THE NEXT AFTERNOON I hung out with Mom in the Hamptons. I picked at the dead grass and moped. She wore the gaudiest floppy hat adorned with plastic roses, and had a blush to her cheeks that didn’t have anything to do with the summer sun. She must’ve had a good time with cradle-robbing Roger. I wondered if I’d ever meet him, and if I’d be able to keep myself from calling him cradle-robbing Roger.
“You look happy.” I nudged her foot with mine. “Did your date go well?”
“Hmm?” Mom looked up from the book she’d been staring at for ten minutes without turning a page. “Oh, yes. We went out on the lake.”
“You went out on the lake after the park closed?” I narrowed my eyes. “How?”
“You think Paxton is the only who knows how to break into that shed and snag a boat?” She laughed at my scandalized expression.
“Oh my God. My mom. The rebel teenager.” I did not want to know how she knew Paxton stole boats for our movies on the lake. I’d never told her about those nights, but I supposed moms had a sixth sense about those kinds of things. She went back to her book, and I opened the YouTube app to post the dinner video. First I wanted to check on my Dirty Dancing video. It still had a lot of thumbs-downs, way more than my other videos, and while I could admit it had been a rush job, I didn’t think it was that bad. I took a peek at the comments.
EmilyChase: Boring
MargHenry: Less movie talk, more Baseball Babe please
AllySheridan: what does dirty dancing have to do with baseball babe?
LincolnDunn: I’m only here for the porn
KellyConner: wake me up when she talks about baseball babe again
At least they had a running theme. Even Lincoln, in his own trollish way. The more I scrolled through the comments, the more they started to prove Paxton right—they wouldn’t care about my videos once the novelty of Fly Ball Girl wore off—which just pissed me off even more. I shut down the app and threw my phone into the grass.
“How did your date go last night?” Mom asked.
I wanted to ask which one, but I wasn’t in the mood to be cheeky or to talk about Paxton. “I don’t know. It feels icky. Like I’m playing into what other people want for me, not really what I want for myself. I wonder if it would be better if I left it alone.”
It was one thing to play up this fauxmance online, but once I’d seen Eric in person, I’d crossed a very fundamental line. I kept telling myself it was worth it, long term, but now I wasn’t so sure. Elise didn’t seem to think so. Paxton definitely didn’t think so. I didn’t want to text him, because then I’d just look desperate, so I did the totally reasonable and normal thing by letting it eat away at me instead.
Mom laid a hand on my arm. “For what it’s worth, I think Eric genuinely likes you. I got that sense at the stadium, and you both got caught up in an unfortunate circumstance that you can now make the best of.”
She was too much of a romantic and a softie to see all the games people played online for their fifteen minutes. We weren’t two teenagers in love who’d met by chance at a baseball game. This ultimately wouldn’t be a story written in the stars. We’d gotten what many people tried for and only a few attained. Instant, viral fame. And playing it up, stretching it out, to meet our own ends didn’t make us good or right, but we did it anyway.
“I still can’t believe you let me drive to St. Joseph on my own.”
Mom set her book aside. “Are you saying that because you didn’t really want to go?”
“No.”
She gave me the Look.
“Maybe a little,” I said sheepishly. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to see Eric again.” He was way worse off than me, anxiety and nightmares included. His obsession with likes and retweets bordered on masochistic.
Mom tipped her sunglasses down. “Oh?”
“There’s no story. It just wasn’t a love connection.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. He seemed like a nice boy.”
They all seemed like nice boys, until they weren’t. I did my best to smile, if only to ease that worry crease between her brows. “It wasn’t a total bust. I did get a free meal at Pellegrino’s.”
Mom brushed her hand over my cheek. “I worry about you.”
“You shouldn’t. I’m fine.” Besides all the lying I’d been doing, the stress over my Twitter mentions and subscribers, the fight I’d had with Paxton, and everything I’d given up to chase something I wasn’t even sure I could hold on to.
“Sorry, kiddo, I’m a mom. Worrying is what I do best.”
“I know.” I slumped in my beach recliner. “Maybe Paxton was right.”
“What was Paxton right about?”
“Um.” I was five again and learning how to skate. The ice was so cold and slippery. “He wasn’t exactly thrilled about my date with Eric.”
Mom pinched her lips until they were nothing more than a grim line. “I see.”
