The next day Micah and Heather go on their first date. It's a pity date—it has to be. Heather has a heart somewhere in that undead carcass of hers that feels sorry for my best friend. But then the next day they go on a second date.
Then a third.
A fourth last night.
All week he visits the store; she meets him at the diner for lunch, leaving Billie, LD, and I scrounging up extra change to pick up more of the chili-fry bill than normal. I hear them talking on Micah’s front porch in the evenings, and I see their silhouettes through the curtains in his bedroom window. I try not to stare too long.
Because if I do I’ll begin to realize that Heather isn’t pitying Micah any more than I pity her. She looks at him like I’ve always done in secret, between the folds our friendship where something warm grew.
I try to ignore Heather and Micah. I try to tell myself that it’s only a few dates. Only a few kisses. Only a few . . . other things.
If Heather talks about him at work, I ignore it, diving into rag mags and music as if they can save my soul. Or at least bandage my heart so it’ll quit aching every time his name slips from her cherry ChapStick lips.
On Saturday, she’s talking to her friend, Clarissa, about a drive-in movie she went to see with Micah last night—the drive-in has Friday double features. Two dumb romantic comedies Micah wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Or at least not until today.
I guess I didn’t know my best friend as well as I thought I did.
“So, after Love All Night there was an intermission, right? Before the second movie because it was like this double-feature thing. And he actually wanted a pretzel. I know, right? Like you never know what they fry those in or for how long,” she was saying as I came in and went straight to the back room, where I stashed my book bag in my locker and put on my apron.
She’s at the front counter, so I decide to hang back near the foreign chocolates for a while, restickering them with new price tags.
“I mean, yeah I ate it. Yes; with the preprocessed cheese. Ugh, I had to go for like a three-mile run after we got home just to get all that poison out of my body,” Heather went on.
I want to tell her that Micah loves the nacho cheese, and that if she ever decides to share chili cheese fries with him, then order extra cheese because he’s a cheese demon, but I don’t. Because it’s something I know because I’m his best friend. She wouldn't listen to what I have to say anyway.
As I listen to Heather tell—in detail—what happened before, during, and after the movie (and spoiler, very little of it involved actually watching the movie), I finish the German chocolates and move on to Japan. The cookie pandas. I open a box and eat one, sticking the new price tag on my forehead instead.
That’s when the bell above the front door chimes. Heather instantly quiets down. That means it’s either the Bossman or—
“Oh, Mike,” she says. “Hi.”
My blood runs cold.
“Hey girl,” he replies. “What’s up?”
“Talking to Clarissa—she says you owe her like ten bucks for lunch last week,” she relays from her conversation over the phone. I peek around the end of the aisle as Heather hangs up and leans against the counter toward Mike. “So what’s the occasion? Come to relieve me of my boredom?”
“Yeah, lunch?”
“Uh, please.”
“Without the cowboy,” he adds.
“Mike—”
“Seriously, ditch him.”
“Let me grab my purse, and I'm not ditching him.”
“What do you see in him anyway?”
With a roll of her eyes, she begins back toward the break room—which I’m standing right in front of, as luck would have it. She finds me at the end of the aisle with an unamused expression. “What’re you looking at?” she snaps. “I’m taking my lunch. You have the front.”
My head’s reeling, remembering what I said to Mike at the Barn. Does she want to send me to my doom? “I gotta, um, finish these stickers first—”
“Hey, girl, how much do these little pop things cost?” Mike yells to Heather from the front of the store.
She gives me an impatient look. “Well? I'm off the clock.”
“But—”
She slams the door to the break room. Mike calls her again. I grip the price tag gun tighter. It’s just a customer, I have to repeat to myself. It's just a customer who wants to know how much the Baby Bottle Pops cost. Neanderthal.
I turn toward the front and, steeling my loins, march to the counter.
“How do you get the powder to stick—shit, you.” He gives a start when he notices me at the register. “What’re you doing here?”
“I work here,” I intone.
“That your price at auction?” He motions to the sticker still stuck to my forehead. I’d forgotten I stuck it there and embarrassingly peel it off.
“Are you here to buy something, Mike?” I ask, trying to keep myself civil. Bossman has cameras set up on the register (but nowhere else in the store, surprisingly enough) so for all I know he could be monitoring me right now. And I really don’t want to lose this job. It’s all I have, as pathetic as that sounds. “Lollipops? A heart?”
“Ooh, aren’t you snarky,” he comments, putting the Baby Bottle Pop back. “You had some balls at the Barn. Tell me, which one of you’s the man in the relationship?”
I breathe out through my nose. Calm. Peace. Try to imagine myself somewhere else—anywhere else. On a safari, at the top of the Eiffel Tower, walking the streets of London, standing in Times Square in New York City—
If I could be anywhere right now, just wish myself to some other place, it’d be there. Surrounded by people, blending in, never being seen, never being noticed. Wouldn’t it be heaven, to be somewhere and have no one care you’re there.
“Would you like to buy anything?” I ask again, forcing the words out between my clenched teeth.
He grins and takes a jar of gumdrops from the end shelf and holds it up. “How much does this cost?”
“Seven dollars and eighty-f—”
He drops it, and the jar shatters on the ground. Gumdrops go rolling everywhere. “Oh, whoops.”
“Seriously?” I snap before I can bite my tongue. “What’ve I done to piss you off?”
“What’ve you done?” he echoes.
I swallow. Oh, Bless, what have I gotten myself into? He stalks to the counter, and I instinctively stand up a little straighter. Is it too late to retract my statement?
“What have you done?” he repeats again, leaning over the counter to me. He smells like Axe body spray—the douchey kind.
“Yeah, Mike,” I find myself saying, “what have I done?”
“Nothing,” he responds and grins. “You’ve done nothing, Iggy North. That’s what’s so pathetic about you. Following around in Bleaker’s shadow, but guess what? Bleaker isn’t here right now. So you’re nothing, like that stupid girly friend of yours, and you’ll always be nothing.”
I can see my own reflection in his green eyes. And that’s scary—seeing yourself reflected in glass marbles. I see how small I am, and realize how easy it is for him to call me nothing. Am I nothing? Is that how everyone in this town sees me? Me and LD? In Billie’s shadow? I fist my hands, nails cutting into my palms, torn between punching the smug look off his face and hiding myself underneath the table, but all I can do is stare at him, trapped between mortification and the sinking feeling that . . . that he’s right.
I am nothing.
His grin only grows wider because the look on my face is telling. We both know he’s right, and he loves it. “And you—”
“What broke?” Heather’s voice cuts in, coming back from the break room with her purse slung over her shoulder. She looks down at the shattered jar of gumdrops, then at us. When neither of us say anything, she adds impatiently, “Um, hello?”
I snap out of it. “I’ll clean it up,” I say, tearing myself away from the counter to go retrieve the broom and dustpan from the break room.
I hear Heather ask Mike, “What happened?”
“Dunno. It just fell. Lunch?”
“Yeah, Micah’s meeting us—”
“Jesus, again? Get rid of that oil stain, girl,” he says before the door closes behind them and the bell rings, echoing in the empty candy shop. I don’t even get the broom and dustpan out of the break room before I catch my reflection in the mirror—the white uniform that makes me look outrageously marshmallow, the white-blonde hair, the forgettable face—nothing.
I’m looking at nothing.