by Leigh, Ember
My heart is pounding now. I have no idea what’s going on. And at this point, after being ignored for half a day, I’m less sure than ever that Bayshore really happened. “Yeah.”
“Didn’t you see the pictures he posted?”
I shake my head.
“Well…aren’t you friends with him on Facebook?”
I nod.
“Hm.” Her mouth turns downward, and she taps her fingernails against the desktop. Then she pulls out her phone and swipes idly at it for a few moments. “You might not have known, but Connor and I broke up four days before he left for Ohio.” Her green eyes snap up to find mine, and I find a warning there. My whole body goes hot with foreboding. Because even though I haven’t heard the whole story, I know enough of it.
At the bar the first night, Connor told me they’d broken up a while ago. I took that to mean weeks. Not days.
Somebody is lying to me, and for once, I don’t think it’s Tamara.
“I…I wasn’t…I didn’t know.”
She shows me her phone screen suddenly. It’s the picture that Connor snapped of him and I the day of the seagull uprising. It’s plainly visible, a post on his wall. I blink dumbly for a few moments.
“Well, it’s nice that two old hometown friends could reconnect over the death of his grandmother. I know she was so important to you.” She pockets the phone, staring at me so intently I could wilt, but I stay strong. I feel like she’s challenging me. Goading me with this uncharacteristic sympathy. “Connor said that it was important for you to attend the funeral, which is why you requested the time off.”
Now I’m officially spinning in deep space, and I have no idea how to land. “Yeah.”
Tamara wraps up the review and prints something for me to sign. The truth sizzles through me. The lava has turned into anger, and by the time I hit my desk, all the realizations have settled into place in the same way a meteorite crashes into the crust of the Earth.
First and foremost?
Connor is exactly the user my mother warned me about.
Chapter 25
KINSLEY
I wouldn’t say that I’m surprised when Connor doesn’t respond to my messages that night, the next day, or even the following.
What happens instead is that all the carefully cultivated trust, relief, and joy that followed me around for two full weeks in Bayshore slides off like the top layer of pond scum. Gross and bubbling, all of those good feelings gurgle down into the sewer, where they belong.
And it’s not like I’m jumping to conclusions here. No, I take my time to vet all the outstanding claims being made by the vile woman in control of my career. Connor’s continued absence serves as the extraneous nails in the already-closed coffin.
Which means that I finally invite Lena over to my house. Instead of critiquing George R. R. Martin’s masterpiece as I originally planned, I open a bottle of pinot grigio and lay out the Connor tale. As much as I’m willing to share, at least. I don’t tell her the whole pose as my girlfriend part, but rather that we went back, fell in love the good old-fashioned way, and then he followed it up with a similarly old-fashioned spurning with immediate reversion to ex-girlfriend.
You know, like every handsome asshole ends up doing eventually.
She’s aghast, as any good work friend would be, and she immediately offers to help investigate and, should it come to it, kick his ass.
We settle on Facebook. I pull up Connor’s profile, and so does she. We compare timelines.
And there are no pictures of us. At all. Anywhere.
Even though I clearly saw the photographic evidence earlier that day in Tamara’s hand. I think she’s an evil bitch, but I don’t think she’s tech savvy enough to break into Connor’s phone, steal a personal picture, and somehow ghost upload it to his own profile. The man is a tech genius, for God’s sake. She can barely swipe on her phone with those nails.
Which leaves only one possible explanation. He purposefully hid that from me, and from everyone. Except Tamara.
The drunker I get, the deeper I dive into why. And it isn’t pretty. Lena is as helpful as she can be, but the truth is, neither of us have any idea why men behave the way they do, and least of all why Connor is doing this. It turns into a drunken girl-power session, where Lena is undoing my braid and imploring me to dye my hair black like hers.
“We can have a girl band,” she insists drunkenly, which actually makes me giggle for once.
“What will our name be?”
