There was no way my apartment would ever pass an inspection. With my horrible credit history (which was still very much in the present), I’d never qualify for anything better. And it’s not like I could search Craigslist for illegal, unsanctioned hovels to live in.
Later that night, as I unpacked my clothes and put them in the guest room dresser, Natasha assured me, “Everything will be okay. You can stay here as long as you need to,” before zipping off to draw Izzy a bath.
The way my life was going, I’d be living here forever. Not that sleeping in this heavenly bed was such a tragedy, but Natasha had saved my ass one time too many, and I wasn’t going to take any more handouts. If I was going to stay here for an extended period of time, I’d insist on paying her rent.
As soon as my PayPal account was unfrozen.
Exhausted from the day’s events, I crawled into bed not long after the sun went down, more than ready for the sweet release of sleep to sweep me away. The nature sounds app would help quiet my jittery brain, so I pulled out my phone and swiped through my home screens. But I stopped short when I saw the multicolored swirl of the Instagram icon.
Ugh. Instagram.
I’d been threatening to delete my account for the past few days, but never pulled the trigger. Maybe if I had, Trey would’ve still been speaking to me.
It still didn’t make sense—how could a year-old photo of Shayla end up in my feed? With one angry finger, I tapped the Instagram icon and pulled up her profile to scroll through her recent posts. There she was, standing on a city street, her hands tangled seductively in her long hair. And in the next one, posing on the deck of a yacht, plucking plump strawberries from a goblet of fruit.
She was sickeningly beautiful. Though I wondered how much was real, and how much was filtered.
Then I saw it: the photo of her in the red bikini, the one I’d reposted to my vision board. The time stamp said May 3—the same day I’d seen it—but she’d hashtagged it #flashbackfriday.
Well, that explained that.
Swiping back to my profile, I took one final scroll through my feed, marveling at how quickly the whole thing had spiraled out of control. One moment I was faking my way through a vision board, the next I was a self-absorbed attention seeker, ravenous for whatever free junk people would send me. At the time, all those likes and follows and comments felt like validation. Now I realized it meant nothing at all.
With a few quick taps of my fingertip, I deleted Bree by the Sea.
* * *
The next morning, I bounced from bed with renewed energy, bounding down the stairs before the sun came up. Natasha was already at her Orangetheory class, but Al and Izzy were still fast asleep. In the silent, empty kitchen, I pulled up Alton Brown’s French toast recipe on the screen of the smart fridge and prepared the whole family a surprise breakfast. It didn’t turn out as perfectly as the batch Trey had cooked up for me, but no one seemed to mind.
“This is amazing,” Natasha said. “Totally not keto, but amazing.”
“You’re staying forever, right, Auntie Bree?” Izzy spoke with her mouth full.
“Probably.”
She laughed, but I wasn’t joking.
While everyone else got showered and dressed, I cleaned up the kitchen, scrubbing pots and wiping countertops with Natasha-like precision. After dropping Izzy at school, my sister perused the daily schedule on the kitchen command center.
“Izzy’s got ballet at 3:45,” she said. “If we’re gonna make any headway at the storage unit today, we’d better get moving.”
Armed with a Costco-sized container of trash bags and a case of flattened boxes, we headed up the I-5 to StoreSmart, where we began the painstaking task of sorting through all of Mom’s worldly possessions. No question, most of the stuff had to go, but there were some things we knew we’d want to hold on to. Plus, we wanted to say a proper goodbye to everything else, instead of tossing it away without a second thought.
At Natasha’s suggestion, we approached it methodically, working our way around the room and evaluating each item one at a time. The BUGS acronym was completely useless to us, considering everything was sentimental. Instead, we asked ourselves meaningful questions: Does it bring back a great memory of Mom? Is there a space to keep it in our home—not jammed in the back of the closet or shoved in a box under the bed, but on display, where we can see it regularly and smile? Or would it be better to donate it, so someone else could benefit from its use?
Progress was slow. Each item had a story behind it, some long-forgotten history that we dredged up for the sake of remembering Mom. We laughed more than we cried, and we only got through half of what we’d initially aimed to accomplish on our first day. It wasn’t particularly efficient, but as Natasha had recently taken to saying: the only way out is through.
So every day, after dropping Izzy at school, we trudged through another piece of our past.
By late Friday morning, all that remained in the storage unit were a couple of bare shelving units, the rolling clothes hangers, and over a dozen bags and boxes set aside for the donation bin.
“I can drop this off at the Goodwill truck tomorrow,” Natasha said, surveying the stack in the corner of the nearly empty room. “Who knows if they’ll even take it, though. Half the time, they’re so full, they turn my clients’ donations away.”
“In that case, I know a place in PB that could really use donations. Let me get the address.” I whipped out my phone and texted Mari.
The place where you take the pastries,
the one that gives stuff to women’s shelters,
what’s the name of it again?
Community Resource Center.
Why?
I’ve got a bunch of stuff to give away.
