Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
SOPHIE
Conversation with BigCatchBabe
I’m bringing him his phone. He’s in a meeting with the Silver Star owner.
Oh, yeah. It’s going down. Spill a beer on him for me, will you?
There are more of us. He also has a SilverStarBabe and a GingerBeerBabe on his phone.
Ho-ly shit.
I can’t believe I have to miss this.
I’m sure I’ll probably feel disappointed later by this proof that all men really are full of it, but right now I’m amped up on self-righteous adrenaline.
Hey, can we meet up so you can tell me how it all went down?
I turn the phone face down in my lap. I should probably answer her, but I don’t know what to say—or how it’ll feel to come face-to-face with these women who have been living parallel lives to mine for who knows how long.
My conscience tells me I should also message SilverStarBabe, especially since I’m going to Silver Star and will probably see her, but she seems to genuinely care about Jonah, and if we keep messaging, we might both end up sobbing. Right now, I need to feed the other emotions festering inside of me. Because I have spent the past twelve years trying to avoid confrontation, and here I am, driving toward it.
Rob gives me a sidelong look as he cuts through downtown to get to the brewery. His car is a surprisingly clean Subaru, not an Outback like nearly every other person in Asheville possesses but a WRX with circular headlights. It looks like it has a smiley face—not that I’d ever tell him that, because I know what he’d say if I did.
Not everything has to smile, Pollyanna.
What a tool fictional Rob is.
We pass a couple of buskers, a group of lost-looking tourists with their phones out, and very little else. This is not a town known for its early risers. It is a town where people stay out late on Thursday nights.
The tasting room is in the South Slope, close to Buchanan’s tasting room, so after I ruin Jonah’s meeting, I can walk to work. Regrettably, I would be several hours early, but maybe they’d let me sit at the bar and stare off into nothingness for a few hours. Or scream into a pillow in the event room.
“So…” Rob says. I glance at him, taking in the dark circles under his eyes. No doubt he was living his own life of sin late into the night. For all I know, their father was doing the same. Maybe being a cheating jerk is a genetically inherited trait.
“Whoa, what’s that look for?”
“Nothing,” I say, wiping the disapproval from my face. That’s exactly the sort of sentiment that could lead to an argument—and it’s easier when everyone is acting the way they’re supposed to.
Rob takes a turn, his gaze fixed on the road. Probably a good thing, since a couple of tourists just stepped into traffic, their eyes glued to their phones. He honks his horn, and one of them, a woman wearing oversized sunglasses and bright white sneakers, casts him a bewildered look, as if he’d just exposed himself in her living room.
After giving them an ironic wave, he shifts his attention back to me. “That wasn’t nothing.”
My first instinct is to hold my tongue, but it occurs to me I’ll have no reason to interact with him ever again after this morning. Maybe my thinking is addled by my slight beer buzz, but why not be honest? “I was just thinking that I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if you were out carousing last night, too.”
His lips twitch. “Carousing, huh? Don’t you work at a brewery?”
“You know I do. The taproom always closes at ten, and I never drink on the job.”
“Sure,” he concedes, rubbing his chin.
We reach the brewery, and he parallel parks in a tight spot with enviable precision and no obvious anxiety. I never would have attempted that.
He glances at me as he activates the emergency brake. “I had a show. So, yeah, I was up late. Working. I don’t drink on the job either. Not even when the nerves hit.”
“ You get nervous?”
He snorts. “I know, radical, isn’t it? It feels good, playing for an audience, and it also feels like shit. Life’s like that sometimes.”
I know all about Rob’s band. They’re called Garbage Fire, and they were voted best of Asheville twice in a row. Honestly, I haven’t ever felt the need to listen to them, partly because of the name, and partly because Jonah told me they sound like a bunch of stoner teenagers. They’ve played at Buchanan Brewery before but never during one of my shifts.
“I haven’t heard your band play. I guess I probably never will now,” I say, and he raises a brow at me.
