4. The Worst Day Ever #2
He must’ve taken stock of my discomfort because he unwound the entire toilet paper roll and attempted to clean his mess. “I am experiencing a new sensation over what I just did. While it felt good to do it, I now feel bad for doing it… on you .”
This man was talking like someone trying to solve an extensive, ridiculous riddle posed by a bridge troll. “Please, just… um, get it off me.” I looked away as best I could.
Minutes later, there came a muffled knock from the front of the shop.
“Shit,” I said, remembering I had a business to run.
“No, I’m pretty sure this is puke,” the man said, flushing the toilet.
“No, not—” I swiped a hand across my face in frustration. My forehead was extra dewy. “You need to leave. No, wait. Stay. Stay back here, don’t move, and don’t make a single sound. You should be good at that!”
I wasn’t expecting customers this early on a Sunday morning after Small Business Saturday, but I also wasn’t expecting a strange man to have appeared in the shop and raccooned my minifridge, so it was already shaping up to be the worst day ever.
A fragment of my composure had returned by the time I unlocked the door, but then I found my perfect cousin and soap-selling savant, Alexa, standing there on the sidewalk and an awful situation turned even more awful.
Her sleek black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, drawing attention to her heavily penciled-in eyebrows and her dark red lip color. She wore a fluffy black maxi coat and red faux snakeskin boots whose heels only brought her eyeline up to my chin.
“What’s the point of having your hours posted on the door if you aren’t going to stick to them?” she asked, breezing right past me. “It’s freezing out there!”
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked with a tone landing somewhere between customer-service and go-shove-it.
“I wanted to stop by and say I’m super sorry for missing Small Business Saturday.
On Friday, Sid and I posted about our engagement on social media and my phone would not stop chiming.
I swear, I felt like a Kardashian. Plus, I had so many people to call and share the news with,” she said before catching sight of the wrecked store.
I had nearly forgotten about it myself, too jarred by the arrival of my cousin/former best friend. “Whoa, what happened here?”
Alexa’s wide eyes scanned me up and down.
I had coffee all over my shirt and traces of vomit on my sneakers.
The store appeared as if a pack of monkeys had been sent on a scavenger hunt to find hidden bananas and went berserk when they couldn’t find them.
My mouth opened but no words came out. Excuses felt feeble.
“Did you do this?” she asked, sounding concerned or pleased, but definitely not both.
“No,” I said. “I think it was, um, an animal? I’m not sure. It was just… like this when I came in.”
“Did you call the police?”
“No.”
“Did you call animal control?”
“No.”
Her shock morphed into incredulous pity.
She set her tiny red sling purse down on the nearest table and said, “I’m gonna be nice here and help you clean this up.
” She patted me on the shoulder, which meant she thought I was lying.
That I had gone on some misguided, possibly drunken bender and destroyed the store.
Little did she know some random, stunning man was in the back room doing—what?
I could only hope nothing else reckless.
I longed for the days when I wouldn’t have hesitated to tell Alexa what fresh chaos was happening, but I knew it was in my best interest to stay chill and say little until I assessed the situation with a clearer head.
“I feel like we barely got to talk during Thanksgiving dinner,” said Alexa, hoisting a circular rack up with little difficulty, while I struggled to right a stack of old books. Pilates made her deceptively strong.
“Table placement,” I said by way of excuse.
Before dinner, I snuck into the dining room under the cover of appetizers being served and switched around Mom’s place cards so I could be the farthest away from Alexa and Sid as possible.
Usually, I’d sit next to Great Aunt Isla—the only other single person in the Aster family at holiday functions—but she opted for staying at Sunshine Meadows, which was unlike her.
Mom gave me quite the look over fruit cocktail when I sat opposite her at the table, which I pointedly ignored.
It turned out to be my smartest move yet because as soon as the coffee was served, Sid was on one knee at the far end of the dining room declaring his undying love for Alexa with a ring box open.
Everyone’s attention was on the glowing, happy couple, so I slipped out the side door and into the hall to catch my breath.
My chest fought for tiny gasps as I leaned against the wall.
When I tipped my head back for support, I banged against the edge of a photo frame.
Looking up, I was beneath the wall of wedding photos.
Grandma and Grandpa. Gram and Pops. Mom and Dad.
A spectral outline appeared in line with the others, the apparition of what could’ve been—me and Cam.
Sensing tears I wouldn’t be able to contain, I raced upstairs to my childhood bedroom and flopped onto my full-sized bed.
Under a poster of the cast of High School Musical I never took down after elementary school, I bawled my eyes out.
Zac Efron didn’t even have the decency to turn away from my plight.
“I didn’t get to show you the ring up close,” she said, making her way across the store and extending her hand.
As if I hadn’t spent half of the previous night obsessively staring at all the photos she posted of the east-west pear-shaped lab-grown diamond on a gold band.
As the likes and comment count grew, so did my bitterness.
Why did everyone have someone but me? Why could everyone keep someone but me?
“Stunning,” I said before turning back to the hat rack. I pretended to be really interested in a brown fedora with a feather sticking out of it.
