Not Your #Lovestory

by Sonia Hartl

  I adjusted the graphics, double-checked to make sure all of my videos were monetized, uploaded it onto YouTube, and then flipped back over to Twitter.

  @baseballbabe2020: Making dinner plans for me and a beautiful lady;) #baseballbabe #flyballgirl #datenight

  I clicked on the link to tweet. Even if my real name and real life were out there, playing this game with Eric wasn’t a whole lot different from donning my Misty Morning persona. This was just a different type of wig, a different costume.

  @MacyAtTheMovies: Can’t wait to find out what @baseballbabe2020 has planned for Wednesday <3 #DateNight #FlyBallGirl #BaseballBabe

  I linked the YouTube video in my tweet, and then pulled my quilt over my head.

  What the hell had I just gotten myself into?

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  THE COMMENTS I’D SCROLLED through in the middle of the night still crawled beneath my skin, but I wouldn’t allow myself to be vulnerable again. I wouldn’t let another Jared put me down. Never again would I scrape quarters off the sidewalk or watch the Bees sell a piece of their soul for beef or see my mom soaking her feet in salt water after working a double just to keep the lights on. I’d been given a way out, and I was going to make the most of it.

  @MacyAtTheMovies: BTW, I saw your @TODAYshow interview, @baseballbabe2020, and you looked just as cute as you did at the game #BaseballBabe

  I closed Twitter, then went down to the basement. We still had a broken dryer, and the money from my latest views wouldn’t come in for another month. I’d just brought up the jams and canned tomatoes to bring over to Elise’s, when there was a knock. We weren’t expecting company.

  I opened the door and a squat man with wire-rimmed glasses shoved his phone at me. “Fly Ball Girl, what’s the status on your relationship with Baseball Babe? Did you contact him because you saw him on TV? Are you really planning a date together?”

  Panic seized my lungs. I slammed the door and locked it. And leaned against it for extra reinforcement. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d locked our door. He knocked again, and the sound pounded between my temples. How did he find out where I lived? I never posted my address online. Not even on the accounts I’d kept separate from R3ntal Wor1d.

  I looked out the peephole. He wasn’t from around here. I would’ve recognized his face. He didn’t look like a reporter, and there was no news van, no real camera. He just had his shitty phone. A random stranger. Who showed up at my house because of Jessica Banks.

  “Macy, what’s going on?” Gram came down the hall, holding an electric flyswatter.

  “There’s a man at the door.” I could hardly talk, hardly draw a breath. “I don’t know him. He recorded me and asked me questions.”

  “Step aside.” Her voice reminded me of thunder, the way clouds would boil and roll before unleashing cracks of lightning. Her expression pinched tight, deepening the lines in her face.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Don’t you mind.” I’d never seen Gram so mad, and her mood was permanently set on mad. If yesterday’s evening news story was a six, she was now at an eleven. “Go on back to the dining room with the Bees.”

  I would do no such thing. “You’re not going out there.”

  “This is my property and I’m a grown woman. I’ll do what I want.” Before I could grab her arm, she flung open the door and marched outside.

  The man had his phone raised, like he was taking pictures of our house. As soon as he caught sight of Gram, he turned his phone on her, and she swung the flyswatter right at his face. His scream split the air, and I winced at the angry crisscross pattern already taking shape on his right cheek from the electric shock.

  “Get off my lawn.” Gram hit him with the flyswatter. “Get out of my town.” He tried to block her, and got another shock as the flyswatter zapped his hands. “And don’t you dare come near my granddaughter again.” The man ran, and Gram chased him all the way to the end of the driveway, hitting him on the back of the head. The electric flyswatter zinged as it singed his hair.

  “What the hell?” Paxton stopped a few feet from the edge of our property. Quilting patterns fell from his arms and crinkled like autumn leaves across our dead lawn.

  “Um. Small issue. No big deal.” I glanced from him to Gram, who was still after the stranger with her flyswatter. To my horror, I noticed a second person with the guy—a woman who had recorded the entire incident.

