Chapter 22 Harper
Today’s the kind of miserable day I just want to spend in bed binging a whole podcast season, like the forgotten slug smashed under humanity’s boot that I am. But I have work to do, so instead I force myself down to the kitchen to pour the biggest cup of coffee I can manage.
Mom is lesson planning at the table. When she turns her raised eyebrow on me and opens her mouth to remind me of the dangers of caffeine dependency, I whirl with my tureen-sized mug to face her, stopping the words right in her throat.
“I need coffee to keep my eye on the ball, okay? You can choose: scholarship or no caffeine addiction, I don’t care.”
Luckily, she doesn’t say anything about community college today.
Just stares after me, mouth agape. I feel a little guilty, but I cannot hold myself responsible for what I might say if we keep arguing.
So I escape with my prize, frowning and stuck in my own head as I pad up the dingily carpeted stairs.
I barely slept last night, tossing and turning for hours, sheets twisted around my legs, skin clammy and mind in knots. Too busy reliving every minute with Dawson.
The good ones: holding his hand on the rink, laughing and joking with the rest of the team, his touch skimming over my skin in the car.
And the bad ones: the hurt on his face when he realized I hadn’t told Marissa. The way it hardened when he suggested dating me might be considered a favor. I should be grateful the truth came out. If all this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t know how he really feels.
But under it is my own guilt: at being shady with Dawson, at not giving him more of a chance to explain, at being too chicken to text Marissa back.
Maybe that’s why, instead of getting started on my enormous to-do list, I find myself staring blankly at the ticket stub from the hockey game that I pinned on the corkboard above my desk.
Whatever. I take a deep breath and shake my head. Hockey never distracted me before, and it won’t distract me now. I have work to do.
Clutching my coffee with one hand, I click over to the review section of my website with the other. I haven’t checked since making it live again and I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until I let it out in a sigh of relief.
All the negative comments are gone.
I scroll down to double-check, but all that remain are the glowing ratings from before.
My new necklace is the number one thing strangers compliment me on…. harper’s jewelry cleared my skin and watered my crops…. Harper is such a professional! My rating is right where it used to be too.
I slump back in my desk chair, drawing my legs up underneath me. I cup my mug and take a long, slow sip to distract myself from the mixed feelings in my chest.
Dawson made good on his promise to get the negative reviews deleted.
My chest aches. I can’t help seeing his face, earnest and determined, when he said he’d get those reviews taken down. I wonder how that conversation with Noah went. He didn’t even brag about it! Didn’t even use it to try to get in my pants!
I catch a glimpse of my face in the window, pale and sad.
Like an abandoned puppy. The thought hollows out my stomach, makes me feel so sorry for myself, because I do feel abandoned.
Shut out from the new sense of belonging I was just starting to get used to.
So used to that I even shared my old longing for it with Dawson, like an idiot.
An even more devastating thought hits me, and I suck in my breath: Did he fix my reviews because he pitied me?
Did he think I was that desperate for validation?
I never should’ve told him how nice it was to hang out with everyone.
Letting him know even a tiny part of me wanted to be more involved was way too vulnerable. I don’t need his pity inclusion.
I can’t believe I thought he was different from the rest of them.
But even as I get myself good and worked up, I have a hard time believing my own anger. It’s not the same as it used to be, when I could take one slight from a hockey player and turn it into a sign of their character, when anything they did made them dead to me.
I can’t quite make myself believe they’re villains anymore.
Not Alex and Ryan, and especially not Dawson.
He believed in my business. Respected my hard work.
Every time we hung out, he was so chill, so interested in me.
He took me to the party—to the rink. He wasn’t embarrassed to introduce me to his friends.
He was the one who kept holding my hand.
And he sure didn’t kiss me like it was community service.
What if… what if I was wrong?
I wince. Outside, the clouds pass over the sun; the last leaves of fall cling to the tree in front of my window. True winter is right around the corner.
It makes me remember the chill in Dawson’s car. Makes me want to wrap myself in his warmth all over again.
I wasn’t exactly the nicest to him last night, either. Keeping him a secret from Marissa was fucked up of me. How would I have reacted if he was trying to do that to me?
