Not Your #Lovestory

by Sonia Hartl

  I’d planned on uploading a baseball video next, but with Gram in full fair mode, she wouldn’t have time to help me with the costumes. Plus, a romance would’ve been better. Something I could suggestively tag Eric in. The feel of Paxton’s hands around my waist in the lake floated through my mind, and I rummaged around in my closet until I found a white button-down I could tie into a knot above my stomach. It wasn’t Jennifer Grey’s wispy pink lift dress, but I had to improvise on short notice.

  Dirty Dancing was right up there with Say Anything as a most watched movie in our house. Mom could (and often did) quote every line. The aftermath of the abortion scene was where I’d learned about reproductive rights, Baby standing up to her father was where I learned how some will stop seeing you as a person once you shatter the illusions of who they want you to be, and the way her father treated Johnny didn’t give me my first lesson in classism (life had done that), but it was an easy way for Mom and Gram to segue into the discussion. I had enough talking points to fill three videos. I didn’t touch any of them. Not when I didn’t have time for my usual routine of handwritten cue cards and hours of research.

  Instead I burned one of my favorite movies on hashtag clickbait.

  I’d always planned to have my Dirty Dancing video dig into the topics that had shaped my entire worldview, making me a baby feminist at the age of nine. Instead I took ten minutes to wax poetic about the romance between Baby and Johnny. The romance was great, no doubt, but that wasn’t what set Dirty Dancing apart. That wasn’t what made it magic to me. But that was the angle I needed to work Eric into the video.

  As I added the graphics to the background, an invisible hand pressed down on my chest. That pressure grew when I uploaded the video. And when I tweeted the link with this one’s for you #BaseballBabe, my palms sweat and the pressure on my chest became heavy enough to make me light-headed. But this was what I wanted. This would get me the views and clicks and a big enough paycheck at the end of the month to leave it all behind.

  And if I had to leave pieces of myself behind too, so be it.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  I’D BLOCKED EMILY PAYNE Blog Life, but that hadn’t stopped the comments from rolling into my mentions like a tidal wave. Before Baseball Babe, I had 59 followers. I was lucky if I got one like a month. Now I had so much junk to scroll through, I hadn’t even gotten a chance to peek at how many retweets the link to my video had gotten before I had to leave for work.

  Elise’s shift ended and she had to do repair errands with her dad, so I had no ride. Gram said Mom had called dibs on the car after her shift. For what, I had no idea. So I got stuck walking. Gram didn’t want me wandering the streets alone after that guy had shown up at our house, but I assured her I’d take the back way and get a ride home. She didn’t want to keep me from work, and I had my cell phone.

  It didn’t stop me from looking over my shoulder the whole way, my pulse jumping every time a twig snapped in the woods. I’d always felt safe in town. Until now. I hadn’t been totally honest with Gram about the ride home, but I could always call Elise if it came down to it.

  I made it to the end of the trail behind our house and cut across the nicer neighborhood on my way to Main Street. Nicer in this town meant splurging for a sprinkler so the grass wouldn’t die and keeping up with the siding and shutters if paint started to chip. We didn’t have mansions in Honeyfield. We had a handful of middle class, the working class who thought they were middle class, and the rest of us, who had no such delusions.

  The bell to the Video and Repair chimed above my head as I entered. Brady stood at the register, his whole face pinched, like he couldn’t stand another second of this place. He really hated the customer part of the customer service job.

  “You’re free,” I said.

  He unclenched and his expression became softer. “Are you doing okay?”

  “As well as I can be, I guess. Thanks again. For earlier.”

  “No problem. I owe Jared worse than a shove, but that wasn’t the time or place.” His lips thinned and I wondered what kind of run-in he’d had with the town asshole.

  I opened my mouth to ask him and shut it again when Midnight came out of the closet/break room and looked me up and down, spending extra time evaluating my hair and makeup. Like it was an armor she knew well. “You’re late.”

