Hot Mess

by Emma Hart

  After spending all day potting approximately forty seeds, I didn’t feel like cooking.

  “You went viral, you know.” She peered at me over the rim of her gin glass. “Everywhere. All over the media, all over social media, everywhere you could.”

  “I know. My sister told me.”

  “Okay. Every other person in your situation would be happy about that, but you look miserable. Who shoved a cactus up your ass?”

  I let out a small laugh at her words. “Well, none of it is real, is it?” I relayed the epiphany I’d had this morning. “None of them cared until it mattered that they did. I knew it was a shallow world, but I realized today just how shallow it is.”

  She smiled, setting her glass down. “For sure, girl. These people… wow. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “I don’t know how you survive in that world. It’s rough. But what will you do without it?”

  “Change how I use my platform, I think. Use it to bring awareness for what I’ve been through. Teach kids how to be safe online. Warning signs of problematic people. Charities, that kind of thing.”

  “So does that mean you’re giving up vlogging? As it is now?”

  “I’m not sure. I have to work it all out, and I have to figure out how to do it all.”

  “Does that mean you’ll stay?”

  “Stop asking me things I don’t know the answer to!”

  We both laughed.

  I toyed with the stem of my wine glass. “My sister lives in New York. It would be a big change, but I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I’m here for at least a month, so I have a lot of time to plan.”

  But my gut already knew the answer. Even if it meant finding an actual rental property, that’s what I would do. I didn’t think I was ready to leave Creek Keys until I’d found my footing again.

  Which opened my world up to a thousand possibilities.

  Not least romantically.

  But I wasn’t going to say anything yet. Not to Blaire, not to Charity, not to Theo. I would keep that inside and let things run their course the way they should.

  Until then, I would figure out my own life.

  Theo and Alex joined us, both out of breath like they’d run a marathon.

  “Never. Again,” Alex wheezed. “I need the gym.”

  Theo nodded. “Same.”

  I frowned. “I’ve seen you shirtless. You go to the gym.”

  Blaire wiggled her eyebrows. “Shirtless, eh?”

  Theo gave her a withering look. “She decided to throw a glass of ice water over me. Was I supposed to stay sitting in a wet shirt?”

  “No, you should have gone outside in the sun for thirty seconds and kept your abs to yourself.”

  I disagreed with that, but whatever.

  “So, Elle, you were the poor person who had to plant all Ari’s seeds. She keeps talking about them and how she’s going to feed me tomatoes,” Alex said wryly. “I bet that was fun.”

  I laughed. “I only did it because Theo had to work.”

  Theo frowned. “I didn’t have to work.”

  Wait, what?

  I shifted to look at him. “She told me you had to work, and that was why she came to ask me to help her plant the seeds.”

  “I didn’t have to work. Well, not that much. Just check in with the current residents and confirm future bookings. Nothing that would have taken the amount of time she was with you for.”

  Blaire looked between us. “So, Elle, what did you and our very own Pinocchio talk about?”

  “Um.” I shuffled in my seat. “It’s personal?”

  “You’ll have to do better than that to get it past Blaire,” Alex said.

  I figured.

  “Okay, fine. We’ve already kind of talked,” I said, motioning to Theo. “And you obviously know something.” I motioned to Blaire. “She came over and asked me if I like Theo. I said sure, he’s a great guy, and tried to avoid going further because, well, it’s not my place to have any kind of talk with her about you dating.” I glanced at Theo, then looked at Blaire. “Then she told me she heard you, Blaire, tell Alex that you thought the reason I wouldn’t tell Theo I… potentially have feelings for him is because of her.”

  “Wait, what?” Blaire balked.

  “Whoa, hold on,” Theo said. “That’s what she told you?”

  I nodded.

  “No, girl, I didn’t say that. I told Alex I thought Theo wasn’t telling you he potentially had feelings for you because of Ari. Because of obvious reasons.”

  “That’s what she told me,” Theo said slowly. “That she overheard you say that.”

  “Then why would she tell me it the other way around?”

  Alex grinned. “Because she’s trying to play you off. Let me guess: she saw something she shouldn’t have.”

  “She might have seen us after I kissed her,” Theo said vaguely.

  I blushed.

  God, I felt like I was playing Truth or Dare.

  “She gave me permission to kiss Elle, like she was my mother.” He fought back a laugh.

  “Oh, my God. She did the same to me!” I swatted his arm. “This is ridiculous.”

  “I agree,” Blaire said, picking up her glass. “But then you already know what I think about the two of you.”

  “Blaire,” Alex said in a low voice.

  “Oh, I know! Why doesn’t Ari come and sleep over tonight? Then you can sort it out.” She winked at me.

  “Blaire,” Alex repeated. “You cannot force two people to be together just because it’s what you want.”

  “I know, but I can try.”

  I covered my eyes with my hand and laughed. “We’ve barely known each other two weeks, and he didn’t even like me for one of those.”

  “I bet he wanted to screw—”

  Alex didn’t even bother saying her name this time. He just leaned over and covered her mouth with his hand. “Problem solved.”