My ankles wobbled in my skates. “You see what?”
Her back stiffened and she’d become calm. Like eye-of-the-storm calm. “I don’t see why who you date is any of his concern, since you work with him.”
And I fell through the ice.
“Oh my God.” I threw my hands in the air. “He’s my friend, Mom. And who even cares if we work together? What if I did date him? I know how you feel about pregnancy—trust me, I know—but do you really think on the first day of work they hand all the guys a time card and a jar of sperm with a slap on the back and say, ‘Use it wisely, boys’?”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to stuff them all back in. I’d never taken that tone with my mom. It’s not like we’d never been mad at each other, but we didn’t scream at each other. We always walked away to cool down before we got to that point. Or we’d go pick a fight with Gram, who lived to argue, just to burn off some of that frustration.
“That’s enough, Macy.” Mom’s complexion had gone paper white. “You know pregnancy isn’t my main concern when it comes to dating your coworkers. You’re so headstrong and passionate. You wouldn’t have an amicable breakup, and an ugly breakup could cost you your job. There aren’t enough jobs to go around this town as it is.”
“You’re right. It is enough. Because none of this means anything. I’m not dating Paxton, he’s not even talking to me, this conversation is asinine, and I have to get ready for work.” I stormed into the house and slammed the door behind me.
Days where Paxton and I worked different shifts dragged. Days where I hadn’t spoken to him since our fight lasted an eternity. I had no idea what was going on inside his head, and the not knowing was the worst part. I couldn’t begin to sort through my feelings, and not really knowing his just exacerbated everything.
Elise leaned against the counter and pursed her lips. Oil stains covered her gray work overalls and she had a streak of grease across her cheekbone. “You look like shit.”
“Says the Goodwill version of the Tin Man.”
“Yeah, I wanted the Total Bitch costume, but they said you took the last one.”
“Sorry.” I gave her a light shove. “I’m having a day.”
“Anything you want to talk about?” She gave me the same feline grin as the day after the lake. “Like how you keep looking over at Paxton’s work space.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Anything but that, please.”
Her expression went from mischievous to concerned in a flash. “What happened?”
I told her about the kiss and the disaster that happened when I told him the truth about Eric. “Now he’s not talking to me.”
“Give him a minute to cool down.” She patted my hand. “Watching you go viral and knowing you’re playing into it isn’t easy for him.”
“You know what his deal is?”
“I do, and I can’t say.” She mimed zipping her lips. “It’s not my story to tell.”
“But I’m your best friend.” Elise and Paxton were close, I knew that, but it was always a small gut punch when I realized the two people I considered my closest friends might’ve been closer to each other than to me.
“And as your best friend, who knows you once had a very riveting sex dream about Mr. Caldwell in which you rode him like Seabiscuit on a lab table, aren’t you glad I’m the kind of person who keeps secrets?”
I shuddered. Our chemistry teacher had sallow skin and a nose like a hawk’s beak. I could barely stand to look at him the next day in class. “Point taken.”
Elise went back to the repair side, while I stewed. Paxton had issues with viral fame, but I had no idea why. I’d already googled him and turned up nothing. He didn’t drive, but I had no idea if that was connected. Maybe he’d just sucked at the road test and didn’t tell anyone. Though from the small bits of information I’d been able to pick up from Gigi, he wouldn’t sit on the driver’s side at all, not even when he was younger and rode in the back.
Most of all, I stewed about what he’d said last night. About how far I’d be willing to go to stretch out my fauxmance for views and subscribers. The words he’d flung at me stung, but in the way it’d stung when Elise yelled at me for purposefully taking a dive on our animal science exam last year so I could have an excuse to stop by Lance’s farm to study his cows. Like part of me knew he was right. Like I knew all along why my Dirty Dancing video had been getting thumbed down. And maybe part of me knew it was going to make him mad, but I’d spent the last week hating myself so much, it was a relief to have someone else do it for me.
I didn’t have a ton of time to dwell on it though. Thursday was one of our busiest nights, and as VCRs rentals flew off the shelves, I tried my best to keep that customer service smile plastered to my face. Even with my personal life in a knot I couldn’t untangle, and my YouTube channel going from dissecting and discussing eighties movies to becoming a bad eighties movie, I still had a job to do. I still needed that paycheck. And somehow, in the middle of it all, I had to figure out how to accept the choices I’d made.