The False Flat

CHAPTER 2

THROW-DOWN ON AISLE FOUR

Two weeks passed in a blur, and Nashville wasn’t at all what I’d expected. But given the whirlwind move, I hadn’t had time to expect much. Age and a musty odor clung to every crevice of my new (very expensive) two-story house located in too-trendy-for-you East Nashville. But it was quaint, situated in a tree-lined, bikeable neighborhood with a sizable backyard, and it was five minutes from downtown (why it was so expensive). Its biggest selling point, though, was its distance from my life back in Minnesota. And it was mine.

The sun threatened to set as I stood in the part of the driveway that curved into the backyard and waited for the ancient door on the detached garage to ratchet upward. The cool (yet much warmer than Minnesota) late-March breeze fluttered the new leaves on the overgrown bush beside me. A bee hovered in midair, its hum merging with my stomach growls as we (the bee and I) scanned the property. The lawn was manicured, the wooden house slats freshly painted a midnight blue, and the flower beds around the perimeter of the house had a solid two inches of mulch. I could smell the cedar.

The house was like me, strong and stately on the outside, all but falling apart on the inside.

I maneuvered into the now-open garage, past all the unpacked boxes to my bicycle, my best friend, my only friend, and current chauffeur to the grocery store, because I needed Cap’n Crunch, the best cereal, and therefore dinner, on the planet. It made my soul sing. I yanked out my new bike, bumping my elbow against the handlebars in the process. As I rubbed my arm, I felt eyes on me.

When I looked up, sure enough, “The Nose” dropped a section of blinds on an upstairs window of the house next door. That woman watched every move I made without apology. I’d assigned her a number four—the kind that comes to a point on top, most resembling a nose—though we hadn’t officially met. Erin had told me her real name was Mrs. Snoe, but until further notice, she’d remain “The Nose” to me, which wasn’t the nicest title since I didn’t know her, but I didn’t like the feeling of being spied on in the only place I could let loose—home, which this wasn’t yet.

I threw my long leg over my bicycle, and then my phone buzzed in my armband.

My knuckles blanched white on the handlebars because even without looking at the screen, I guessed it was Aurora. I’d hung up on her five minutes ago because she couldn’t believe I’d walked out on my job and my boyfriend and her. She wanted me to come back.

“You don’t even have a plan, Penelope!” she’d said, her voice stern but not shouting.

“I have a plan.” I didn’t, at least not a solid one. I was going to start my own business, now that I was out from under Houston’s sexist thumb. But the idea was all I had. Her words gnawed at my intestines, made me doubt my ability to do this—without her, in a foreign place.

Aurora Auberge wasn’t like other mothers. She didn’t meddle in my thoughts and feelings. However, she was compelled to make my life sparkle. In Minnesota, she’d picked out my apartment because I’d previously been ready to “settle” for one that had a faulty closet door. Then she’d furnished it with all the “must-haves” for a high-powered woman in finance. That was how we had a relationship. I let her run certain aspects of my life. It was easier. And left to my own devices, I’d be a slob, at least in my homelife.

Our relationship, such as it was, came with an unspoken contract:

No feelings. Those had stopped after my brother / best friend died, and my mother responded by morphing into a combination of Stepford wife and corporate powerhouse.

No problems. Potential problems were polished, shined, put in an Armani suit, and fed a wholesome dinner someone else had cooked. The fact that my physician father had coped by becoming a cheating alcoholic wasn’t a problem; it was a task for my mother to tend to.

Appearances mattered. If we looked fine, convinced everyone around us that we were fine, then we were fine. I sort of liked this one.

ABM. Always be moving. Downtime led to thinking. Thinking might lead to discovering problems, and since problems didn’t exist in my mother’s world, thinking too long was strictly prohibited.

As a child, I’d harbored resentment. As an adult, I harbored that same resentment, but I’d become accustomed to the unspoken contract. There was an odd comfort to our way of life. “Comfort” wasn’t the right word. We were too rigid for that. “Predictability,” maybe? That was it. Predictability held appeal. But now that my mother only had me to focus on, the attention was stifling.

I shoved my feet onto the pedals and moved like my life depended on it, flying by the overpriced houses along the street on my new Trek bicycle.

