Chapter Four
Chapter
four
I FIGURED.
“I figured.” I read it out loud this time to see if it sounded different when spoken than it did in my head. It didn’t. That was Jensen’s response to my breakup text. Not him defending himself, not him trying to explain why he did what he did or that he was sorry or that he would quit the podcast because he loved me so much. That he was destroyed because he’d destroyed us.
I figured.
“Ugh!” I should’ve sent the jerk text I’d composed in my head. I hit the steering wheel with both hands.
I was in my car, parked on the street in front of my house after coming home from the diner. I had just pulled up and turned off the ignition when I got the text. I screenshotted the response and sent it to the group chat Maxwell had started titled Petty Queens.
He did not! Max responded first.
Deja was next: There are no words to describe how much I hate him right now!
Sorry, babe. That was Lee.
Lee was picking up on my hurt side more than the others, and even though that was so him of him, I didn’t want to be hurt. I wanted to be angry. I was angry.
Don’t you dare respond to him, Deja added.
Wasn’t planning on it. If I could delete him from my brain, I would. I settled for blocking him on my phone. After that I gave a satisfied nod and climbed out of my car.
I grabbed my backpack off the passenger seat and walked through the front door to find my mom scooping something up off the floor and dropping it onto a plate.
“Hi,” I said, closing the door behind me. “Grandma?”
She blew at a strand of hair that had fallen across her eyes. “Yes.”
My grandma was one of my favorite people in the whole world. She was also becoming less and less like my grandma. She was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, and some days were harder than others. My mom took care of her, along with a nurse who came in the mornings while my mom went to work.
She took care of me the first twenty years of my life, I’m going to take care of her the last twenty years of hers, my mom often said. I hoped Grandma had twenty years left. I thought that was optimistic, but hope never hurt anyone, including me.
“What can I do?” I picked up a carrot that had somehow ended up by the front door. I tried my best to help Mom when I could because my dad worked a lot and my older brother had moved out several years ago to go to college, but I knew Mom handled the majority of the work.
Mom pointed at the plate she held. “Will you go make sure Grandma is in her bedroom? That’s where she went after spillingthis.”
“Okay.” I set the carrot onto the plate as I walked by.
Mom called after me, “Did you go somewhere after school?”
“Yeah, sorry, I should’ve texted. I went to the diner with Deja and the guys.”
“It’s fine,” Mom said. “Glad you had fun.”
I hadn’t said anything about fun. But I also hadn’t said anything about revenge, and I would keep it that way too. Mom was all about forgiveness and moving forward with dignity. And sure, that was all good in theory, but in reality, sometimes people deserved a little karma. And sometimes, karma needed a little help.
I threw my backpack into my room, the first door on the right, as I walked to my grandma’s room, last door on the left, across the hall from my parents.
“Hey, Grams,” I said, letting myself into her room.
She was pacing back and forth mumbling something about how Mom should’ve known she hated carrots. How she’d always hated carrots.
“Hey, Grandma,” I tried again.
She stopped pacing and looked at me for a beat too long. I braced myself. She had yet to forget who I was, but one day she would and I couldn’t handle that day being today. Today was already terribleenough.
“Oh, Finley,” she said, and I let out a relieved breath. “Hello, my lovely girl. How was school?”
“Just okay today.”
“Where is Jensen?” Grandma loved Jensen. He always told her how beautiful she was and would often sneak her little chocolate treats because my mom limited her sugar intake. She would recount old movies to him, and he would tell her about the comic books he’d read as a child. I did not want to tell Grandma her boyfriend broke up with us. Well, I broke up with him, but he pretty much made the decision the second he walked into that studio to steal my dream.
But I needed to just get it over with. “We broke up, Grandma.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s a long story. I guess I didn’t know him very well.”
She clucked her tongue in disappointment but aside from that was calmer than I expected her to be. “That’s too bad. I wanted to show him my nails.” She held up her hand. “Betsy did them.” Betsy was her nurse.
“You can show me your nails.”
“I am showing you.”
I laughed. “You are. They’re pretty.”
“I know,” she said.
“Are you up for an interview?” I had started a podcast about six months ago called It’s About Us where I interviewed my grandma about her life. Next to nobody listened to it, but it was good to get her stories down while she remembered them. And it was good practice for me. It’s what ultimately gave me the idea for my audition. An idea that had obviously done nothing for me.