“Sorry,” I apologize automatically.
“Are you?” he asks as he cocks his head, watching me. There’s a challenge in his eyes, and it occurs to me that he’s purposefully revving me up.
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “It’s what I was taught to say when I upset someone.”
“Do I look upset?”
“No,” I admit.
“I’m not. Doesn’t bother me if you think I’m a loser. I know my brother does, and I couldn’t care less.”
“Why don’t you like each other?” I ask. It’s a stupid question—I know it, he knows it, the man dancing on the street corner probably would know it too, should we describe the situation to him. But I need to say something. I have to distract myself from what I’m about to do.
Rob smiles sadly and looks at the low-slung ceiling of the car as if he might find the answers written there. He seems enormous in the car, a giant stuck in a box. “I’m guessing he’s told you why he doesn’t like me. You’re one of the people who knows him best. Can you guess why I might not like him?”
“Yes.” I pause. “But why don’t you like me ?”
He glances at me, eyes wide. “I’m surprised you went there.”
“Well?”
He turns up the air conditioner, which is a welcome distraction from the dancing man, who is now urinating against the side of a brick building in broad daylight. “I wouldn’t say I dislike you.”
“But you don’t like me.”
“Jonah doesn’t need another person telling him how good he is at everything. He already thinks that.”
“But he is good at a lot of things. And I try to focus on the positive. No one wants to be around people who keep pointing out everything they’re bad at.”
“No, but then they’ll keep being bad at them. He thinks he’s a god because his father’s rich and he’s a successful distributor, but?—”
“You have the same father,” I point out.
He laughs bitterly. “Now you tell me. It’s my dad’s money. It’s never been mine. Never will be.”
I’m not sure what he means by that, or how his situation is different from Jonah’s. Their father is a wealthy financial planner, from a wealthy family. I know Jonah gained access to a small trust fund when he reached eighteen, and I’d assumed the same was true for Rob but that he’d blown it all on booze, blunts, and women, or whatever eighteen-year-old boys like to spend money on.
“Sorry,” I say again, somewhat meaning it this time.
“There you go again.”
“There you go being a dick again.”
I cover my mouth after the words come out, which doesn’t do any good.
Rob looks amused. “Well, at least we know you have no trouble being honest with me .”
I watch as he runs a hand over his jaw. The coverage of the stubble is as perfect as if someone had painstakingly plotted it out on graph paper. Curiosity makes me want to brush my fingers over it, although of course I never would. Jonah’s beard doesn’t grow in like that—his is patchy, which is why he always shaves first thing in the morning. I used to think that sliver of self-consciousness was proof of a sweet vulnerability. But maybe that was something else I’d romanticized, making it into an endearing quality rather than a show of vanity.
“I never really knew Jonah at all,” I reflect morosely.
“It’s my turn to be sorry,” Rob says with a sigh. “I suppose my brother’s like all of us. He tries to put his best foot forward. He cares what people think.”
“You don’t.”
He laughs, but I can’t tell whether he’s offended or genuinely amused. “The world could benefit from a little more honesty, don’t you think?”
“A little more honesty,” I repeat, letting the sentiment seep in. A little more honesty.
Yes, why yes I do.
I firm up my posture and exit the car. Rob gets out, too, but I don’t look at him.
“I need to do this part by myself,” I say.
There’s a heavy pause, like he’s preparing to object, but he says, “You’re right. But I’ll wait out here in case you need a ride. Or a getaway car.”
Maybe he’s only sticking around to make sure I actually go through with ruining his brother’s morning, like he said before, but I’m not going to complain. It makes me feel less alone.
I suck in a breath of the warm summer air, then regret it, because it smells a bit like hot trash.
Garbage Fire.
The thought makes me sneak a surreptitious glance at Rob, who has returned to the driver’s seat, though he’s left the door open as if he’s ready to jump out at a moment’s notice. He winks at me, and apparently shock does crazy things to a woman because I feel something inside of me wink back. Metaphorically, of course. I have never possessed the ability to close only one eye upon command. It’s like the universe solely bestowed that talent on men who would misuse it to make women feel things they shouldn’t.
