Chapter 21
Sapphire
“How’s she holding up?” I said, leaning over the counter, and Madeleine gave me a small, thin smile, not looking up from where she was steaming milk for my latte—with an employee discount, girlfriend perks and all that. Still made me all giggly inside being able to call myself her girlfriend, even now, a full month after that party where I’d swooned and clung to her side as she introduced me to her IIT friends as my girlfriend Sapphire.
“As well as can be expected…” She sighed, shutting off the steam wand, swirling the milk before tapping it on the counter. I’d seen her do this whole thing a million times, always here in her café, watching her carefully practiced routine. And kind of shamelessly checking her out too. “How many times did I warn her?”
“Sometimes you just have to make the bad decision, I guess…”
“Guess so. Hate to see her like this, though.” She finished pouring my latte, and she set it down in front of me, a tall cup with a little heart in the latte art. She normally did a rosetta, but she always did a heart for me, and it always made me feel like I was welling up until I’d burst, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed, because the swing door behind her flung open and her manager Bert, a big guy with dark skin and an absolutely radiant smile, beamed at us.
“How you doing, Miss Sapphire?” he said, and Madeleine rolled her eyes with a smile, moving onto the next drink in the line.
“Sapphire’s fine. And she’s getting to work soon, so don’t hold her up all day this time, Berty.”
Bert leaned against the counter, grinning at the latte art, and he chuckled, shaking his head. “You two being all cute always makes me smile. Look at that cute shit. Hearts just for the girlfriend.”
“Knock it off, big guy,” Madeleine laughed. I just beamed, sipping at the coffee.
“I knew what I was doing, getting a girlfriend who works at the café.”
“Aw, see, don’t go rubbing it in now. I don’t have that luxury. If I go trying to find a lady who works at a café, I’d have to either date my employees, or even worse, I’d be dating a rival.”
“It’s definitely dating your employees that’s worse, Bert,” Madeleine said. I beamed at him.
“I’ll enjoy dating my cute barista girlfriend twice as much in your stead.”
He chuckled, and it broke out into a big belly laugh, shaking his head. “Oh, you couple of troublemakers, you. Didn’t bring Britt along? Don’t tell me you can only bring one person at a time to buy drinks and you had to drop Britt once you got a girlfriend.”
Madeleine sighed, setting down a drink in the mobile order station before she went to wipe down her station. “Britt,” she said, “ignored all my warnings, went on some dates with Haley, got way too attached, and got her heart broken. Like I said she would. So she’s sitting at home with ice cream and Netflix crying about how she’ll never love again.”
Bert scrunched up his face. “Our Haley? You telling me she’s playing games?”
“She’s Haley. Of course she’s playing games.”
Bert sighed, shaking his head, leaning against the counter and wiping the sweat from his forehead, like he’d never had such a painful revelation. Honestly, having seen Haley around Britt while they were dating-not-dating, I didn’t know how someone could work alongside Haley and not see this coming… “Well,” he said, “you know what might cheer up a damsel suffering from a broken heart—”
“Gee, is it shameless sales pitches for me to bring my friends here to buy overpriced drinks?”
He laughed. “A good cappuccino and a sandwich never made anything worse. Well,” he said, clapping a hand on Madeleine’s shoulder and heading off towards where a group came in through the doors and started for the front, “tell her Uncle Bert sends his regards and hopes she feels better soon. And I’ll make sure to send Haley off on dishwashing duty if I see Britt come around while she’s on.”
“ Uncle Bert sends his regards, ” Madeleine muttered to herself as she started on another drink. “If he’s trying to make it sound creepy, he’s doing great.”
“He’s so funny,” I said. “And it’s sweet of him to worry after Britt.”
“ I’m not worried after Britt. Girl got what was coming to her.”
I stuck out my tongue. “You’re such a liar. Like I haven’t seen you fussing over her?”
“I’m just making sure she doesn’t have a mental break and start putting more olives in my food…” She smiled drily at me, shaking her head. “You’ll be over for dinner tonight, right? She’ll be miserable if she doesn’t have you around to bring some optimism to the situation.”
I patted a hand to my chest. “Sunshine girlfriend reporting for duty. Of course I’ll be there. Ah…” I looked down at my phone, checking the clock against the phone background of me and Madeleine cheek-to-cheek together posing at the top of Willis Tower, Chicago skyline behind us. “I guess I should probably go to my job instead of flirting with you at yours.”
“Hah. I’d like to keep you around flirting all day if I could. Getting bored with clock-in-clock-out life yet?”
“Yeah, a little. But…” I shrugged. “I like to think maybe things will keep on the up and up for my little makeup artist dream, so—that keeps me from getting fed up with it.” I paused. “Besides, the employee discount?”
She laughed. “I’ve told you a million times, you’re going to do great. You just landed a client completely cold like two days ago, so you can’t really call it a little makeup artist dream anymore, I think it’s actually happening.”
“Ah, stop. I can’t handle compliments.” I laughed. “I just don’t want to get ahead of myself! But… you’re very sweet and I appreciate you. Now—I really have to run. I’ll see you later, okay, sweetheart?”