  She swung her phone toward me. Paxton froze. All the color drained from his face, his lips turning to a chalky blush. He shook so hard, the single quilting pattern he’d held on to rattled like a flag in a windstorm. I blocked her view of Paxton and charged. Her eyes widened as her phone arm dropped. Both the man and woman dashed into a car parked on the other side of the street. Their tires squealed against the pavement as they drove away.

  I turned around to check in with Paxton, and only caught sight of his back as he ran for the cover of the trees. He tripped over a root and went sprawling across the leafy wooded floor. Before I could take a single step forward to ask if he was okay, he was on his feet again and gone through a thick cluster of brush.

  Gram chuckled as she scooped quilting patterns off our yard. “You sure can send them running. Still want to put that sex ad on the Craigslist?”

  “Har, har.” I helped her gather up the rest of the scattered papers. “Was the flyswatter really necessary?”

  Gram straightened her blouse, swept back her short gray hair, and gave me a grim nod as she headed into the house. “They need to learn they can’t invade other people’s privacy.”

  I followed her in, shutting and locking the door behind me. “Did you see that woman with him? She was recording too. They’re going to post that video all over the Internet.”

  “Good,” Gram said. “Let it be a warning for anyone else who wants to show up here.”

  I had no response for that. Gram didn’t go online. She had no idea what she’d just unleashed. I followed her back to the dining room. Gram had literally fried a guy’s face for me, which was why I couldn’t tell her that she’d likely made things worse.

  The phone rang and Gram yanked the cord out of the wall. “Those damned reporters have been nonstop all morning. I’m calling the phone company.”

  “I’m sorry.” Useless words.

  “This isn’t your fault.” Gram lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the fan. “We’ll change our number and get on with it. Bad timing with the fair coming up and all.” She patted my cheek. “Get those canned goods over to Elise’s momma.”

  I put the boxes in Peg’s car, and Gram stood by the front door with her flyswatter in hand the entire time, but no one else came around. She said she’d use my cell phone later to get our number changed. If only I hadn’t sat next to Eric or ogled his abs so openly or let him walk me to the bathroom or a hundred other things Jessica had used to craft her story. It wasn’t my fault, and I’d keep telling myself that until I believed it, but I couldn’t deny this whole mess had upended our entire world.

  I drove to Elise’s, Paxton’s reaction running through my mind the entire time. I’d never seen anyone so terrified in their life, including the time Elise’s pants got caught on Grumpy Gill’s barbed-wire fence when we’d cut through his farm behind her house for the first and last time. The scene outside my house was chaos, but Paxton acted like those people were coming after him with a chainsaw instead of Gram going after them with a flyswatter.

  I pulled into Elise’s driveway and texted Paxton: Are you okay?

  Paxton: Fine

  Okay … Me: It just looked like something was going on there

  Paxton: I’ll see you at work.

  Cool. I could tell when I was getting the brush-off. No need to spell it out.

  I sat in Peg’s car, scrolling through Twitter. The woman who recorded Gram taking a flyswatter to her boyfriend didn’t waste any time trying to collect a piece of that viral fame. She’d posted it about ten minutes after pulling away f
rom my house.

  @EmilyPayneBlogLife: Check out #FlyBallGirl’s crazy grandma. I’d be careful if I were you #baseballbabe #flyswatter #fuckinginsane

  @torontoraptors4life Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: HOLY SHIT!!!

  @MinaWillis Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: I hope you’re filing charges.

  @dogsbiteback22 Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: Damnnnnnn, that old lady fucked him up. how embarrassing for your boy.

  @trinanotnina Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: How is no one talking about the slippers yet?

  @fruitbythefoottt Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife @trinanotnina : Didn’t you hear? Dirty slippers are in this year #TrailerParkChic

  Rage spotted my vision, pulsed in my veins, gnashed its teeth inside me. It was one thing to tear me apart and judge the Instagram pictures I’d willingly posted online, but Gram wasn’t even on Twitter to defend herself. She’d only been protecting me. They didn’t know her; they didn’t know a single thing about me and my family. I responded with shaking fingers.