  “Good thing you’re not my boss then.” I tossed the backpack holding my dinner into the room behind her and cleaned out the return box to start rewinding.

  Brady took that as his cue to leave, and I’d never seen anyone run so fast. I didn’t even get a chance to utter the word goodbye before he was gone.

  Midnight leaned against the doorjamb. “What crawled up your ass and died?”

  “Nothing.” After my morning with Jared, my deal with Eric, the bloggers, and my subpar upload, I was on the edge and it wouldn’t take a whole lot more to push me over. I slammed VHS tapes on the counter, picturing Jared’s and Emily Payne Blog Life’s faces on each of them, until one of the cases cracked. I yanked the cover and tape out and then threw it on the floor and stomped on it until the plastic broke and shattered beneath my foot.

  Midnight’s nostrils flared as she looked between me and the ruined case. “If I were you, I’d save that rage for the next time you see Jared, rather than burn it out on this bullshit.”

  Air got stuck in my throat, making it hard to breathe. I wanted to scream and tear something apart with my bare hands, rip its head off with my teeth. My anger was a starved and injured beast, and I wanted nothing more than to let it out of its cage. “Who told you?”

  “Who didn’t tell me would be a shorter list.”

  My gaze snapped up the street to the diner, where my mom was still on her shift. If Midnight knew, they’d be talking about it there, too. All the fire died out of me. Replaced by a layer of shame that coated me like an oily second skin. Mom would worry, customers would pity her, and she’d try to keep it from showing, even as her back and feet ached and she’d still feel like it wasn’t enough. That it was her fault. That if she’d only smiled a bit brighter or hustled a bit faster on the drink refills, there would’ve been enough quarters to spare me from Jared.

  “I hate people,” I said.

  Midnight gave me a considering look. “Welcome to the dark side. We have popcorn.” She tossed me an individually wrapped movie butter and I put it in with the rest of her display.

  Two guys wearing skinny jeans, tight striped V-necks, and knitted hats walked into the store, and me and Midnight glanced at each other. While the steady stream of tourists passing through were our lifeblood in the summer, we also got a number of hipsters, who we didn’t quite welcome with the same open arms. They generally reeked of gourmet coffee and trying too hard, and the worst part was that they didn’t spend money. They came here for one reason only: to gawk. Having one of the few remaining VHS rental stores in the Midwest had made us an oddity of sorts. A pit stop on a retro road trip. And sure, we played up the trendy museum angle as much as we could to move twenty-dollar VCR rentals, but this was also a place where real people lived and worked. The hipsters treated us like modern-day freak shows. Apparently, the last gasping breath of a town on the brink of collapse made for compelling Instagram moments.

  “I told you this place was like a time capsule.” The guy wearing chunky black geek glasses nudged his companion, who then went and posed beside the action movies while his friend took his picture with his phone.

  “Rent something or get out,” Midnight said.

  The guy with the chunky glasses just turned his phone to Midnight and snapped her picture. She snarled, leaping over the counter so fast, I didn’t have time to grab her, even if I’d wanted. Which I most definitely did not. Feral Midnight was my favorite show.

  The shock on their faces as she barreled toward them, a tiny tornado of spiked black hair and fury, froze them in place. She yanked the phone away from the glasses guy, smashing it on the concrete floor of the repair side. H
is friend ran out the door, no doubt wanting to protect his own phone. I grabbed a wrench we kept under the counter for when the register acted up. I kept an eye on the guy with glasses, hitting the wrench against my open palm. He grabbed his smashed phone and backed away toward the door.

  “You’re crazy. Both of you.” But he froze as he looked at me, recognition flickering in his eyes. “Hey, aren’t you that girl from the baseball game?”

  “Get out.” Midnight launched herself at him, shoving him out the door with the kind of strength generally reserved for panicked mothers lifting whole cars off their babies.