There’s a pit in my stomach that won’t go away. All I can think about is whether Dawson and I are too caught up in our own egos. Maybe it was too much to imagine that we could create these brand-new versions of ourselves this year. Together.
I can’t focus on my site any longer—it’s not even worth pretending I am.
What’s the point, at this stage in the semester?
The grant application’s due in less than two weeks, and I have almost no profits to show for the fall.
There’s a dull, hopeless whisper in my chest: Does it even matter? Do you even care anymore?
I should want to escape this town more than ever. But after my date with Dawson, I can’t deny the weird tug in my chest. The one that instead of escaping and destroying, yearns to repair and build.
Biting my lip, I pick up my phone and tap over to the recent messages, scrolling back to the moment last night that ruined everything.
Marissa: Um, Liv said you and Dawson were all over each other at Skate Night????
One thing’s for sure: before I can figure out what’s going on with Dawson, I need to talk to my best friend.
Marissa and I meet at the café downtown.
It’s cozy, brick-walled, with big, cushy upholstered chairs in the front windows.
There’s not a lot of space, and eventually I always feel bad about taking up the good chairs for too long, but the diner’s kind of out today.
I’m not trying to run into Dawson until I’m good and ready.
Which may be never.
I push thoughts of Dawson out of my head and bring my focus back to Marissa, who’s cupping her mug in both hands. The mugs here are all mismatched, and hers advertises the Hamilton Lakes Easter Egg Hunt, 1995. The bunny on the front looks disappointed in us.
Me too, bunny. Me too.
I clear my throat. “So I got your text.”
Marissa raises an eyebrow behind her glasses. She doesn’t say anything.
Deep breaths. “I should’ve told you about Dawson.”
Marissa looks at me for a long moment before letting out a heavy, disappointed sigh. “You should have. Can you imagine how much that hurt, finding out you were dating Dawson from Liv?”
I wince. I’d been so nervous to tell her, I hadn’t even thought about how much worse it would be to hear it from someone else.
“I’m sorry. This was our first actual date, and we were still figuring out what we were doing.
I still should’ve told you, but you have to admit…
you haven’t always been his biggest fan.
I felt bad about breaking girl code? And I was worried you might be a little… ” Another deep breath. “Judgmental.”
Both of Marissa’s eyebrows shoot up this time. “Um, yeah. It’s Luke Dawson. I thought we were both judgmental of him. Do you not remember what he did to me freshman year?”
“We talked about that. He wasn’t trying to lie to you—he was being honest. It was all for a friend—”
“Are you really defending him?” Her voice is hot.
“What’s going on with you this year, Harper?
Here you are spending all this time with the hockey team, and it feels like I’m the only one who’s still focused on our goals, you know?
” She waves her hands in the air, getting more and more worked up.
“I mean, after we got rid of Coach Red, I figured surely this year would be different!”
I frown. After we… what? “What do you mean?” I ask slowly, though the growing sense of horror in my chest already knows the answer.
Marissa leans forward across the table. Her eyes are bright, as if she’s in the grip of some kind of fever—but her gaze is focused on mine, and her voice is steady.
“I’m the one who tipped off the administration.
The paper was doing an investigation into the new facility budget, and things just weren’t adding up.
As soon as I started looking into it, it became really, really clear who was responsible. ”
My mouth hangs open. I can’t speak. Is this actually happening, right here in a coffee shop surrounded by crocheted coasters and antique art?
“Turning him in was the right thing to do,” she says firmly.
“Truly disgusting behavior. And if the school got that information and decided to fire him… well, not my problem.” She shrugs.
I’m still reeling, but I can’t argue with her logic—I would have done the same thing if I were in her shoes.
“Besides,” she continues, “I was hoping they might redistribute that funding for the Young Entrepreneurs Program, or any of the other departments they’ve been neglecting.
I mean, we were trying petitions for years, and they didn’t get us anywhere! ”
I finally find my words. “Sure, Red deserved it. But your approach nearly cost me my entire business,” I say, shaking my head slowly. “Everyone thought it was me, and you still didn’t come clean? Even when they were review bombing my website and boycotting my stuff?”