“See you soon, gorgeous.” She set down the carafe of milk she was working on, and she leaned across the counter to give me a quick peck on the cheek, and I bounced my way on that bubbly bliss out of the café, my latte in hand, just about skipping down the street. It was a blustery day out, November cold setting in fully all around, but I’d gone on a shopping spree with my second paycheck, and I’d gotten to bulk up my wardrobe with cold-weather clothes. Unashamedly, though, my favorite was the one I was just about surgically fixed to—the pink scarf Madeleine had given me, not even for any occasion, just a random gift, a beautiful silky thing with an almost ribbon-like quality to it that was just so fun and pretty and I never wanted to let it go.
The shopping center with Ulta was just around the corner and down the street a bit from Madeleine’s café, secretly half the reason I was so anxious to land the job, and running out the door last-minute from the café to get to work was fast becoming a routine for me, enough that when I got to the store and pushed through the employee-only door at the back, the shift supervisor Jenna looked up at the coffee in my hand, and she said, “Girlfriend spoiling you again today?”
“I pay for my drinks. Most of the time. I mean, why have a girlfriend if not to spoil each other? How’s today been?”
“Dead. It’s great. Going to get yelled at by store manager though, as if it’s our fault, but it’s worth it right now.”
She was right about it being dead—I got to the register where it was quiet enough I got to chat it up a little with Rhea on the till next to me, a tall Black girl who pulled off the most gorgeous golden shimmer eyeshadow and my best friend at work to the point Madeleine jokingly asked if she needed to be worried, and when she finished ranting about the disaster of a party her family was trying to put together for Thanksgiving, she said she’d take advantage of the quiet and take her break now, and I found myself texting Britt in the quiet I was left in.
Ulta’s super quiet right now if you want to take advantage and shop in peace!
She replied so quickly as to be concerning even before I read her reply. do you sell hand grenades without the pin to put in my mouth??
I hesitated over the phone for a second before I typed, well, no, we do not sell that, but we do have some new mascaras in that are really nice!
I don’t want to highlight my eyes, I want to gouge them out so I’m not led astray by some lesbian fuckboy, and then a line of crying and throwing-up emojis interspersed with a knife emoji that I assume was just in her recently-used list and she hit it accidentally, but given the circumstances, I was a little worried about what she’d been using a knife emoji for recently.
well, we don’t have anything to do that with, but I can pick up some ice cream and brownies from target for after dinner!
She paused a while before she sent a puppy-dog eyes emoji, and then, before dinner?
Madeleine was going to be annoyed with me for saying yes, but… well, who was I kidding? Madeleine never got annoyed at me. absolutely, I sent back with a heart emoji, and she replied with another line of crying emojis.
you’re the best, she sent, and then, I’m so glad I managed to beat enough sense into mads’s head for her to start dating you
I hovered over the keyboard. just to make sure, you didn’t actually beat her, did you??
just a lil bit here and there, she sent, and then, sorry for being such a sad ugly wreck on you, I know I did this to myself but that doesn’t make it suck less
I leaned against the counter, typing slowly. I think the hurt is proof that you care, I sent. And I think it’s always better to care and be hurt than it is to preemptively give up on what matters to you. So I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, and you’re fighting an important battle, so don’t feel bad about whatever help you need to fight that battle. Okay?
She worked for a while on a reply, typing it and deleting it again, long enough that a customer finally showed up, and I set down the phone to process her purchase with all smiles and chatter and small talk about the new Urban Decay line she was buying from, and I sent her on her way with her receipt and her bag and picked up my phone to see Britt’s reply had just come through. ok but what if I still want to blow up my face with a hand grenade
Well, Madeleine and I won’t let you, but it’s very understandable that you feel this way!
thanks, sapph, she sent. I’m really really glad the butler didn’t get you
I didn’t realize, though, that Britt was carrying a curse around with her. That she’d say something like that and it would backfire quite so spectacularly, because—what were the odds, anyway? Of all the days, that it would be on the day Britt mentioned it, like my old life was a ghost that would come to haunt us if we spoke its name?
But it wasn’t Andrew. Never would have imagined myself thinking it, but Andrew would have been better. Instead, it was five hours into a six-hour shift that I turned away from where I was stocking a shelf, and my whole body went cold and it felt like the floor dropping out from under me at the sight of my mother, walking into the store.
I froze—she hadn’t seen me, and I probably had the opportunity to get away, to go hide in the back, run away, something, anything, but—what would be the point? She’d hunt me down, drag me back, and—my body didn’t move anyway, no matter how much I tried to urge it on, urge it away from her, my head thrumming hard, and when she swept her gaze across the store and found me there at the shelf, I’d never felt so small in my life. Like a mouse before a cat, like prey, like… like a child.
She furrowed her brow at the sight of me, disbelief, like—like she didn’t come in here looking for me. Like she was disgusted to see my face. Like she always had been.
“Sapphire?” she said, dropping her arms by her sides and striding towards me. She felt so—distant, unfamiliar and uncannily familiar at the same time, like something from a bad dream I only vaguely remembered but was so carnally, viscerally real in my mind as soon as I saw her again. God—I felt like I’d be sick. That same camel-colored coat she always wore to formal events. Was finally leaving the house long enough to track me down a formal event for her? Should I have been flattered? “Oh, God, look at you. What in the world are you doing here?”