  After she threw him out onto the sidewalk with so much force his knees buckled, she leaned against the frame to catch her breath. She took one look at me still holding the wrench before a smile split her usual dark and morose features.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You—” A laugh rasped out of her, then a louder one. I’d never heard Midnight laugh out loud like that before. It kind of freaked me out. Within seconds she was holding her sides, laughing uncontrollably. “Were you going to hit him with that wrench?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  She paused, looked at me, and started laughing again. I couldn’t help myself; I grinned back at her as she wiped at her smudged eyeliner. The door opened, and she nearly fell over backward, but Paxton caught her by the shoulders.

  “I saw two hipsters leaving with their tails between their legs.” Paxton glanced at the wrench still in my hand. “Did I miss the fun?”

  I searched his face for the fear I’d seen at my house, but I only saw regular Paxton. Loose limbs and easy smile. The smile I’d very nearly kissed the night before. My toes tingled and I shook my foot. Lingering adrenaline from the hipster encounter must’ve been doing funny things to my body.

  “We handled it.” I tucked the wrench back under the register.

  Paxton leaned against the counter with a half grin. “Who knew you were such a badass?”

  “Midnight’s the badass.” I jerked my chin to her. “I’m just her menacing backup.”

  “Sorry I missed it again.” His gaze swept over my lips, which I’d painted bright red again after making my video, and my cheeks heated. “I should get to work.” He pushed off from the counter and went over to the repair side.

  I stared at the worktable on the other half of the store. The point above his head. The wood counter with years of dents and scratches worn in. Midnight gave me a knowing look, like she could tell how hard I tried not to stare at his backside as he walked away. I flipped her off and she blew me a kiss. Business as usual.

  She went back to the closet/break room, and I had the front of the store to myself. Butch stumbled in, gave me a sloppy wave, and went back to his office. He booted up the computer and at least pretended to work. That was new.

  Paxton looked up from the vacuum he’d just taken apart and raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged in return. Whatever our so-called manager did or didn’t do while he was here mattered very little to us. As long as the owner of this place kept cutting the paychecks.

  Monday nights tended to be slower than other days, but we still stayed pretty steady, renting out ten VCRs and twenty DVDs. After the seven o’clock rush, I opened up my phone. The pressure on my chest returned instantly. I knew what I’d been doing, why I did it, and if throwing a few tweets and videos out there meant I’d never crawl for quarters again, I’d do it. But it also felt so permanent. In the way things on the Internet tended to be forever. If I ever had a change of heart, it would be too late to take it back.

  I opened Twitter first, completely ignoring the mess of my mentions. Those I’d save for the middle of the night, when I couldn’t sleep and I was really in the mood to hate myself. Eric had retweeted my video five minutes ago.

  @baseballbabe2020: If @MacyAtTheMovies wants to dance, I’d be a fool to turn her down. #baseballbabe #flyballgirl

  @MacyAtTheMovies Replying to @baseballbabe2020: Yeah, you would. #FlyBallGirl #BaseballBabe

  Let people pick that apart for a while, as long as they kept clicking on that video. My first message to Eric had reached thirty thousand within the first hour, more views than my first year as a reviewer combined. I flipped back over to the hashtag to check the responses.

  “What are you doing?” Paxton asked.

  I dropped my phone like I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, except these cookies were laced with arsenic and would make me sick before ultimately ending me, but I couldn’t stop eating them. “Nothing.”

  “How many hours have you spent doing nothing today?”

  A lot. Too many. “Like, maybe ten minutes.”

  He rested his arms on the counter. “When you lie, the left side of your mouth quirks up just a little bit higher than your right.”

  “I’m so glad you’ve spent enough time looking at my mouth to notice.”

  His whole face lit up. “Not a lie.”

  “Oh my God.” I shoved his arms off the counter. “I’m never talking to you again.”

  “Lie.”

  I covered my mouth with my hands. “Aren’t you on the clock? Go fix something.”

  “I have all night to fix stuff.” He paused. “But to make us even, I’ll tell you something that isn’t a lie.” He reached up, his fingers grazing the ends of my curls. “You look really pretty today. And I’ve spent the last hour trying to work up the nerve to tell you that.”

