CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Taylor grabbed a plastic storage container from the cabinet—the one that was stained from heating red sauce in the microwave—and filled it halfway with water. She placed four of the five credit cards she owned in the container and set a rock on top of them. Snapping the lid on, she walked over to the freezer and placed it next to a bag of frozen broccoli.
“There,” she said, dusting her hands for good measure.
She’d used the initial payment from Jamar to cover this month’s rent and to pay off one of the credit cards, with a vow that she would pay off the rest over these next two months and never get into this kind of financial trouble again. Putting the credit cards on ice was symbolic. She could still access them through apps on her phone, but she wasn’t going to. She would keep one card in her wallet for emergency purposes only.
And when she said emergency, this time she meant a real emergency. No more “emergency” sales on tennis shoes or “emergency” sushi because she deserved to treat herself after a long day. She was going to start living by an actual budget, and she would not allow any stupid you only live once nonsense to entice her into making irresponsible choices.
Ugh. She was starting to sound like a grown-up.
“About damn time,” Taylor muttered.
She took a pint of store-brand strawberry frozen yogurt from the freezer—part of her new adulting was forgoing the expensive one she usually bought—and grabbed a spoon. She perched against the kitchen counter and started eating straight from the carton.
She used the remote to turn the volume up on The Princess and the Frog. It had become her Saturday morning ritual to pop in the DVD and listen to it as background noise while cleaning her apartment. Until Tiana started singing “Almost There.” Then it was time to belt it out like a contestant on The Voice. Well, whatever was the equivalent to The Voice for people who couldn’t sing a single note in tune.
Lack of musical skills aside, when Tiana sang about how she worked real hard each and every day and now things for sure were going her way, Taylor felt that in her spirit.
“Preach, girl!” she said, waving her hand like a deaconess in church. Her hustle would pay off in the end, just like Tiana’s. Except she wasn’t kissing a frog.
Her phone dinged with an incoming text message. She glanced at it over on the counter and couldn’t stop the ridiculous smile that instantly stretched across her face.
Hey, Drill Sergeant. Do you have a minute?
Taylor put the yogurt back in the freezer and lowered the volume on the TV before picking up the phone.
Taylor: U get 1 minute. Do u always txt in complete sentences???
Jamar: Yes. And proper punctuation. Commas are our friends.
Taylor: What’s up, 23? U like my comma usage?
Jamar: Very much appreciate the comma usage. . . .
Jamar: I know you had a bad experience going viral a few months ago, but something tells me you’re about to go viral again.
A chill that had nothing to do with the frozen yogurt she just ate raced down Taylor’s spine.
Taylor: Y? What happened?
Jamar: We’ve been outed.
A moment later, the link to a TikTok video appeared. Taylor clicked on it and waited for the video to open in the app. It started with an image of Jamar handing her a pineapple in Whole Foods. Whoever posted the video had added thought bubbles just above their heads. Taylor’s said “best couple ever” and Jamar’s had “couple envy”—as if either of them would ever think those words.
Taylor had to admit she was impressed by the editing, but as the nineteen-second clip played, she realized their covert videographer had followed them around the store, snapping pictures of them in the produce section, the deli, and at the checkout counter. It freaked her out a bit.
Taylor: Oh well. It was only a matter of time. At least I look cute in all the pics. :)
Jamar: Very cute.
Her stomach executed a perfect somersault. Before she could spend a single minute overanalyzing the meaning behind those two words, he followed up with another text she longed to overanalyze.
Jamar: Maybe we need to go on a date that isn’t at the grocery store. Give the public something to really talk about.
It wasn’t as if this was coming out of left field. She was the one who’d written “several pretend dates” in the playbook sitting right there on her countertop. So why did this suddenly feel too much like the real thing?
Taylor: I guess we should.
Jamar: What are you doing today?
Taylor: U mean besides kicking ur ass in the gym?
Jamar: 
Jamar: What are you doing after you’re finished with my ass?
She was smiling so much that her cheeks ached, but she couldn’t stop.
She wrote: this is starting to get dirty. But then she erased it. Maybe it was just her own dirty mind’s interpretation. Instead, she typed: Is this how u talk to all ur girlfriends? Then she erased that too. She meant it as a joke, but what if he didn’t read it that way?
Jamar: What?
Taylor: What?
Jamar: Those dots keep appearing like you’re trying to text, but then they disappear.
Shit. Technology could be a real son of a bitch at times.
Taylor: Yes. Time to take our fake relationship to the next level. Wine and dine me, 23.