  Theo laughed and nudged me under the table. “She’s hardly lying.”

  I blushed again.

  “Ah-ha!” Blaire said, triumphantly removing Alex’s hand from her mouth. “I knew it. We’ll take Ari tonight and—”

  “For someone who told me he never gets a break, that’s the second time in a week someone has had Ari overnight,” I teased Theo.

  “She’s only doing it because she thinks I need to get laid,” he muttered.

  “You do need to,” Blaire shot back.

  “I think it’s time to pay and go,” Alex said, raising his hand for Charity to get us the check. “With Adalyn,” he added. “Only Adalyn.”

  Blaire pouted, but she didn’t say anything else.

  Now was the moment to say that I thought I’d stay, but I didn’t.

  I kept it to myself, because for now, I just wanted to breathe.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – ELLE

  Three Weeks Later

  “If your phone rings one more time, I’m going to throw it into the ocean.”

  “Hey,” I said, taking the phone from Theo with my dirty hands. “You’re the one who said you weren’t going to plant on these seedlings.”

  “No, because I’m the one who had to buy seventy-five pots from the bloody garden center,” he muttered.

  Emily’s name was on the screen, and I rolled my eyes at him before I answered. “Hello?”

  “Hello? Hello? I’ve called you fifteen times! Bethany a thousand! Not to mention Ben and your agent and your publicist!” she shrieked. “Nobody can get hold of you!”

  “Okay, stop yelling,” I said, dusting my hand off on my bare thigh and walking into Theo’s house with both him and Ari staring after me. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “What’s happened? They’ve found that rotten, sleazy, no good sonofabitch!”

  I froze, a chill going over my entire body. “What?”

  “They found him. He went into Canada, took out a shit ton of the money, and came back into the US. He’s been hiding in a place in Vermont und
er a fake name.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Apparently, your video freaked him out and he went into major hiding in the hope he could get away with it. He might have done if you hadn’t hired Noelle. It meant the cops could bring in the editor and make her tell the truth.”

  My legs buckled beneath me, but I was thankfully in front of the sofa, and that was what I collapsed onto. “I can’t believe they found him, Em.”

  “I know. I know. Now you can decide what you want to do, but I think I already know.”

  “You do. I do, too. But what happens now?”

  “Bethany is trying to call you. They’re bringing him to New York tomorrow once they’ve crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s, so she’ll probably go through the process of pressing the charges with you.”

  “Okay. I’ll call her. In a minute. I need to process this.”

  “I know. Meanwhile, you want me to get movers for your apartment?”

  I smiled, even though I was shaking. “Yes, please. I know what I’m doing.”

  “So do I. I might rent a U-Haul and move it all myself to come and see you.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You’d let the company handle it and then get on a plane.”

  “True. Okay, look, I’m gonna go. I’ll tell Bethany you’ll call her today but you need some time.”

  “Thanks, Em.”

  “No problem. Love you.”

  “Love you. Bye.” I hung up and stared at my phone.

  They had Mitch.

  They’d arrested him.

  It had all worked out.

  “Elle?” Theo slowly stepped into the living room. “You’re as white as a sheet. What’s wrong?”

  I tried to smile, but I couldn’t.

  I burst into tears instead.

  “Come here.” Theo sat down next to me and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into him. Together, we sank back into the sofa cushions, and I buried my face in his chest while the tears fell.

  He said nothing the entire time I cried. With every tear that fell, I felt a bit of the stress I’d held for weeks leave me. It disappeared entirely until I was an exhausted, loose mess, who’d cried and snotted all over his white t-shirt.

  “They found him,” I said in a low, thick voice. “They’ve arrested him. They’re charging him as soon as he gets to New York.”

  He held me even tighter, and that was all the response I needed. I peered at the glass doors, but Ari was so busy filling the bigger pots with new soil that she had no idea I’d been crying, or if she did, she was doing a fantastic job at not panicking.

  We stayed here for a few moments until I’d calmed down enough that he could let me go. I sat up straight and he fetched a box of tissues, and I smiled as I took a few from him.

  “Thank you.”

  “I think you’ve needed to do that for a long time.”

  I blew my nose and nodded. He was right. I really had. It was too easy to keep everything locked inside, though. Not to mention I’d been busy over the past few weeks.

  The whole situation had resulted in me actually seeing a bump in my earnings. My views went up and so did my subscribers, and I’d spent hours mapping out my future vlogging career with my team.

  We were about to finalize a deal with a national charity that supported victims of revenge porn. I was going to use my platform for good, use my experiences for good, but I was still going to do what I usually did, just at a slower pace.

  And then, eventually, when I decided if I wanted to go back to school or not, I would have so many options for the future.

  Mitch’s arrest had opened one of those for me right now.

  “Phew, okay. I feel better now.” I dabbed under my eyes one last time. “It was Emily. Apparently, I have like a thousand missed calls.”

  “That’s about how many times it buzzed,” he said dryly, reaching up to wipe some mascara away from the corner of my eye where it’d smudged. “Are you just waiting now to hear from the police?”