I shouldn’t have spent the money on it, but my old bicycle was like a human who knew my previous life, so I’d given it away. But I didn’t even have furniture. And while I had money because I knew how to multiply funds by a few clicks of my keyboard, that pool had been drained by this house. A bicycle was more important than furniture anyway.

I’d let the bouncy, fit guy at the bicycle store talk me into this one, partly because I didn’t want to admit I had no idea what I was doing. People thought you were fit when you rode a bicycle, but I wasn’t a typical cyclist. I didn’t eat kale or fawn over microgreens.

Cycling was simply how I managed the rising panic, a discovery that had changed my life a few years ago.

My legs started burning as I turned the corner. A little white-haired lady smiled and waved as she walked her curly-haired brown dog down the sidewalk. The wind blew, taking some of my thoughts with it. I was pedaling on, very near able to pretend it was okay again, when a little ping indicated Aurora had left a voicemail. The first flares of a panic attack shot across my stomach, and I screeched to a stop, ripped the phone out of its pocket on my arm, nearly tearing the tiny stitches holding the extra flap of fabric in place, and stared at the screen.

Not my mother.

Chad.

He’d called at exactly the wrong time or exactly the right time, depending on who was asked. Because right then, I didn’t want to hear his baritone voice, and I certainly didn’t want to admit how the sound of it still slid around my body, settling inside me like a decadent cup of hot chocolate. And I wanted even less to hear what he had to say. I was moving on.

I made a mental note to pick up some packages of hot chocolate.

I deleted the voicemail without listening to it, smiled, and decided that if deleting one voicemail made me feel this good, then blocking his number should be orgasmic. Not that I wanted to have an orgasm on the side of the road in front of the new neighbors. Chad’s hot breath cascaded down the side of my neck as he whispered, “Don’t do it,” and so, I did it. Illogical spite? Maybe. Whatever it was called, it made me feel better.

I found his name, scrolled to the bottom of his contact page, and saw three little delightfully red words: “Block this Caller.” I didn’t even hesitate to hit the button. Maybe I hesitated when the box warned me that I would no longer be receiving this handsome, cheating bastard’s phone calls, messages, or FaceTimes, but the hesitation was brief. I needed him blocked from my life.

The words changed from an angry red “Block this Caller” to a soothing blue “Unblock this Caller.” I secured my phone back into my armband, shoved my feet onto my pedals, and took off again as fast as my legs would move. When the wind whipped around me again, I imagined a cape flapping in the spring breeze behind me.

I’d ride away from Chad.

I’d ride away from my mother.

Hell, I’d ride away from all my problems, like usual.

My stomach growled like a vicious animal as I rode into the Publix parking lot, secured my bicycle, and headed straight to the cereal aisle, unconcerned with my sweat-stained T-shirt. Kids’ cereal wasn’t a glamorous dinner choice for a thirty-two-year-old, successful (?) financial planner, but it kept me functional.

There he was, nestled between a box of bran flakes on one side and little heart-healthy circles on the other: the sexiest Cap’n I’d ever seen. I rolled my eyes at myself as I licked my lips. When had a cartoon man with a spoon in his hand incited such lust? I shrugged. Being Mrs. Crunch wasn’t the worst thing, but what was the worst thing was the perky woman who also appeared to want to be Mrs. Crunch.

Nuh-uh. Not today. Not now. Not when there was only one box of the Crunch Berries kind left—the other options, the peanut butter, the plain pillows, the Oops! All Berries, weren’t going to cut it. Not when my mother was annoying me, and Chad was calling, and I’d been looking forward to this treat for hours now. I was leaving on the arm of the Cap’n if I had to throw down on aisle four to make that happen. I towered over her, every inch of my six feet filled with an irritation her happy little face probably hadn’t ever experienced.

I could take her.

We reached for the box at the same time, but the woman pulled short and put her hands on her hips. “Okay, how can you eat this and stay so fit?” she asked, a defiant grin on her face.

“You look fine,” I said, the sole box of Crunch Berries held in my Momma’s-keepin’-her-man death grip. And then I thought she’d be a good number two because she was second to arrive at the final box.

This was also the third time since moving to Nashville that I’d been in the store and someone had just started talking to me. A few days ago, I’d been wondering if I’d made a horrible mistake by moving to Nashville, missing my job and, alarmingly, Chad. I’d hopped onto my bicycle without noticing the dark storm clouds. Rain had seized my flattened hair and frizzed every single strand.