She hesitates for only a moment. “The Black-Hair Bitches!”
That gets another laugh out of me, which I’m grateful for. But it doesn’t last long. A sigh ripples out of me.
“I hate being ghosted.”
She frowns. “It’s the worst. And I don’t understand why these baby men can’t have a direct conversation for once.”
Her words echo through me that night, even after Lena catches a rideshare back to her apartment and I’m left alone and woozy, flipping through channels even though I don’t want to watch TV. One hundred percent of my time is dedicated to not thinking about Connor, yet somehow, he’s all that fills my mind.
And you know what I realize right before my head hits the pillow?
Connor didn’t just want to use me to prove to his family that he had a girlfriend. He used me to make Tamara jealous. Which—I guess I’m all for that if it meant he would actually stay with me. But he didn’t. He jumped ship the second our regular lives restarted on Monday.
Which meant that I was just a passing fancy. A hookup with a two-week timestamp on her forehead that everyone could see but me. Some vessel into which he could pump his false words and his unprotected dick as much as he wanted, knowing that I was lapping it up like the affection-hungry frumpster I am.
And yes. I cry.
I cry so much that night because it sucks, and it hurts, and I can’t believe I’m back to this place.
Alone and unhappy in San Diego.
I take one full day to continue wallowing. By then it’s Thursday, and I realize that I’m not cut out for being miserable like this. It’s too taxing, and honestly, it’s boring.
I’m sick of not living my best life. I’m sick of Tamara’s ironclad manipulation and all the second-guessing about my looks and the pointless wondering of what a different job or man would be like.
So I throw myself into personal betterment. It begins with the HR pseudo-therapy group I conceived of. I start it on Facebook, slap a couple ground rules on the About page and stick to secret-inviting some of my HR pals I’ve made through the years and starting the discussion with clever memes and a few exemplary posts. On day one, it has ten members. Day two: fifty. Day three: two hundred. And by day four? It’s pushing a thousand, and I need to enlist some HR buddies to help approve the requests to join.
I almost can’t believe my eyes.
But clearly this is something my people need. Yes, I am delivering a service to my people. The handling of the group is fun. It’s a great distraction from the sluggish monotony of my day job, and it’s in this safe space I created that I begin to get more feedback on my own work situation. Most people implore me to quit and find a new HR position.
Someone named Carl says: “You are living in the worst-case scenario right now. What do you have to lose by quitting? It can only go up from here.” Inspiring. Someone named Linda writes: “I would honestly stage a coup and throw that stupid bitch into a moat. Too bad we live in modern times.” That comment demands the Love reaction.
Between diving headfirst into this sudden community I forged and hanging out with Lena more, days slip away from me. It doesn’t take away the ache, but it at least drags my attention away from how much it hurts.
It’s one week after I started the Facebook group that Lena brings up The Black-Haired Bitches for the billionth time. She is serious about this band. She has no idea how badly I sing, though.
“Would it appease you if I dyed my hair black?” I ask.
We’re eating
lunch together in the breakroom, and she nods so vehemently, I think her head might pop off.
“I don’t know how I’d look with black hair,” I say, holding out my wrists so she can inspect my complexion. “Look how pale I am.”
“You are tan,” she reminds me. “But…” She frowns down at my arm, “Yeah you’re pretty German-based.”
“Would you settle for one of those bayalage thingies?” I ask.
“Ohhh, yes. And, it’s ‘balayage’.”
“Well, fat chance, because I’m not changing my hair.” I smirk at her, so she crumples up her sandwich wrapper and throws it at me.
“Don’t make me go find a black-hair bitch to replace you,” she threatens jokingly.
“You can’t. Because I was there during conception, which makes me a default Black-Hair Bitch for life, regardless of hair color,” I inform her.
Lena goes quiet suddenly, and I can tell something is amiss around us. I look over my shoulder, and there he is. Connor. Striding through the lunchroom, dressed to impregnate in a slate-gray button-down with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. His charcoal-gray slacks pair well with expensive-looking alligator shoes.