  “I have to call Bethany soon, but Em is telling her I need some time. Besides, one call will morph into six, and I promised I’d replant Ari’s seedlings since you won’t.” I tapped his nose and got up, giving my face a good rub so it didn’t look like I’d really been crying.

  “Go make your calls. I’ll help her.” He moved to get up.

  “If you want to help, help us both. Do you know how many times I’ve watered the twenty-five tomato plants on my deck? Those are practically my babies now.”

  Theo rolled his eyes and followed me. “Do you know how many times I’ve watered all the others? She’s not good with the maintenance.”

  “I know. That’s why at least ten of the tomato plants are going to die,” I finished on a whisper. “Freak accident with a gentle breeze.”

  “Won’t be that freak if you stay much longer,” he muttered. “Damn hurricanes really will kill them.”

  I dipped my head and smiled to myself. The last three weeks had been so much fun. For the first time in years, I’d cultivated real relationships with people that were based on mutual interests and not what one person could do for the other.

  I now counted Blaire and Alex as my closest friends, along with Charity and, weirdly, the ladies of the Creek Keys Conspiracy Krew who were this close to finally convincing me to start them their own YouTube channel.

  I was holding out by a thread.

  I was unreasonably emotionally attached to Arielle who’d become somewhat of my shadow. If I was on my back deck, she was on my back deck. If I was on the beach for longer than thirty minutes, she would be, too.

  It was more than just a kid who loved their idol.

  I loved that kid. Probably more than I had any right to after only being here for five weeks. She made me smile, even when she talked ten miles an hour or made me watch an entire series of Ever After High in one sitting.

  If I ever had a daughter myself, she was everything I wanted her to be.

  As for Theo—that was dangerous territory, but I’d known that from the start. From the very start, if I was honest with myself. I’d known it when I’d first laid eyes on him in the diner on my first night in Creek Keys, but every single day I spent with him, the safer I felt.

  That was it.

  He made me feel safe. My feelings for him were unlike everything I’d ever felt, and when I looked back, I realized I’d always had them for him.

  Hindsight was a wonderful thing, because it allowed me to see what I hadn’t been able to before. Not when we were painting the bathroom or at dinner or bantering in the kitchen.

  He never pushed, he never asked for more than I was willing to give. Not once had he asked what my future plans were. I never felt as though I was being forced into making a decision, and that was part of why I’d never told him that I always knew I’d stay.

  Not yet, anyway.

  I would tell him tonight when Ari was in bed.

  That I was staying in Creek Keys and I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Elle, I think I broke this plant.” Ari held up a rather sad-looking tomato plant whose stem was snapped at the top.

  “Aw, that’s okay. It happens. They’re still really small, and that’s why we have to be super careful.” I sat down next to her. “We have lots more. Don’t worry.”

  She nodded, then looked up at me. “Oh. Did you cry? Why did you cry?”

  “Good news,” I assured her. “They were happy tears.”

  She shuffled over to close the distance between us and wrapped her little arms around my waist tightly. “Here. Is that better?”

  Smiling, I hugged her back and rested my cheek on the top of her head. “Much, much better.”

  ***

  “What is wrong with you tonight?” Theo said, walking into the living room. “You’ve gone from crying to three hours on the phone to bouncing off the walls. Did you eat all the ice cream again?”

  “No. Look at this.” I handed him my phone.

  He took it. “What am I
looking at here?”

  “Read the email.”

  His eyes darted back and forth. “A moving company? Why do you have an email from a moving company?”

  I stared at him. “Why do most people have them from a moving company, Theodore?”

  “God, I hate it when you call me that.”

  “I know. That’s why I do it when you annoy me.”

  He shot me a look. “Is that—your address in New York?”

  I nodded. “To a storage facility on one of the bigger islands.”

  “All your stuff?”

  Again, I nodded. “You haven’t checked your bank account, have you?”

  He stared at me. “No. Not today. Why?”

  I took my phone from him. “Because I deposited another month of rent this afternoon,” I said quietly. “Until I can find a more permanent place to stay.”

  “Stop pissing around and tell me exactly what you’re talking about, Elle.”

  “I’m not leaving. I’m staying here, in Creek Keys. My sister arranged movers to pack up and empty my apartment and deliver it here. I paid you another month of rent to give me a chance to find a more permanent place, and—”

  He yanked me against him. “A more permanent place? You have one. I told you that weeks ago. That house is yours as long as you want it, and I’m not taking your damn money.”

  “Yes, you are. I’m not going to live there for free.”

  His ice-blue eyes glistened with fire. “I’m not taking your money, Elle.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll pay the mortgage, at the very least.”

  “You already have been.” He ran one hand through his hair. “That’s all I ever charged you.”

  My eyes widened. “What?”

  “I thought you’d only be there a week. Up until now, I always thought you’d leave.”

  “Theo…” I touched my hand to his cheek and turned his face so he had to meet my eyes. “I knew weeks ago I wasn’t leaving. I knew I was going to stay, but I had to get my life straightened out. I had to figure out what I was going.”