Jamar: 
Taylor burst out laughing. Just then, the video hub on her kitchen counter lit up with an incoming call, undoubtedly from her mother. Her parents had sent her the device for her birthday, and they were the only ones who used it to call her. Well, her mother used it. The Colonel was satisfied with a quick Just checking on you text once every other week.
She pressed the green answer button. “Hey, Mom, what’s up?”
Her mother stood at the granite countertop in their newly remodeled kitchen, unloading groceries from a cloth grocery bag. Her sensible bob cut didn’t have a strand of hair out of place.
“What are you smiling about?” her mother asked.
Taylor looked up from her phone. “Nothing,” she answered.
Taylor: I need to go. TTYL.
She added a heart emoji without thinking, and hit send.
“Fuck!”
“Taylor Renee!” Gail Powell screeched. “I’m sorry!” Taylor said. “Give me a sec, Ma.”
She slumped against the counter and tried to get her accelerated heart rate back to a normal level.
“Excuse my language,” she apologized again to her mother.
“I can’t talk for long,” her mother said in that I’ve-got-places-to-go-and-people-to-see tone of voice she used when in the middle of a hectic day. “What are your plans for Thanksgiving? Are you coming in the Tuesday before like you did last year?”
“Ma, I told you that I can’t do both Thanksgiving and Daddy’s party—Wait, is he around?”
“He isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. I’m convinced he knows about the party.”
“How? I thought you were being careful?”
“That man knows everything,” her mother said. She folded the cloth bag and directed her full attention at the screen. “If you can’t afford the plane ticket home for Thanksgiving, your father and I will pay for it.”
“It’s not about the money.” Biggest lie ever. Even with the money she was making with Jamar, she still couldn’t afford those airline prices at Thanksgiving.
“I have clients to consider,” she said. She had one client, but still. “And you know Thanksgiving is the start of my busy season. I have a ton of meal prep—” Not a lie now that she was doing meal prep for Jamar. She was working on a low-carb alternative to sweet potato pie. “I just can’t take that much time off from work.”
“What I’m hearing is that this is no longer a question of you having to decide between Thanksgiving and your father’s sixtieth birthday party. You’ve already made your decision.”
Taylor hunched her shoulders. “Well, Thanksgiving comes around every year. The Colonel only turns the big Six Oh once. If given the choice, I think Dad would rather I be there for his birthday party.”
“Fine, but make sure you’re here for more than just a day. I don’t want you flying up the morning of the party and then on the red-eye back to Texas.”
Count on her mother to read her like a book.
“I won’t,” Taylor said. “I promise.”
“Good. I have to go. The work at the office never ends.”
“I wondered what you were doing home in the middle of the day,” Taylor said.
Her mother’s penciled brow spiked. “I could say the same for you, but I didn’t.”
Taylor reminded herself that her mother would see it if she rolled her eyes. “Goodbye, Mother.”
She blew an air kiss toward the digital display before ending the call; then she folded her arms on the countertop and dropped her head on them.
Taylor wasn’t sure there was a word in the English language that adequately represented the complex, oftentimes thorny space her family occupied in her world. She couldn’t imagine loving another group of people as fiercely as she loved them, but a simple conversation with her mother left her feeling drained.
She dreaded going home to North Carolina, enduring bouts of anxiety over her family’s judgmental attitudes. It usually started weeks in advance, with the apprehension steadily escalating as the date to fly home drew closer. Taylor found herself waking up in cold sweats, hardly able to catch her breath. Her skin became tight and itchy, as if something was slowly sucking the moisture from her pores.
The most ridiculous aspect of all of this was that, for the most part, she enjoyed her time at home. Last Thanksgiving she’d had the best time watching old movies with her sister, playing gin rummy with her niece, and baking pecan pies with her dad. It had been her most blissful holiday in ages, until her brother, Darwin, made a comment about one of Taylor’s old friends who’d just opened up a franchise of a regional pizza restaurant. That’s when the murmurs about wasting her time with that “fitness thing” had flitted around the dinner table, and her holiday had turned to shit.
She was done putting herself through that kind of turmoil. She’d learned that she could love her family from a distance. She would endure them for her dad’s birthday party, because she owed it to him to celebrate this milestone in person, but she wouldn’t subject herself to their thinly veiled censure any longer than she had to.
The next time she made an extended trip home, she would have some measure of success that she could shove in her brother’s face. She would no longer be the Powell Family Fuckup. She would be the one everyone talked about with pride, the one her mother bragged about to the people in her law office.
She just had to completely turn every single thing around in her life.
Piece of cake.