All the air goes out of me as every tender moment in Bayshore comes crashing back to me. But one rises above all the rest: when he told me his secret nickname for me, the night that we made love so passionately that it might haunt me for the rest of my life. He called me Sunny-kins. The sweetest thing that someone has ever uttered to me.
Was that a lie?
I whip back around to face Lena, unsure what to do. He probably jokes with the other developers about me. If rumors were swirling, Connor probably had to douse those flames. The slightest thought of what he might be saying about me causes mortification to drip through my veins. My cheeks flame, and I can’t even remember what we were talking about.
I watch Lena’s face; her eyes are following him across the room. I press my hands to my forehead like a visor and grimace, waiting for something. Anything.
“He’s gone,” she finally says.
I deflate, forehead dropping to the table. “Jesus, why is he so hot?”
“You can’t think like that,” she chides.
“It’s impossible. You don’t know what he looks like under those clothes.”
“But he ghosted you.”
I grunt into the tabletop. “I know.” I let a few moments of silence go by. “But you don’t understand how good the sex was.”
“Kinsley.”
I lift my head, rubbing at my face. “I know, I know. I deserve better than that.”
“Have you blocked him?”
I shake my head.
“Do it.” Lena jerks her chin toward my phone. “Seriously. It’ll make things easier. Block him everywhere.”
I take a cleansing breath, feeling the fog lift. Lena has a point. Because I do deserve better than that. Like, way better.
Not just from Connor or whatever other love interest I might have in my life. But from myself.
That’s what this whole week has been about. Reminding me of this. Pushing me into my discomfort zone.
And that starts with how I think of myself.
I deserve to love myself.
And I know where to begin.
Chapter 26
CONNOR
The first week back at work is easily the worst week of my life.
Why?
Because I’m a weak-willed asshole who will do anything for career advancement. Not pussy. A job. I am pussy whipped by a career track. Which is why when Tamara shattered my post-Bayshore vibin’ with her ultimatum, I only knew how to go with the flow. I only knew how to say yes to her demands.
She gave my app the green light. Which means she’s getting her foot in the door at my dream company on my behalf.
I didn’t expect her to do it. But when she called me on my way to work on Monday morning, my lips still tingling from kissing Kinsley’s forehead goodbye, the path forward was clear. If I wanted the connection, I needed to play her game.
And her game involves staying the fuck away from Kinsley. The ultimatum was brutal. WeGo only happens if I eschew Tamara’s hated underling. Even though that underling is the only bright sunbeam that commands my attention.
For the first few days, I told myself it didn’t matter. We had a little hometown jaunt; who cares? It was nothing. It was a dalliance. Kinsley and I never had a conversation about what would come after, so this won’t hurt anyone.
These are rationalizations I repeat to myself hourly during the first work week. I increase it to half-hourly at the start of the second week, and I don’t find myself coping any better.
I miss Kinsley. That’s the problem. I miss her laugh, her non-sequiturs, her braid, her periwinkle sparkle, her high-waisted jean shorts, her cotton-candy-pink toes, her fifty-pound stack of books that she took to Ohio. I even miss the dried drool that I’m pretty sure was hers from one of the nights that we snuggled without meaning to.
I would give anything for her to drool on me again.
I miss my Sunny-kins.
So by the middle of the second week of No Kinsley, I break down. I send her the latest text in all of follow-up history. I keep it simple.
CONNOR: Can we talk?
I’m not expecting her to respond, but I’m hopeful she will. But of course, she doesn’t. Not that day, not the next, and not the next.
And I don’t blame her.
Because even though she doesn’t realize it yet, I chose money over her. I chose this undefined, uncertain chance at making twenty thousand more dollars per year over a soon-to-be-defined, way-more-certain happiness at her side.