I’d been a little worried about moving to the South, but I definitely hadn’t expected an older Black woman to come up to me in this very grocery store, touch the untamed animal on my head, and ask me who was Black, my mom or dad? I was so taken aback I couldn’t remember what I said. I think I short-circuited at the uninvited touch. I’d gone to the salon the next day for a keratin relaxer, a tear-inducing and semipermanent antifrizzing treatment.

She’d been nice enough, but it made me want to hide.

This woman, however, didn’t appear to want to touch my now stick-straight hair. I tried to picture my icy, northern mother talking to a random stranger next to the line of cereal boxes. My mother, nose in the air, would’ve stalked off, but my mother would’ve never reached for a box of sweet, crunchy cereal in the first place. A much more digestively sensible Shredded Wheat was her thing.

“Fine?” the two said with a sigh. “One hour on the Peloton, every day, and yoga three times a week. And I look ‘fine’? Maybe it’s best there’s only one box.”

Great. I’d offended her. “I didn’t mean—”

“I’m kidding. Well, not about the Peloton, or the yoga, but I’m a caterer, around food all the time, so if I sample—and I always sample—I have to pay. And you don’t even want to know what I was going to do with that cereal.”

“‘Do’ with it? You weren’t going to eat it?”

The woman laughed. “I wasn’t going to eat it like a civilized person with milk, if that’s what you’re asking. But desperate times ... someone bought the B and B space I’ve had my eye on for the past month now. I was going to add it to my ice cream sundae. Comfort food.”

I stared at my arm—my own arm—as I watched my betraying appendage extend the yellow box toward the woman. “Here.” What the hell was I doing?

The woman reached her hand out, then pulled it back, eyeing me, probably also wondering what the hell I was doing.

“What’s your story?” she asked. “Because if this is medicine for you, too, then the only fair thing is to figure out who needs it most.”

She was giving me the chance to come to my senses and run away with my treat like a ninja in dark leggings. It’s what I should’ve done, but instead, I said, “We could ask customer service if they have any in the back ...” She could ask customer service, because this box was mine.

“We could, but that would require hunting someone down and explaining the situation and me admitting to another person I can’t cope with life’s disappointments. So ...”

A laugh flew out of my mouth before I could stop it. She was serious. She seriously wanted me to tell her why I wanted—needed—this box of cereal.

What the hell? I probably wasn’t ever going to see her again.

“My dad died six months ago, my mother now wants to control my life, I quit my job because my boss is a jerk, I don’t know if I’m capable of running my own business because I don’t have a plan, and, turns out, my boyfriend had a wife.” The faces on the cereal boxes cheered, or maybe that was the blood rushing through my ears because I’d opened up to a stranger in the middle of a grocery store.

At least I hadn’t said that my dad was a cheating alcoholic, that my mother had always been a control freak, or that my brother had died when I was twelve and I’d never properly coped. This woman was a stranger, after all.

But if I was being honest with myself—let’s get real, I was never honest with myself—I had to admit it felt good saying those truths.

Was this what it was like having a friend? I hadn’t had one since elementary school, and then not even my childhood bestie Chelsea wanted to be friends after ... I let the thought drop. I might’ve spilled part of my misery to the woman who shared my love of Cap’n Crunch, but if I let my thoughts go there, I’d turn into a babbling puddle, awaiting cleanup by a Publix employee.

Instead of replying, the woman snatched the box out of my hand and opened it. “Wow. I’m inspired by your honesty. We both need this cereal, and after what you just told me, we both need it right now.” She reached into the bag, pulled out a handful of electric-yellow pillows and medicinal, psychedelic balls, moaned as she crunched them between her teeth, then tilted the box toward me, an invitation to munch alongside her.

What was the proper etiquette here? An old man in a T-shirt and suspenders pushed a cart full of cat food around us. I looked at him with apology.

The woman popped another piece of cereal into her mouth. “You ride? Of course you ride; look at you. Do you ride with a group?”

Oh no. Did she ride? Was this southern etiquette, or was she trying to bond? How did I tell her I would never consider a group ride? I rode to recover from people, not be with people.