  @MacyAtTheMovies Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: Maybe you should’ve stayed home then. Come to my house again and you’ll get worse than a flyswatter to the face.

  Then I rolled down my window to get some air so I wouldn’t puke all over Peg’s dashboard. Gram’s pink quilting slippers were nearly as old as me, and more gray than pink now, but it’s not like she wore them to a fancy dinner party. She was at home. Minding her own business. Like Emily Payne Blog Life and her boyfriend should’ve been doing.

  Elise tapped on the roof of the car, and I jumped. My phone flew out of my hand and landed at my feet. “Why are you sitting out here like a weirdo?” she asked.

  “No reason. Gram wanted me to bring the jam and tomatoes for fixing our dryer, and she asked if your mom needs any sewing done.” I opened the door and got out. As I reached for my phone, Elise snatched it first.

  “Are you on Twitter? No one goes on there anymore.” She scrolled through the thread I still had open. “Your grandma burned a dude with an electric flyswatter?”

  “Yeah. That woman and her boyfriend showed up at the house this morning. I think they’re amateur journalists or bloggers or something. Gram chased them away.”

  “Bizzy Evans is a motherfucking legend. Please, God, let me be that awesome when I’m old.” She closed the app before handing my phone back to me. “Stay off Twitter. No good will come of looking at those threads.”

  “I know.” But I still couldn’t stay away. It had become an addiction. “Paxton brought over some of Gigi’s patterns while those bloggers were there. He seemed super freaked out.”

  “Don’t stress over it—he’s just a really private dude. I have to get to work, but I’ll be by your place tomorrow with my tools and get that dryer fixed,” Elise said. “Momma’s inside. Just bring the box in to her.”

  As soon as Elise drove away, I got back into the car and scrolled through Twitter again.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  AFTER MOMMA GOMEZ DECLARED me too thin and loaded me up on roasted chicken and rice, she let me leave. Elise had forgotten her lunch, so she sent me over to the Video and Repair to bring it to her.

  The bell above the door dinged, and Lance Harrington walked in behind me. His light brown hair turned sandy in the summer and he already had a deep tan from helping out at his parents’ farm. He was only a few inches taller than me, but Harrington boys managed to fill out just fine. Elise pinched his cheeks like she used to when I was dating him—he really did have the most pinchable cheeks—and went to let Midnight know she had a customer.

  “I’m not here to rent a movie,” he said. “I was hoping you’d be working.”

  “I’m not actually working.” On a scale of one to ten, how sad did hanging out at work off the clock make me look? “I’m running errands. And stopped in to say hi.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t look like he cared either way. Coincidently, the same look he’d had when I’d told him I wanted to break up. “I just wanted to let you know I’ve been contacted by a couple of reporters and bloggers.”

  “What?” I swayed a bit to the side, and Lance put a hand on my arm to steady me. “Why? What did they want?”

  “I think …” He bit his lip and looked at the ground. “I think they saw pictures of us on your Instagram before you went private. They wanted to know if we were still together, if you broke my heart, if I knew Baseball Babe.”

  “Oh God. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what’s happening.” First Gram and now Lance. How far into my personal life would this poison spread?

  “It’s so bizarre. Momma had a fit when she found out you were Fly Ball Girl. She was following the story, all into it, and then, well …”

  I could only imagine what Lance’s good Christian momma thought about that bathroom picture. The chicken and rice I had for lunch threatened to make an appearance all over his shoes. “So, should I change my identity now or …?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He waved my question away, even though I was dying of humiliation all over again. “She thought for a second that one shot of you going into the bathroom was pretty bad, but I told her to think real hard about that. She knows you.”

  I didn’t know which made me feel worse, the fact that Lance’s mom so easily believed I’d have a quickie in public with a guy I’d just met, or that it was only because of Lance that she no longer believed it. How many people in town had seen those pictures? How many of them knew me from a distance, but not the way the Harringtons did? If Lance’s mom could buy into Jessica’s lie, I had no doubt most of the town thought I’d done it. Why wouldn’t they? Weren’t pictures supposed to be worth a thousand words? And even if I had, wouldn’t that have been my business? How was this any different from Peeping Toms who ran through towns at night, looking in people’s windows to see if they were getting it on or not?