Clothes and books and jewelry.
All in good condition.
Think they could use it?
Definitely! They don’t get many donations.
She sent me the address—not far from The Bean House, actually—so, on a whim, I added,
Do you think they might need volunteers?
YES!
They’re super understaffed and
need all the help they can get.
Cool!
I’m gonna drop all this stuff off now.
I’ll ask for a volunteer application
while I’m there.
Actually, would you mind swinging
by Bean House first?
You can bring them today’s pastries
while you’re at it.
Also, I’ve got exciting news!
Wanna tell you in person.
I smiled, imagining what exciting tidbit she had to share with me. In the course of a week, Mari’s life had turned upside down—in the very best way—all thanks to that video skewering Demi DiPalma. Her subscriber count was in the tens of thousands and her views were in the millions. And she didn’t have to buy the following. She’d earned it.
“It’s all settled,” I said, turning to my sister. “Let’s load up the car and drive down there now.”
Natasha glanced at her phone. “I have to FaceTime with a client in a half hour. Would you mind dropping me home and going by yourself?”
“Of course not.”
Twenty minutes later I was flying down the I-5 in Natasha’s Audi to The Bean House, where Mari was waiting for me in the front garden. The tray of pastries sat beside her on a bistro table, looking perfectly delectable.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked, leaning in for a hug. “Don’t you have angry customers to attend to?”
“It’s slow right now. Besides, Logan needs to practice being in charge, since he’s getting promoted to head barista.”
“Good for him. So he’ll be the boss on your days off?”
“No, he’s taking over my shifts.” Her face lit up with a wide,
beautiful smile. “My last day’s next Friday. I got a new job!”
“Oh my God!” I threw my arms around her again. “Congratulations! Doing what?”
“Turns out all it takes is one socially conscious viral video for Netflix to come knocking on your door. They recruited me as a staff writer for this sketch comedy show they’re launching next year.”
“Holy shit! That’s incredible!”
“Yeah.” Her smile faltered. “Except the job’s in LA. I’m moving next weekend.”
“Oh.” I tried not to let the disappointment show on my face. After all, this was Mari’s dream, and it was coming true.
But damn, I was gonna miss her.
“Don’t worry,” she said, sensing my sadness. “I’ll come back to visit all the time. And Logan knows you get free coffee in perpetuity.”
I laughed, despite myself. “Well, this is the greatest news ever. I get free coffee for life and you get your dream job.”
Her smile was back in full force. “I still can’t believe it’s happening.”
“I can. They’d be stupid not to hire you. Your last video was fire.”
Two days earlier, she’d uploaded “I Thought I Told You to Fuck Off, Zach,” a sequel to the classic “Fuck Off, Zach,” in which she dissected an email he sent her in the wake of her newfound success. It was filled with backhanded compliments and condescending douchery, and at the end, he had the gall to ask her for a feature on her channel.
“When I say, ‘fuck off,’ I mean it,” she said. “So, what’s going on with your accounts? Are they still frozen?”
“No, thankfully. PayPal just released the hold today. I submitted my HandyMinion application as soon as they did.”
“I can’t believe HandyMinion is making you start all over again at level one. What a scam.”
“It’s not so much a scam as a total waste of resources, but I’m hoping the onboarding process goes fast so I can get back to work right away.”
“And what about your apartment?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t heard anything from the landlord yet, but I’m pretty sure I won’t ever be able to move back in.”
“So where are you gonna live?”
“Right now I’m with Natasha.”
“In Encinitas?” She pulled a face. “You can’t live there forever.”
“It’s not like I have any other choice. Not with my lousy credit score and nonexistent income. No landlord in their right mind would give me a legit lease. Hopefully, I’ll stumble across another shady illegal situation at some point.”
I crossed my fingers in a playful gesture to hide the misery I felt in my bones. Pacific Beach was my home, and I loved everything about it: the cute houses and the shady apartments; the bars on Garnet Street and the surf shops on the beach; the salty air and the brilliant sunsets. And the people, all of them.
Pacific Beach was my home, but I didn’t live here anymore.
Then, Mari came through with a genius idea.
“Why don’t you move into my place? My roommates are great, they keep to themselves, and I know they’d be thrilled to have my replacement be someone I personally recommended as opposed to some rando they found on Craigslist. You won’t need a credit check, and the rent is cheap.”
Now I was the one with the thousand-watt smile. “That’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”
“No, that self-help video was the best idea I’ve ever had. But this might be a close second.” An older man strolled past us and entered the shop with two teacup Yorkies in tow. Mari followed them with her eyes and grimaced. “I should probably go. This guy’s always a pain in the ass ordering puppuccinos for his dogs. I’ve gotta show Logan how to do it.”
“Good luck.” I picked up the tray of pastries and started down the stairs. “Let’s get together this weekend, I wanna hear more details about your move.”
“Sure. By the way, have you heard from Trey at all?”
Hearing Trey’s name stopped me cold. I turned around and shook my head. “Of course not.”