I swallowed. My throat felt so dry, so… I couldn’t speak. The store was spinning around me. Her eyes widened, looking at me incredulously.
“What? Don’t just stare at me. Don’t you have anything to say?”
Anything to say? Anything to say? “What?” I breathed, not even meaning to say it, and she frowned.
“What, are you trying to play dumb? Why are you here, stocking shelves at the mall? Is this some kind of game for you? Some new… fad?”
“Anything to say?” I tasted bile, hot and angry in my throat, and something I’d never recognized stabbed like a wedge driving through my skull—blazing-hot anger that spiked up my adrenaline, my pulse pounding as I turned to square my shoulders with her. “ Anything to say? ”
She smiled thinly. “Is this an act? Is there a… line I’m supposed to say next?”
I… could not… stand this woman. Those dark eyes and the haggard look she always had in them, dark rings around them that no procedures could hide because it was the scorn, the skepticism, the… disdain she had in them for everyone she considered lesser. Hate —wasn’t that such an ugly word? I never thought I could hate someone. But this sudden jabbing, visceral sensation seeing that sneering, condescending look she gave me, realizing that was the look she’d been giving me all my life—I thought this was the closest I could ever come to hate.
“ Anything to say? ” I repeated, standing up taller. “Ma’am, I told you what I have to say. I told you perfectly… damn… clearly. And you made your opinions on it quite clear. And now you want to come around and… and ask me if I have anything to say? Are you… not… ashamed?”
I’d never felt this much of a rush, this breathless, in my life—not even in those moments after I’d left, slipping through the city in the middle of the night, desperately anxious about the figure following me and the distant shapes of people all around, faceless figures watching me, mocking me. That was a universe away from this. She gave me a look like I’d just accused her of murder, absolutely outraged, and it took her a second of looking around like she was expecting someone to come to her aid before she said, “Sapphire, is that actually how you intend to speak to your own mother—”
“My mother?” I stood up taller, fire burning in my throat. “I don’t see my mother here. I see a woman who never even bothered to raise me anyway, and who preferred having no daughter to having a lesbian daughter. So if you’re—”
“ Sapphire. We are not making this kind of scene here. It’s—”
“So if you’re trying to take me away,” I said, punching through every word with the same burning force I wanted to be punching her with, “then I… do not… consent. You’re a stranger to me now. If you try to take me anywhere, then… then I’m afraid that’s called kidnapping. And trust me when I tell you that I’ve learned to call for help.”
She stared at me, looking shellshocked, for the longest time before, slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t recognize what’s happened to you, Sapphire,” she said, taking half a step back. “You used to be proper. A decent person. Then you go off to college and decide you want to be—” She wrinkled her nose as she said it, waving me off. “This? You were never like that—I know you. If you—”
“You know me?” I said, my voice hitting a high shrill I probably should have been worried about in a store like this, but to hell with it. “You never knew one thing about me—I had one parent, and his name is Andrew. You can’t pay away a human being, Sarah. You can’t buy feelings. Now please… if you’re not here to make a purchase… please leave. ”
She took a step back, clearly flustered—the only thing she cared about not making a scene, being normal, looking proper. “I guess we were wrong to put taking care of you first,” she said, her voice so icy and sharp it probably would have cut like a knife if I weren’t on fire inside and out. “I’m the one who actually cares, but the only one you care about is precious, perfect Andrew, rushing to your defense. I’m the one with all the flaws, and he—”
“Shut up,” I said, “and get out of my store.”
She scoffed, taking another step back towards the doors. “We’ll have a talk about this once you get home, Sapphire.”
“I’m not going anywhere, ” I spat, digging my fingernails into my palms. “I’ll say it as many times as you need— you’re not taking me anywhere with you. ”
She wrinkled her nose, looked me over one last time—cold, derisive—before she turned and stormed out of the store, leaving me there, alone, shaking, in the aisle, coming down with a feeling like I was about to throw up. It wasn’t… real, was it? It felt like it couldn’t possibly be—that I was waiting for Madeleine to come along and wake me up again, that I’d be back in bed and she’d stir me awake, say, Sapphire, it’s okay—it’s just a dream—it’s just me, and I’d cry and throw myself in her arms, and she’d hold me and kiss me and love me.
But it was just the cold, oppressive air of the quiet aisle. And it set in with this horrible, horrible feeling that none of this was a dream, that every second of it was real, and that I had to live the rest of my life with the consequences. And they caught up quickly, because Jenna’s voice spoke quietly from behind me, and I whirled back to where she gave me an ashen-faced look.
“Sapphire?” she said, quietly. “Can you… come to the back with me?”
Oh, god. I was about to lose my job. The entire store—entire shopping center had just gotten a front-row seat to an employee screaming at a customer to get out of her life forever. I’d forgotten there was a whole store around me, forgotten there was anything beyond me and that—that woman.
Dammit. Did that mean she won? Did that mean she won?