  I blushed all the way down to my toes. Those new feelings I’d been keeping in check burst open again. I wished we could’ve gone to the lake last week, before Baseball Babe, when I could’ve just flirted and had fun and not worried about my every move being watched.

  Which was why I couldn’t respond to Paxton. The entire Internet, which also included a gross number of Honeyfield residents, thought I was dating Eric. I needed to stay focused. The money from my YouTube channel was the one thing I could count on to get set up in Chicago. I’d have plenty of time to consider flirting and feelings that weren’t part of some game after I earned a steady income from my reviews.

  I was saved from having to respond by Butch throwing open the door to his office. He looked between me and Paxton, his eyes slightly glazed, as if trying to place our names to our faces and coming up empty. “I’ve just gone over the yearly budget.”

  What budget? I mouthed to Paxton. He looked as clueless as me.

  At the sound of Butch’s booming voice, Midnight poked her head out of the closet.

  “You.” Butch waved a hand at her. “Unholy Mistress.”

  Paxton coughed, loud enough to barely cover his laugh. Midnight stiffened, shooting a glare at me and Paxton, daring us to call her that from now on. I was pretty certain the look we’d given each other already had her plotting our very messy deaths.

  Butch rambled on, unaware or uncaring of the silent back-and-forth going on around him. “You get money for snacks and popcorn. Why don’t we have more candy by the register? People love that stuff. Order whatever you want. You. Repair guy.” He pointed at Paxton, and Midnight looked positively murderous that Butch hadn’t bestowed him with a nickname of equal annoyance. “Buy some tools or whatever this place needs.”

  “Where is this coming from?” I asked.

  He gave me a look that suggested I was the one who spent my days either passed out in the office or not bothering to show up at all. “We do this every year.”

  I glanced at the counter, stocked with movie snacks Midnight had bought and sold on the side. Paxton gave me a subtle jerk of his chin. A warning to let it go. Likely because Butch would go back to his office, pass out, and forget this conversation had ever happened.

  “Right,” I said. “Last year. I remember now.”

  Lie, Paxton mouthed to me. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

  Butch gave us a satisfied nod and went back to his office. He propped his feet up on the desk and promptly fell asleep. That whole hour of work he’d done must’ve completely drained him.r />
  Midnight pulled up Amazon on her phone.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “If you’re ordering snacks in bulk, I’d hold off on that. There’s a good chance Butch won’t remember this so-called budget in the morning.”

  “If he forgets, I’ll just take the income from them for myself,” she said.

  Midnight went back to her snack ordering and Paxton went back to the vacuum he’d taken apart earlier, like he hadn’t just called me pretty. Which was fine. For the best, really.

  Without the distraction, I opened up YouTube. My Dirty Dancing video had twenty thousand views already, and I’d gone up to fifty thousand subscribers. Actual subscribers to my channel who wanted to be notified of future content. Before all this had started, I had twenty-five hundred. These Twitter games were already starting to pay off.

  I had a suspicious number of thumbs-downs, but I didn’t dare wander into the comments. People were clicking; that’s all the advertisers cared about. After I closed YouTube, I went over to Twitter.

  @MacyAtTheMovies: Thank you all so much for the support you’ve given my videos. It really feels like a fairy tale come true #blessed

  Yuck. I’d officially become one of those people who hashtagged blessed. I wanted to punch myself in the face. But if this got me more subscribers, then fine. I’d do whatever it took to get to Chicago, even if I had to #bless my ass across the Internet.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  AFTER THE LAST RUSH of locals had left, gossiping about me in the Comedy aisle like I couldn’t hear them right there at the counter, a shadow fell over me. I glanced up to find Paxton’s mouth set in a grim line. I locked my phone and placed it on the counter. Even though I hadn’t been doing anything wrong, a snaking line of guilt curled around my stomach.