13. Accounta-fucking-bility
ACCOUNTA-FUCKING-BILITY
JUNIE
Monday morning, I’m halfway across the driveway when Cole emerges from his garage with a tool bag over one shoulder and his keys clutched between his teeth. It shouldn’t be as attractive as it is.
He stops short when he sees me. “Hardware store run,” he mumbles around the keys. “Stanley broke the golf cart charger. Again.”
“I didn’t even know that was a thing.”
Cole grunts and moves forward. “Come with me.”
When he realizes I’m not following him, he spins back around. “I need a second opinion on cabinet pulls.”
I blink. “Why would I have opinions on cabinet pulls?”
He returns my slow blink. “Because you have opinions on everything.”
Cole’s in a mood today. But he’s not wrong, so I climb into his truck without arguing, mostly because the hardware store is next door to Grounds for Celebration so I can probably finagle a free coffee out of this little excursion.
Which is good because Nana Mae’s been spiking my coffee with turmeric to “help with inflammation” every time I turn around so I’m opting for anything with a lid these days.
The hardware store is exactly as I was expecting—creaky wooden floors, a cat lying on the register, and an entire aisle devoted to things I can’t identify. Cole walks in like a man in church.
He loves it here.
We’re three aisles in when I spot her.
Freaking Lola. She has a full face of makeup at eight forty in the morning, and I’m over here breathing into my palm to make sure I remembered to brush my teeth. She holds a paint swatch card as though she’s picking out a prom dress, and I shiver. Prom with her was probably a very elaborate affair.
I wait for the moment Cole spots her, then study his face. What’s he thinking? Is Lola the type of woman he usually dates? Not that I care, obviously. I’m gathering facts. It’s what I do.
But a snort escapes my lips when he walks right past her. He doesn’t reroute, doesn’t hide, just continues to the end of the aisle because the paint section is not his problem today.
More surprisingly, Lola doesn’t follow. She barely even acknowledges him, and I frown between the two of them while trailing behind Cole.
“At least I don’t have to dodge her in the cereal aisle anymore.” He glances at the ring on my finger and smirks before carrying on to wherever he’s going.
The ring catches the fluorescent light, smug as ever, but at some point, I stopped working so hard to remove it. Even if Cole sees me staring at it and all its stupid happy rainbows that shoot off in every direction, he doesn’t comment on it.
Neither do I—it just joins the long list of shit we don’t talk about.
At 11:14 on Tuesday morning, Grace tags Callahan Analytics in a post. This is the type of emotional warfare she excels at.
I have her notifications on, which is either strategic intelligence gathering or digital self-harm. Or most likely, a mix of both.
The post is a throwback photo of us at a company holiday party. I’d been invited during my internship at Callahan because I held “promise.” Paul was…somewhere, though I can’t remember his excuse now, so I’d dragged Grace along as my date.
We’re wearing matching red lipstick, and she captioned the photo: Missing my girl. Some friendships are worth fighting for, even when the other person doesn’t believe in forgiveness… #IAmSorry #accountability #healing
Accountability?
Accounta-fucking-bility?
Has she lost her ever-fucking mind? Never once has she apologized for anything.
She has well over a million followers now. She’s building an empire on the back of my heartbreak, and she’s using a photo where I thought we were friends to do it.
My thumbs slide across my phone typing out furious thoughts because what I thought would die down over time has turned into a snowball at the top of a very long mountain, and I can only stay silent for so long.
Accountability is a fascinating word choice from the woman who practiced crying in my living room, hoping she’d land on a reality dating show while sleeping with her best friend’s boyfriend behind her back.
Remember that? I do. I also remember whose credit card paid for that lipstick and shirt you’re wearing.
But sure, Grace. Tell them about our friendship.
Especially tell them how often and how hard you’ve betrayed me.
I stare at the draft through eyes that are too hot, too itchy. Seventy-one words that could blow her narrative apart, and she would deserve every single snake emoji she got.
My thumb hovers over send.
Old Junie—bar speech Junie, the version who lights matches just to watch shit burn—would hit send and deal with the wreckage later. But this version—the one with a routine and three p.m. coffee exchanges with Cole and the bruise under her collar that she’s still hiding, still savoring—hesitates.
Not because the words are wrong.
But because commenting means reentering the arena. Willfully becoming part of the storyline again. Giving Grace exactly what she wants—a reaction she can weaponize into another cycle of content.
And I’m so damn tired of being content. Of carrying other people’s trauma. I just want to be…happy.
My thumb hovers over Nana Mae’s ring as if somewhere along my twisted path it’s become my touchstone for happiness.
The burden of doing the right thing makes me itchy, but I close out of the app, put my phone face down on my desk, and press my palms into my eyes so hard that lights dance like technicolor rainbows.
When I open them, Cole’s in the doorway, silently watching me with the expression of a man who sees too much and says too little.
Will he ever speak up? Will I?
“Bad day?” he asks, setting a blueberry muffin in front of me.
It makes my heart feel too heavy in my chest. This man knows my favorite treats, my favorite movies, my likes and dislikes better than I do. But he won’t use any of it to ignite the attraction that sparks between us.
“Grace.” One word conveys an entire story.
His jaw ticks. “What did she do now?”
Images flash like warning signs with all the ways I could retaliate, but I blink them away and focus on the man in front of me.
“She tagged Callahan in an old photo of us and used the hashtag accountability,” I say instead of the spiteful daydreams boxing in my mind. Then I pick up the muffin so I’ll have something to do with my hands. “I wrote a reply.”
The lashes of his right eye twitch.
“Which I deleted.” My tone brings me right back to being sixteen when I thought I had life all figured out.
Cole sits on the edge of the table, close enough to touch, far enough away that he doesn’t. “That’s good, Junie.”
