.
And for one microsecond, I thought about replying to him. Telling him no. But…
No.
Because the best way to get under his skin would be to just not reply.
Kaden hated being ignored. More than likely because his mom had spoiled him every day of his life and gave him just about everything he ever asked for, and everything he didn’t. He’d gotten too used to being the center of attention. The pretty boy everyone fawned over and fell over to please.
So instead of deleting the email, knowing I wouldn’t be tempted to reply to him, I left the message where it was because Aunt Carolina would ask to see it. Yuki would too so she could cackle. Nori would tell me to keep it so one day when I was feeling down, I could look at it and chuckle to myself at how the mighty had fallen. I set my phone back into my pocket.
Yeah, he wasn’t asking for me to call because he couldn’t find his social security card or had a hex on his dick, and I knew it.
I smiled to myself.
“What’s that smile for?” Clara whispered as she came around the counter where the register was.
The family she’d been helping waved as they went by. “We’re going to think about it, thank you!” one of the two moms said before leading her loved ones out.
Clara told them to call if they had any more questions, waiting until they were out before turning to me.
I couldn’t help but smile again and shrug. “Kaden just emailed me. He asked me to call him.” I had thought this situation over in my head a few times since we’d reconnected, and I’d decided that sticking to the truth was the only way to go.
She knew about our relationship because I’d told her about him before he’d gotten famous, back when I’d been able to post pictures of us online, before his mom had come up with the idea of painting him as an eternal bachelor. Before they had asked me, so sweetly, so kindly, to please remove all the pictures I had up of us together.
Clara had noticed.
She’d contacted me and asked if we’d broken up, and I’d told her the truth. Not saying what the “plan” was but just that we were still together and things were fine. But that was all she’d known.
And I knew I had to explain it all to her, if I was planning on staying here.
Lies had fragile, little legs. I wanted a foundation.
Clara raised an eyebrow as she leaned a hip against the counter, stretching her dark green, collared shirt with the name of the business above her breast. She’d brought me one of her old ones and promised to order new ones. “Are you going to?”
I shook my head. “No, because I know it will bother him. And there’s nothing he would need to tell me anyway.”
Clara scrunched up her nose, and I could see the questions in her eyes, but there were too many customers still around. “Did he try calling you?”
“He can’t because”—this was all part of Things She Could Know—“his mom disconnected my line the day after he said things weren’t working anymore.” Didn’t even give me a warning or anything. I had been packing up to leave when it had happened. “He doesn’t have my new number.”