I glance away quickly, thinking of BigCatchBabe, Hannah, and kind of wishing she were here with me. Oh, who am I kidding. I wish she were dealing with this instead of me. She’s clearly as addicted to conflict as I am allergic to it.
Gulping in another breath, regretting it again, I cross the road and approach the entrance for Silver Star…and realize the flaw in my plan when I see the “Closed” sign on the glass door. It’s only nine a.m., at the latest, and they’re not open for business yet. They probably won’t open until noon, like Buchanan’s tasting room.
I almost turn back. I have a valid excuse for not going in there. But I can practically see the look Rob will give me if I return to that car without even talking to Jonah. Disappointed but not surprised, like he was hopeful but didn’t really think I had it in me. So I continue walking toward the building and then stand against the outer wall, next to an oversized potted plant that looks on the verge of death.
I consider my options.
Option 1: I could text Jonah, pretending to be Rob, and ask him to meet me at a side door so we can exchange the phones. But he probably doesn’t have my phone on him if he’s in the meeting. It would also eliminate my opportunity to embarrass him, and if I don’t make a scene, he might be able to use his persuasion super power to get me to change my mind.
Option 2: I could text SilverStarBabe.
I pull out my phone, hands shaking, and send her a message.
I know you don’t believe me, but this is Sophie. I’m here at Silver Star to give Jonah his phone back.
Will you let me in?
If you’re here, I mean.
You’ll see how he reacts when he sees me, and then you’ll know.
There’s a pause, and I’m contemplating reverting to Option 1 when she writes back.
How do I know you’re not some psychopath stalker?
I send her my Facebook profile. It says I’m engaged but not to whom. Jonah told me months ago that he has no social media presence and would like to keep it that way. He said he prefers to have real, in-person interactions.
I’ll just bet he does.
This tells me nothing other than that you work at Buchanan Brewery. We HATE Buchanan Brewery.
I look through the photos on Jonah’s phone. He doesn’t take many of them, but there’s a photo of the two of us at his parents’ house a few weeks ago. It was at an all-hands-on-deck family dinner, attended by Rob, who took the photograph with a smug grin on his face. Jonah has his arm around me, and my engagement ring is clearly visible.
A pained sound escapes me. We look content in the photo, and now that kind of happiness feels impossibly far away. To think…all this time, my silver lining was made of the kind of metal that turns your finger green.
Three dots appear and then disappear in the chat window. A passing car honks at me, and the man who urinated against the building walks past the brewery, muttering to himself loudly enough to set a very pale pigeon into flight. I glance over to check if Rob is still there—in his perfect parallel parking spot—and some of my unease drifts away when I see that he is. He’s closed the door, but his window is open.
The phone buzzes in my hand.
SilverStarBabe: I’ll be there in two minutes.
The next two minutes are probably the longest in my life. I almost leave, twice, to return to the safety of Rob’s car. Finally, a woman in a bright green and blue wrap dress with feather earrings ducks across the street—not using the crosswalk but actually paying attention to oncoming traffic. She has thick golden hair down past her butt, and a gnawing feeling grows inside of me, because she’s beautiful . Next to her, I feel like a mouse, perfectly average in every way.
Five minutes ago, the question was why Jonah would want someone else when he already had me, but now I wonder why anyone would want me if they could have her.
She walks up to me, her expression wary, and as she reaches me, her gaze drops to my engagement ring. Hurt ripples across her features, and I realize that this gorgeous woman probably feels the exact same way I do. The thought stokes the rage inside me again, thank God, and I firm up my jaw.
“SilverStarBabe?” I ask.
“My name’s Briar,” she says cautiously. “You’re Sophie.”
I nod.
“And you’re really his fiancée?”