And she was just going to stand here and talk? Right here in the grocery store, after opening another customer’s food choice and eating it in said customer’s face? Who was this woman? I kind of envied her.

“I ride,” I replied, nodding like one of those creepy, slow-moving bobblehead dolls you occasionally see on dashboards.

She shook the box toward me. I glanced down the aisle, then reached in.

“Alone, typically.” I finally embraced this bizarre moment as if it were completely natural to eat in the middle of aisle four. “I just moved here, so I don’t know anyone.” Again, I left out the big picture stuff. I chose to ride alone. People complicated life. I was better with numbers and money. Numbers didn’t rip your heart out; numbers didn’t leave you, or if they did, they usually came back, more numbers with them.

“Great!” The woman dusted off her hands, handed me the box, and then searched in her purse. “My husband’s a cyclist. My brother too. They ride in a group. You should totally join them.”

Interior hard chuckles. It was more likely that the Cap’n would jump off the box and start breakdancing in his underwear—seriously, you couldn’t see his pants behind that bowl—than it was for me to join a group of “cyclists” who actually knew what they were doing.

“What’s your number?” the two asked. “I’ll text you mine and William’s; he’s my husband. I can let you know when their next ride is. Better yet, you should come to dinner. I kind of owe you for eating your cereal.”

Dinner? I’d just stopped for a pile of sugar to drown my sorrows in. Friends had been a previous goal before my life fell apart. I wasn’t sure I wanted a friend anymore, let alone friends. Casual acquaintance, maybe. The kind you called when you wanted to go out somewhere but would look too pathetic if you went alone, like a fondue restaurant or an escape room. This woman didn’t look like a casual acquaintance; this woman looked like she’d pry my whole life story out of me before I could skewer a piece of meat.

“That’s not—”

“Nonsense!” she said, cutting me off. “You’re new around here, and you don’t have to be alone. We’ve already bonded. I mean, how often do I meet someone who loves Cap’n Crunch, is a like-minded aspiring entrepreneur, and is so refreshingly honest about life and how hard it sucks sometimes. Please come to dinner. What’s your number?” Her phone was poised in her hand, waiting.

Wow. How did I explain to her that my freakish outburst was an anomaly? I held everything in, all the time. Though she was right about the Cap’n and the entrepreneur stuff. Still.

I bit the inside of my cheek and then decided that giving her my number was the easiest thing to do here. It wasn’t like I had to go to dinner. It wasn’t like I had to answer calls or texts. Once I was out of this store, I wouldn’t have to see this woman ever again. And I’d check the cereal aisle before I walked down it the next time I needed a fix, which would likely be soon, given the state of my life.

I peered down the aisle again, like this was some covert operation, and then gave my phone number to the amazingly bold, cereal-scarfing, second Mrs. Crunch.

“I’m Deanna, by the way.” Which I guessed was my clue to tell Deanna who I was.

“I’m Penelope. I go by Pen.” I sounded like a robot, like my mother!

“I love that. I just texted you, Pen. Next Friday? A week from tonight? Me and William, and you and ... I’m guessing you won’t want to bring a date, but so you don’t feel like a third wheel, my brother Grant will be there too. His girlfriend is out of town; he was planning to come over for dinner anyway. It works out! I’ll be in touch.” The woman scampered off, leaving me holding an open box of cereal in one hand and my regret in the other.

The idea of dinner and riding groups made the cereal squirm in my stomach.

I grabbed a box of hot chocolate mix, the kind with the tiny, desiccated marshmallows, shuffled to the self-checkout, past the eager woman in lane five because I’d reached my people limit for the day, scanned, paid, and headed back to my bicycle.

On the way home, I had a flash of me sitting on Deanna’s plush sectional—she seemed like a woman who owned a sectional—legs tucked under me, chatting with her over ice cream, like a real friend.

It was such a pleasant thought, but then I remembered who I was. Could I be a real friend?

No. Not now at least. I couldn’t entertain the thought of friends when I was trying to get a financial practice up and running. Friends would have to wait. I’d continue watching the TV show Friends and pick up a few pointers for way, way down the road.

Back at home, I returned my bicycle to the garage, grabbed my sad, brown grocery bag, and sighed when I realized how light it was.

I’d forgotten the milk.

Ten of my well-placed mutual funds said Deanna wouldn’t have forgotten the milk.