“Good that I wrote it, or good that I deleted it?”
“Probably both.” He leans back, resting on his palms. It puts his forearms right at eye level. “Writing it means you’re not swallowing it. Deleting it means you’re not performing it. That’s growth, Viper.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” I grumble. “That’s Bea’s job.”
“Bea charges an exorbitant fee. I’m free.”
If only that were true.
“You get what you pay for,” I snark to hide my new and wildly unpredictable emotions.
It almost earns me a smile. Then he’s gone, back to his desk that annoyingly faces mine as if it’s a design choice he made, not an irrational pull he feels.
Katie finds the post before I can ask Fen to bury it.
The woman has a Google alert set for my name, which she announced at last week’s meeting as though digital surveillance is a love language.
Maybe here, it is.
“Honey.” She holds up her phone during a commercial break. “Your villain is doing a press tour.”
The air in the room shifts.
“This is slander,” Stanley says, scrolling Katie’s phone as though his golf cart license plate that says Enforcer also carries weight here.
“Technically, it’s libel,” I mutter. “Slander is spoken.” I can thank Hudson for that differentiation.
“I’m making a retaliatory video.” Stanley adjusts his collar. “Marley, get the ring thingy light fixture.”
“Absolutely not.” Marley keeps her head down to her own phone. “Cease and desist. I’ll write it on community letterhead. I have that authority. We’ll make it professional.”
“You have HOA authority—very, very minor authority at that,” Cole says from his place holding up the back wall. “Grace doesn’t live here.”
“It’s not about the letterhead,” Marley protests. “It’s about scaring that nitwit into doing the right thing.”
Katie squeezes my hand. Quick, fierce, and gone before anyone can accuse her of going soft.
“That girl wouldn’t know accountability if it bit her in the rear end.” Dollie crosses her legs, then swings them wildly. Pissed-off Dollie is cute, with her little 50s style dress and kitten heels.
Stanley buzzes about searching for a ring light, while Marley mutters under her breath with the intensity of someone who’s used to suing landscapers and winning.
They’re angry on my behalf, not because they picked a side online, but because they know me and like who I am.
If I don’t choose me, who will? That’s been my operating principle since the first time my mother forgot to pick me up in kindergarten. But sitting here, surrounded by people who are actively choosing me without me having to do or say anything, I question myself.
Is my principle inherently wrong or just incomplete?
“Show’s on,” Marley announces with a sharp clap. “We’ll get back to Juniper’s smackdown at the next commercial.”
I don’t know if I want to groan at being the center of attention or laugh because Marley said smackdown as if she’s a wrestling announcer on a Vegas stage.
I do neither because now I’m calculating how to sneak out of here early tonight. A girl can only take so much kindness.
“They’re going to come find you, you know that, right?”
My foot pauses on the curb. Freaking Cole. I was so close to escaping.
The night is warm, and the marsh smells like salt and something green and alive and I can almost, almost see my staircase from here.
“I didn’t want to be the center of attention anymore,” I admit.
“They have safety protocols for a reason.” Cole’s using a dad voice on me, and it creeps me the fuck out. “I’ll give it five minutes before they realize you’re not in the bathroom and come searching for you.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I say, continuing my short walk home.
He’s at my side, matching my stride a moment later.
“You’ll get through this, Junie. You’ve dealt with bullies before. You’re stronger than you think.”
I trip over my next step. Did he know?
I poke a thumb into my ribs because I think my lungs just gave up—it’s like they’re not even trying to work right now.
“What do you mean?” I hiss through clenched teeth.
“Who was that girl in eighth grade? The one who put you on the ‘unkissable list’?”
My lungs punch my thumb away and get back to work.
“And then the girl from your sophomore year who tried to ban you from the yearbook committee because her boyfriend had a crush on you.”
“He did not.” Trevor Masdon was way out of my league.
“Whatever you say, Junie.” Cole bumps my shoulder with his. “All I’m saying is, you’ve handled people like this before. Don’t allow Grace to be the one to break you.”
“Grace could never. That honor goes to Nat—” I snap my lips shut. “No—ah—one. That honor goes to no one because lies can’t hurt me anymore.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
The air shifts around us. Dense. Dark. Unfiltered as his stare flips from jovial best friend to pissed-off rhino in the span of a breath.
“Junie,” Cole growls. His face is hard, and there’s a fire in his eyes I don’t know what to do with. “What were you about to say?”
The words are right there. Lodged in the place where I keep the things I’m too afraid to say out loud.
Natalie was the worst thing that ever happened to me. She made my life hell, and you dated her anyway. I never told you because she said you’d choose her—and you did, every day.
That’s what I want to say. The sentence that changes everything or confirms my biggest fear—that he knew what she did to me and still chose her.
“Juniper,” he snaps. He shutters his expression, but I’ve mastered the same one. I apply my mask while he stares at me.
I don’t think I win either way, and I’ve already lost too much.
“Never mind,” I say, jumping to the first illuminated stair to my apartment. “It’s old news. Bullies may always come for me, and I’ll always fight. It’s what I do, right?”
Two more stairs.
“Junie.” His tone is full of gravel. “Why does it feel like you’re lying to me?”
Two more stairs, then three.
“There’s no lie here, Cole.” I say the words without turning around. “Sometimes we just sugarcoat the truth to make it more palatable.”
I hustle up the last remaining stairs.
“Goodnight, Cole.”
I open my door because I don’t bother locking it anymore. The residents of The Haven are better than a security system.
Tonight though, I don’t turn on my light.
I slink through the shadows to the window and stare down at the man standing at the bottom of my stairs with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his face tilted toward my window like he’s trying to read a language he almost understands.
But that’s the problem with almost—sometimes it just isn’t enough.