The longer I languish without her, the more certain of this I am. Seeing her at work nearly cripples me. I go out of my way to avoid her, but when I do cross paths with her—like in the lunchroom or spotting her from across the foyer in the mornings—I stop breathing for what feels like five minutes. There’s too much that I want to say. And every time I imagine what those words might be, they all begin with: I am the stupidest man on earth.
But Connor, I remind myself, your career is important. Financial security and prestige are the goals. Remember? I can hear my dad’s voice sometimes too, telling me that stability is the foundation of success. How will I find success if I don’t have that stable, six-figure income?
I’m doing everything right, according to my father. He would have me drop “the Cabana girl” in a heartbeat if it means a chance to climb the corporate ladder ever higher.
A month ago, I would have agreed that dumping anybody in favor of career advancement would be a good idea.
Because progress is the goal, after all. More of it. Lots of it. All of it.
But now? I’m not so sure. I’m on my way to entering a higher tax bracket—just barely—but I can’t remember what the point is. Not when I’ve got a gag order on all things Kinsley, and the only thing more unsavory than my cowardly about-face is the fact that Tamara’s only goal is maintaining the illusion that she and I are an item.
I don’t get it. And honestly, I don’t want to know. Our six months of relative hell together proved to me that she’s one shady mofo. But like Dad always said: every person can have a benefit to you. Even the least likely ones.
So that’s clearly Tamara. She’s the person I have to put up with to achieve the goal, which is a lead developer position at this ultra-competitive company. Tamara has her hands in a lot of pots, I’ve noticed. She’s sort of like the dark web of Human Resources.
Which sucks horribly for Kinsley.
Aaand, I’m back to feeling like shit. On a whim, I call Grayson one evening when I’m contemplating drinking rum at five p.m. I should at least wait until six, but I’m ready to drown my sorrows now. He picks up on the third ring.
“Connor.” His rich baritone sounds as crisp as if he were standing next to me, even though he’s all the way back in Ohio.
“Gray.” I sigh, sinking back into my couch. “I need some advi
ce.”
“What’s up?”
I stare at the blank ceiling of my apartment. “You and Hazel are pretty serious now, right?”
A tiny laugh hefts out of him. “Yeah, I think that’s a good way of putting it.”
“Like, do you love her?”
“I’ve loved this woman for decades without even knowing it.”
I nod. “Right. So, would you do anything for her?”
“Of course.”
I nod harder. “Would you quit your job and start from scratch for her?”
He pauses. “Why?”
“It’s a hypothetical.”
“I’m trying to convince her to do that for me, actually. I want her to move to New York.”
I sit up, surprised by this little tidbit. The early evening sun has lit up the western wall of windows in my apartment, and the rectangle of sunlight reaches my bare foot. “You mean leave Bayshore?”
“Yeah. She’ll kill it in New York City. You have no idea.”
I rub my forehead. Hazel leaving Bayshore seems unlikely, but that’s besides the point. “Okay, but what if she asked you to drop everything and move to Bayshore?”
He sighs. “I don’t think she would.”
“But what if she did? And you guys had tried everything else and nothing worked but the only way for you to be with her was to move to Bayshore? Would you?”
Grayson’s response is quiet, but it comes after a long pause. “I don’t know.” And then a moment later, “Of course I would.”
I snap my fingers, but I’m not sure he can hear it. “Okay.”
“What’s all this about?”
“Just trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life.”
“Kinsley?”
“Yeah.” I sink back into the couch, the claws of depression sinking in again. “I kind of fucked things up.”
Gray grunts. “Is she giving you an ultimatum?”
“No.” I gnaw on the inside of my lip for a moment, struggling to find the right words. “I’m giving myself one.”
When Gray presses for more information, I don’t go into details. I need to chew on this. But more than that, I need to prepare myself for the weekend. Saturday is the summer mixer for E-bid, which is like prom for adults except there are awards given out that don’t contain the title king or queen.