“Have you tried reaching out to him?”
“Why? He thinks I’m a stalker weirdo. And I lost all credibility when I lied to him about going to Palm Desert. Whatever we had together is done.” Not that we had much to begin with.
“Are you sure? He came in here a couple of times, but he was kind of quiet. Once he didn’t even order anything, he just poked his head around and left. I think he might’ve been looking for you.”
“Maybe he wanted to chew me out again.”
“He seemed sad,” she said.
With a shrug, I turned around and walked away. There wasn’t really much to say. Trey wasn’t interested in my explanations or excuses, he’d made that much clear. Though I probably owed him a proper apology for involving him in my mess.
For now, I put thoughts of Trey behind me, and after securing the pastries on Natasha’s front seat, I took off for the Community Resource Center. It was a nondescript building on Mission Bay Drive; I’d probably driven past here a thousand times but never noticed the tiny little CRC sign hanging over the narrow glass door. No wonder they didn’t get many donations.
I parked out front and grabbed the pastries, eager to see what volunteer opportunities were available. If they were understaffed, it was probably hard to dedicate any resources toward fund-raising or marketing. Maybe I could put my newly honed Instagram skills to good use by building up their social media presence or something.
Feeling hopeful, I opened the door and stepped inside. The front office was tiny, no bigger than my now-condemned apartment. Shelves lined the walls, stocked with books and boxes and binders. To my left, there was a makeshift waiting room, consisting of two worn-out chairs, a community bulletin board, and a wire rack filled with brochures, their topics ranging from childhood nutrition to affordable housing to free transportation.
There were two desks in the center of the office, but only one was occupied. A woman sat there, one hand clutching a phone to her ear, the other frantically clicking a mouse as she stared wide-eyed at her computer screen, her voice stretched thin as she spoke into the phone.
“I can’t load the inventory right now, I’m sorry. Our database appears to be frozen.”
The person on the other line screamed so loudly I could hear it clear across the room.
“I said I was sorry.” Her response was measured, but from the way she slammed the handset onto the receiver, she was clearly not feeling as calm as she sounded.
She looked up, suddenly aware of my presence. “Oh. I’m sorry. Can I help you?”
“I’m here from The Bean House.” Raising the tray aloft, I said, “These are from Marisol Vega.”
Her brow smoothed instantly and a warm smile spread across her face. “Wonderful, thank you so much. Would you mind—” The phone rang again and she groaned. “Sorry. Give me one minute, please.”
As she answered, I stepped to the side and perused the flyers tacked up to the bulletin board. There were schedules for support groups, contact numbers for emergency shelters, and lists of public bathrooms—all of it available in Pacific Beach. This organization really did a lot for the community.
Behind me, the front door creaked open, and I turned to see a man walking in. From the looks of it, he was down on his luck—tattered clothes, unkempt beard, permanent wrinkles etched in his leathery forehead. I grinned at him, but he ignored me, charging straight in and yelling at the woman behind the desk.
“When’s the meal service?”
Deep in her phone conversation, she held up one finger, the universal sign for “please wait a moment.” Rather than take a seat in the waiting area, though, the man rounded on me.
“When’s the meal service?”
“Uh, I don’t work here.”
He yelled even louder. “What are you talking about? Who the hell are yo
u?”
His eyes narrowed to slits as he stared me down, and my hands gripped the tray tightly. If he tried any funny business, I could chuck these pastries at him and run like the wind.
Then I realized there was a better use for these pastries.
Removing the cover from the tray, I held it out toward him. “Would you care for a croissant or a muffin? I think there’s a few scones in there, too.”
His gaze dropped to the baked goods before him, and he grabbed two blueberry scones, biting into one instantly. In that moment, he reminded me a lot of Eddie Trammel, the day I arrived on his doorstep without the chipotle ranch dressing—just a hangry guy, demanding answers about his food.
Except this man actually said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Then I tilted my head in the direction of the bulletin board. “Let’s see if we can find information about the meal service over here.”
We did, on a neatly printed schedule. He thanked me again, then grabbed a chocolate croissant for the road.
As soon as he left, the woman hung up the phone. “I’m so sorry about that.”
“It was no problem.”
“Well, thank you. You handled that perfectly. Sometimes our clients can get a bit aggressive.”
“I have a lot of experience with aggressive clients.” When her brow furrowed in a question, I said, “I was a GrubGetter for several years. People get really fired up about their food deliveries.”
“I’ll bet.” She held her hands out for the pastries. “Here, let me take that from you.” As she walked them over to the empty desk, she said, “You were a huge help. I’ve been drowning today.”
“You guys are pretty understaffed here, huh?”
“Under normal circumstances, yes, but even more so now. My assistant quit on me last week. Said he wasn’t getting paid enough to deal with ‘these people’—he actually said ‘these people’—and was going to start a new career as a SoundCloud rapper. As if he’s going to become famous overnight on the internet. Can you even believe that?”
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