“Not today, honey. Is that okay?” She lowered herself into a chair by the window.
“Of course.” I wasn’t exactly up for the reminder of my failure either. “Can I get you anything?”
“My book.” She pointed to her nightstand, where books were stacked.
Her room was relatively clean, but there were also things from when she lived in her own house scattered throughout: an old clock that chimed every hour; Styrofoam faceless heads holding her wigs, which she rarely wore anymore; stacks of old magazines that she refused to throw away and would often flip through; a basket full of oils and balms that she rubbed on her knuckles every night to help with her aching joints. It wasn’t a lot, though.
About five years ago, Grandma started a fire in her house after forgetting about a pan of hot oil she’d left on the stove. She ended up losing almost everything in that fire, including her ability to live by herself.
I plucked the top book off the stack and handed it to her. “What’s it about?” I asked.
“Love,” she said wistfully. “Like the best ones always are.”
My grandpa had died over ten years ago. Most of the time she remembered that. Sometimes she didn’t. On both sides of the memory fence, my grandma was still a hopeless romantic. Another reason I wasn’t going to tell her about the jilted tale of revenge I was now embarking on.
I left Grandma reading in her chair and made my way to the kitchen, where my mom was loading the dishwasher.
“She is in her room safe and reading,” I said.
“Good. Thank you.” She added a plate to the bottom rack of the dishwasher. “How did your audition go?”
“I made it onto the team as one of the research specialists.” I tried to say it with as much excitement in my voice as I could, but it was a poor showing.
She turned off the faucet and faced me. Her hands were dripping water down to her elbows, then onto the floor. “Honey, I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged, a lump suddenly in my throat. “What can I say? They only want me for my brains, I guess.”
“Good thing you have your own podcast,” she said.
I let out a fake laugh. “My podcast that has two consistent listeners? One of them being you. No way I’m going to get that internship now.”
“Not with that attitude,” she teased.
What other attitude was there? I’d worked toward this for years, and now I was facing reality. I didn’t get what I wanted. The host spot directly led to the internship at the community college. It was just a fact. It had for as long as both programs had been in existence. And that internship spot often led to the UC hosting spot. Jensen had more than derailed my senior year today. He’d derailed my future. “It’s been a day, Mom. Can I just whine about it for a little bit before you expect me to save the world?”
She shook her head, a guilty look coming onto her face. “I’m sorry. Of course. Whine away.” She winked. “Then save the world.”
“Maybe an opportunity will come up next year where I can fill in or something. I’m on the team.” Maybe Jensen would get sick…or move. A girl could dream.
She stood there, elbows dripping, studying my face. Probably looking for a crack, wondering if I was going to break. I wasn’t. And if I kept telling myself that, it would be true.
She finally grabbed a dish towel from the counter and wiped her hands and arms. “You eating dinner with us, or did you eat with your friends?”
I let out a breath, glad she was moving on. “I only had fries.”
“Will Jensen be joining us for dinner as well?”
I couldn’t hold back the long sigh that escaped my body. We were going to get all the hard topics out at once. “We broke up,” Isaid.
Mom, who had turned back to the counter, adding some utensils to the dishwasher, whirled around. “What?” She was holding a fork in the air, and her eyes were wide. “Why?”
“I don’t feel like talking about it right now.” Or ever, really.
How could I explain to my mom that not only did I fail at making it into the position I’d been working so hard for, but that it was stolen from me by my boyfriend who had zero experience and, before today, zero desire? What did that say about my ability? What did that say about my relationship ?
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I will be.”
“Grandma is going to be so sad.”
I laughed. “She seemed fine, but she probably did like him more than I did.” My eyes found a Zelda mug on the counter. My Christmas gift to my older brother, Corey, who had come home for the holidays. Corey must’ve forgotten it. A flood of hurt washed over me about how easy I was to dismiss, how underwhelming I felt in all aspects of my life.
It’s just a mug, Finley.
“You had a really tough day,” Mom said.
I cleared my throat so I could speak normally. “I did.”
“And yet you seem…” She studied my face.
I smiled to sell it.
“…okay about all this?”
That’s because I was going to be. I had a goal, a good one. It had taken over every other emotion and thought in my body. Revenge. And I needed to make sure I wasn’t underwhelming at it.