  “Anyway.” Lance scratched his shoulder blade. “I didn’t tell anyone who called about you or us, and I won’t either. I just wanted to give you a heads-up. They’re sniffing around.”

  Lance was a good one, and that was why I wouldn’t ever regret him being my first. I hugged him. “Thank you. I mean it.”

  Elise gave me a catlike grin when he left. “I forgot to ask you earlier how it went last night with Pax … ton?” She drew out his name as if it were two words, and the look she gave me had me backing up a step. As if she knew what I’d debated doing before I came to my senses and flung myself into the lake.

  “It went fine.” I shrugged. “We went swimming.”

  “Really?” Her grin stretched wider.

  “Yes, really. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Elise wound the end of her long braid around her finger. “I asked him about last night, and you should’ve seen his smile.”

  “Is he here? Did he say anything about the bloggers?”

  “He’s out on call, and why would I bring that up when I wanted to get the goods on the lake date?”

  He and Elise took turns being on call, where one of them would stay at the shop and fix the smaller items that could be brought in, and the other would head out to fix larger things, like appliances. Since Paxton didn’t drive, Elise took more of the appliances, but on the days when it was his turn, Gigi would drive him where he needed to go.

  “It wasn’t a date. Nothing happened.” Or would ever happen. I’d just gotten carried away by the romance novel setting and my steady diet of rom-com movies. “And speaking of which, where were you?” The words I could’ve used a buffer last night hung unspoken between us.

  She blushed, actually blushed. Oh no. “Me and Midnight …”

  “Seriously? Again?”

  Things had been tense when they broke up, or stopped hooking up or whatever they were, and had just started getting back to normal. Another reminder of why I needed to stick to the No Coworkers Rule. Elise had almost quit last time, and if she hadn’t been able to go fully on call for that first month, she would’ve. I couldn’t aff
ord that kind of a breakup.

  Elise glanced at the storage room, where Midnight was holed up doing paperwork. Or more likely, pressing her ear against the door to listen in on this conversation. “Don’t say anything. I’m not sure where this is going to go, but I want to keep it quiet for now.”

  “I’ll tell you where this should go.” I pointed to the garbage can by the door. I hadn’t forgotten how thoroughly my best friend had been shredded the last time. No way would I let that tiny gothic terror hurt her again.

  “It’s different this time.” Elise pressed her lips together. “Don’t mother hen me, okay? There’s a lot going on with her that isn’t my place to share, and just trust me. It’s different.”

  I held her gaze. “Fine.” It was her life. “But she’s on probation.”

  Elise snorted. “So nothing will change.”

  I left and went back out to Peg’s car. My shift started in a few hours. I’d be working with Midnight and Paxton, who both had double shifts with two breaks in between. Would Paxton be as curt with me tonight as he’d been in his texts? Ugh. That moment I’d almost kissed him hung over me like a wet wool blanket. Maybe he’d told Elise. Probably, judging from the way she’d circled me like a vulture over a corpse. I didn’t have time to think about it though. I had to run peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes from our garden over to the Brewster farm in exchange for milk, the Neilson farm in exchange for honey, and the Jackson farm in exchange for a chicken, help Gram get dinner in the oven, and get back here for my shift.

  Because I still needed to do my part to keep our home running. I still needed the paychecks I got from the Video and Repair. Going viral didn’t do anything to help me get dinner prepared. And rumors whispered about me in town wouldn’t deliver the vegetables waiting for me in Peg’s car.

  After I finished up our barters, and a wily chicken at the Jackson farm nearly pecked off my big toe when I got too close to her eggs, I had a few hours before I had to get to work. While my current videos were still doing well, I needed to build on this momentum. Thanks to my deal with Eric, I had the kind of spotlight I’d been working toward for over a year, and I didn’t intend to waste even a second of my fifteen minutes.