A ball of emotion lodges in my throat. When I break up with him, there’s a chance she’ll step in to pick up the pieces. Or maybe BigCatchBabe or GingerBeerBabe will. They could slip right into the role I’ve been playing and take over the wedding that never really felt like mine…
It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve tried so hard to become a respectable person, and I’m not going to give up on it now.
“I was,” I say. “How long were you?—”
“About five months.”
My mouth gapes open, and fresh indignation washes through me. “He proposed to me five months ago.”
Her lips part, and I halfway expect her to call me a liar again. But she whispers, “That jerk . He…he told me he wanted to be exclusive. That he didn’t have a lot of time to date, but he preferred to focus on forming a soul connection with one person at a time.”
“He said ‘soul connection’?” I ask in disbelief. The Jonah I thought I knew would never talk about soul connections .
She gives a wobbly nod.
“That jerk ,” I echo, feeling it so deeply in my bones it might as well be part of my marrow.
I want to tell her about the two other women. But that can come later. I need to confront him now. I need to do it while I’m feeling strong.
“I have to give his phone back to him, Briar.”
She glances nervously at the building and bites her lip, and I remember what Jonah said about the Silver Star owner. How he’s allergic to technology, even though his entire operation is reliant on it.
For a second, I think Briar is going to turn me down. There’s uncertainty in her eyes, but she takes my hand and leads me around to a door she unlocks. We step into an office space with a couple of desks left out in the open like islands, a kitchenette, and a closed office door. I can hear a man behind it, laughing in deep gusts.
Then I hear Jonah’s voice, so familiar but so wrong, and a shudder runs down my spine.
Briar and I exchange a glance. “You could just throw the phone in the garbage,” she suggests. “He’d be able to find it with the Find My Phone app, probably, but he’d have to go through the trash. He’d hate that. He doesn’t even like scraping dirty dishes off.”
She’s right, of course, although it’s still hard to wrap my head around the reality that Jonah has spent so much time with other women, enough that they’ve eaten home-cooked meals together. Does he travel for work at all? Or did he make phone calls to me while crouched on other women’s balconies or in their bathrooms?
“I’m going in,” I say, stiffening my spine.
“He had your phone when he showed up?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say through my dry mouth.
Her lips press together. “I’ll get it for you. I know where they’re kept during meetings.”
She walks away, and I can’t help but notice that even the way she walks is elegant. It doesn’t make me dislike her, though. None of this is her fault, or BigCatchBabe’s fault, or even the fault of the mysterious GingerBeerBabe. There’s one person behind this mess, and he’s in that office.
That thought is enough to get me moving. I swing the office door open and walk in with Jonah’s phone outstretched as if it has offended me. Both Jonah and the tall, rotund man behind the desk turn to stare at me. Despite the early hour, each of them is drinking from a flight of beer, the small glasses arranged in labeled wooden carriers.
A sense of indignation washes over me. Jonah must have known there was a chance I’d discover his lies, yet he still took this meeting. He sent Rob, whom he doesn’t even like, to retrieve the phone. That’s how much he cared. He’s not just a cheater, but a lazy cheater.
I glare at him, my fingers squeezing the phone.
Surprise flickers across his face, followed by worry and then a fake wide grin. He’s so handsome, with his big hazel eyes, closely cropped dark hair, and that perfectly shaved jaw, but his looks feel offensive now.
“This is my fiancée,” he tells the big guy, who’s scowling at me. “What a nice surprise, honey, but we’re not quite done in here yet.”
“Oh, I think you’re done,” I say, my voice thrumming with anger. “I think you’re very done.”
“Sophie?” Jonah says, reaching for my hand. “If you have something you need to talk about, we can grab breakfast in ten minutes. Why don’t you wait for me outside? It won’t be long.”
Outside, like a dog.
Outside, like an umbrella abandoned after a rainy day.
People have treated me like that almost my whole life. I’ve spent my adulthood trying to absorb it like a sponge or make excuses for them, but no more. My fingers squeeze tighter around the phone.