“Can you believe Sid picked it out himself? He knows me so well,” she said, fawning.
This was the lie she’d plied the entire family with, but I knew better.
I grew up with Alexa, and for a time, I knew everything there was to know about her.
We spent our youthful sleepovers rewatching Bride Wars and 27 Dresses and the sadder-than-advertised Muriel’s Wedding while cutting out celebrity wedding photos from old issues of People magazine once our moms were done reading them.
When high school hit, it was reblogs on Tumblr, then in college it became saves on Pinterest. Neither of us lost the flouncy shared fantasy of flower bouquets and family photos and tiered cakes.
Two months prior, she’d pinned a photo of that exact ring style to her I’d Die If I Don’t Get This board.
There was no way Sid could miss the enormous hint, even if he was a former meathead jock who ran with a crowd that made my high school experience a tense one.
“Oh, and I’m not sure if your mom told you,” Alexa said, reorganizing the cowboy boots by size, “I convinced your mom to let me and Sid host Christmas this year.”
This stopped me in my tracks. “Huh?”
“We’re going to do Christmas at Sid’s. It just makes sense. Your mom has done it and Thanksgiving for twenty years now. I think she deserves a break, and with Sid and me getting married and me moving into his town house, it just makes sense, you know?”
Thud . At first, the sound existed only in my head. It was my mind’s twisted way of processing that not only would I be alone for another Christmas, but I’d be alone in my newly engaged, perfect cousin’s perfect town house. PERFECT!
But then Alexa crinkled her brow and darted her eyes toward the back. “Did you hear something?”
“Nope,” I quickly said. “Will you and Sid have room for everybody in a town house?”
“Plenty. I measured. We’re going to rent tables and chairs. But we will need to get a head count,” she said, readjusting her tight ponytail and looking me dead in the eyes. “If you could let me know if you’re bringing a plus-one no later than December tenth, that would be appreciated.”
Any catty fight brewing inside of me leaked out through the soles of my still throw-uppy shoes.
Sadness wedged its way between my bones.
Through the collaging and the blogging and the Pinterest-board-making, I always assumed I’d be the first of the two of us to marry.
She knew about my plans to propose to Cam on Christmas before the unfortunate breakup.
In all this, her timing and her attitude felt too pointed.
Her choice of Sid felt pointed, too, but I already knew what she’d say if I brought up the fact that his basketball buddies bullied me and my art for four miserable years: High school was so long ago. People change.
Not in my experience, they didn’t. So it was easier to push her away than face those old, festering feelings.
Standing there in my nearly righted shop, I felt like a colossal failure, an unlovable fuckup.
And the sad part was, Alexa was the only person my own age that I wanted to talk to about it.
She was the closest thing I had to a sibling before her world became consumed by Sid the Soap Man.
My loneliness could’ve been a wedding cake based upon how many layers it had.
Not wanting her to examine my dejected expression, I crossed to the front door and flipped the CLOSED sign to OPEN.
Thud, thud, clang.
“Is someone back there?” Alexa asked, already moving toward the door.
I chased after her. “I can explain!”
“Oh my God!” Alexa cried.
I whizzed past her, hoping to shield her from the messy man, but he wasn’t there.
Well, he was. But he was no man. He was plastic again.
On one of the dinette chairs with his hands in his lap, he sat amidst the food mess I’d yet to clean up.
His eyes were painted. His hair was a sewn-on wig. His limbs were completely still.
“Henry, this is gross and creepy,” she said with a shudder. She stepped through the room like she was in a contamination zone. “Did you sleep down here last night?”
“I—” Words dried up in the back of my thick throat.
“This is a lot .” She blew out a big sigh.
“This is obviously a bad time, so look, I’m going to go.
Don’t forget to text me about your plus-one.
” She was halfway out the door when she turned back and added, “Running a business is hard. Believe me, I get it. If I didn’t have Sid by my side running the soap kiosk, I’d probably lose my mind, too.
Our offer stands: if this is too much for you, we’re able and ready to take over this lease for our shoreside storefront.
You can even keep the apartment upstairs if you want. Think about it for real, okay?”
Then she was gone.
God, her and her perfect ring and stupid, thriving soap business. I wanted to scream, first with frustration, but then with joy.
Joy because she was gone, and at least there wasn’t a strange man in my back room wreaking havoc on everything anymore.
Obviously, I was seeing things, but my potential delusions aside, at least I could move on with my day.
Could I explain the vandalized store and the spoiled food and the vomit stench still wafting up from my shoes?
Absolutely not. But could I fix the window display and welcome customers inside without the fear that an unnaturally attractive man was going to pop out of the woodwork and throw a wrench into my carefully calculated worldview? Yes.
That yes was enough for me to go in search of my trusty broom and pan, so I could clean the store and make some sales. Lord knew I needed them if I was going to fend off the soap sharks circling this lease.
Alexa might have chomped off a limb, but I was far from ready to play dead in the water when it came to keeping Isla’s Attic alive.