I try to remember the breathing exercises I was taught in therapy. But I can’t remember whether I’m supposed to breathe fast or slow to calm down, and?—
“No phones allowed in here, sweetheart,” says the man behind the desk as if he doesn’t notice the chaotic energy thrumming through the room. “Bring that out there with you, will you?”
Something inside of me snaps, and I drop the phone on the floor and stomp on it. Once, twice. And again, feeling the glass crack satisfyingly under my orthopedic sneaker. Jonah’s mouth drops open. He stares at me as if he’s just this moment realized that he doesn’t really know me.
I know what that feeling’s like. Normally this is when my empathy would kick in, telling me to save someone else from something that has hurt me, but it doesn’t happen.
I smile at him, probably looking like an insane person, and swing my gaze to the big boss. “Is that better, sir ?”
He opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything. Then he lifts one of the small glasses of beer and drains it.
“You’ll apologize, Sophie,” Jonah says, getting to his feet. He’s five foot ten but consistently writes six-one on forms when asked for his height. He’s capable of looking down at me, but not as much as he’d probably like.
“You’re so much shorter than your brother, you know,” I sneer. “I think he might actually be six-one. Maybe even six-two.” I grab one of the little glasses from his display. I was going to throw the contents at him, but I notice at the last second it’s their Elderberry Breeze, and I down it instead.
Surprisingly refreshing.
Jonah watches me with stupefaction now. Like he can’t believe I’m the same woman who accepted his ring.
“Sophie,” he finally manages to say. “Did you hear from your great-aunt?” He gives the big boss a women will be women look that infuriates me. “Sophie’s elderly aunt just went into remission from a very serious illness. She’s doing better now, but it’s been a stressful time.” Swinging his gaze to me, he adds, “But that’s no excuse to make a spectacle of yourself, sweetheart.”
“ You have made an ass of yourself,” I say. “What’s your excuse?” I pick up another one of the small glasses of beer and face the boss man. He recoils a little as if he’s afraid of what I might do, and for a second I quail. I know what happens when I break the rules. My mind pulls up a familiar memory. Sitting in the police station under the snapping fluorescent lights, my clothes smelling like smoke. But I swallow the old fear down. “Do you know this man has a girlfriend at every brewery in town? Every brewery.” I gesture with the cup on the last two words, and a tiny slosh of beer splashes on his desk.
“There must be over a hundred,” the boss man mutters, gazing at Jonah. Does he look impressed ?
I’m tempted to add that one of them is here, in this brewery, but I don’t want to unmask Briar, who’s been nothing but helpful.
“He’s also a liar,” I say bitterly. “Do you want to work with a liar? You’ll never be able to trust him.”
He purses his lips. “I suppose it depends on who he’s lying to.”
I shake my head and down the beer in the little cup. This one’s not as good. “You should go back to the drawing board for the tropical IPA,” I say. “Ours is better at Buchanan Brewery. Way better.”
The big boss slides his wheeled office chair back a couple of inches, looking like I just slapped him across the face.
Jonah, who’s been staring at me in shock—a broken machine of a man—clears his throat and tells the big boss, “I think she’s in the middle of some kind of breakdown, sir. I’m so sorry. We’ll get her the help she needs, and it’ll never?—”
I slip off my engagement ring and throw it at Jonah’s face. It bounces off the bridge of his nose and lands directly into one of the still-full cups on the tasting board. My lips part in surprise. I’ve never had good luck, but this is astounding. It’s a hole in one. It’s the kind of beautiful moment that will carry a person—for at least as long as it takes me to get out of here.
Not wanting to miss the chance for a perfect exit, I say, “I hope you choke on it, you…you… ignoramus . I never want to see you again.”
Then I turn on my heel and leave the office, nearly colliding with Briar, who has been standing just beyond the doorway witnessing the whole thing.
To my amazement, I see that she’s been recording it on her phone.