Chapter 31
The email that came through early the next morning had been the last thing Marisa would have pictured herself receiving, let alone responding to.
Let alone agreeing to.
But curiosity had a funny way of yanking a person out of whatever equilibrium they’d managed to work up. Even if that equilibrium was still just barely balancing sanity with survival.
Marisa trudged along the street, with her chunky scarf and tasseled wool hat serving as the only armor she had left against the situation she was about to walk into.
Pretty pathetic, but all things considered, she couldn’t imagine anything hurting her more than what she’d already endured.
The coffee shop she entered wasn’t one she normally frequented.
Not only was it on the complete opposite side of town from her usual haunts, but it featured drinks that never sounded like coffee.
Marisa was more than happy to get on board with fun foams, flavored roasts, and alternative milk choices—hello, sensitive tummy—but she tended to say no thanks to any drinks that were crayon-box colored with prices that rivaled her car payment.
But she wasn’t there for a drink. She was there for one reason and one reason only.
Marisa’s steps slowed once she laid eyes on who she was meeting with. Not just slowed but came to a complete stop. She was half inclined to run outside and double-check the signage to make sure she hadn’t gotten the location wrong.
Nope, she hadn’t, but that didn’t make her any more comfortable.
Red hair she had only ever seen perfectly frizz-free and infuriatingly defiant of the elements sat arranged in an artfully messy bun.
A few wisps had broken free here and there, framing a face that looked far more gaunt than glowing.
Gone were the carefully lined lips and smug expression, along with whatever haute couture had usually been called in to pinch hit for perfection.
A pair of mauve sweatpants and an oversized gray sweatshirt swallowed the woman who had her unpainted fingers curled around a steaming cup of something.
“Phoebe?” Marisa waited for confirmation that the scene before her was real and not a mirage.
Sure enough, the Plant Nanny herself lifted her head and immediately got to her feet. “Hi. Thank you for meeting with me.”
Marisa didn’t say anything, and even though she had driven all the way over there before she had to make the schlep to her parents’ house, she still couldn’t make her feet go farther. “Your email caught me off guard.”
“I can imagine. Would you like to sit? Um, with me?” Phoebe stepped to the side and gestured to the chair opposite her.
It was clear that neither of them was in their element, and the only thing Marisa could deduce from that situation was that they were finally on a level playing field.
Marisa pulled out the chair and sat down, but she kept the seat turned out and her left leg positioned toward the door in case more shots were fired and Phoebe intended to start Marisa’s year the way the woman had ended it.
“I didn’t have a way of reaching you, so I figured the contact form on your website was the next best thing.”
“You didn’t want to rifle through Monica’s vendor applications when she wasn’t looking and snatch my phone number instead? Seems like more your speed.”
Phoebe tensed. “I deserve that.”
“Yes, you do.”
The Plant Nanny’s deep breath was unexpected and only served to set Marisa’s nerves on edge even further. “I invited you out today hoping you would agree to speak with me because I want to apologize. For everything.”
Marisa narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “What?”
“The night Alec and I met at the bar . . .”
Oh, she did not want to hear this. No way in hell did she want to hear this. Hadn’t she heard enough about that night? Hadn’t the entire Internet heard enough?
“I remember exactly what you two talked about. You don’t need to reiterate.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know anything about that night, because what was leaked online was a fabrication.” Phoebe pressed a sternness into her words that Marisa hadn’t heard before.
Between the woman’s shrieking and blaming and threatening, each with their own vocal registers, she thought she knew all the flavors of Phoebe. But this one was new and smacked with an earnestness Marisa hadn’t thought the woman capable of.
“You two faked that entire conversation?”
“No. Alec’s words were his own, but they were taken out of context and mashed together in a different order.
” Then she pinched the bridge of her nose, and for the first time, Marisa noticed the bags beneath her eyes and the frayed edges of her sweatshirt collar, along with some discoloration around the wrist cuffs and .
. . Was that an old stain on one of the sleeves?
The Phoebe Marisa knew would rather die buried beneath her potting soil than be caught out in public, let alone in such a disheveled state at a bougie coffee shop.
The shock to her system was almost enough to make her miss the gigantic truth bomb foisted on top of her.
“I’m sorry. What?”
Phoebe’s shoulders rose and fell with a sad, shaky breath that seemed to humanize a woman Marisa had always thought of as untouchable. “Alec and I were together a long time, but we weren’t really together, you know?”
No, she didn’t know, but she would soon find out.
“Regardless, I still resented him for how it ended. I realize now that I wasn’t resentful of him so much as his ability to move on so easily, while I had been trapped inside the sunk-cost fallacy of what we had.
I used to think that, if you put a certain amount of time into something, that thing then owed you in reciprocal dividends, which is foolish.
Even a brand-new car decreases in value the second you drive it off the lot. ”
She took a sip of her coffee and played with the little plastic tab over the mouth opening.
“And then he started dating you. Or not dating you. I don’t know what you two ever were, to be honest, but seemingly overnight, there he was again, basking in his rugby glory once more, but this time, with a different woman to smile along with. ”
Then Phoebe sat back, straightened her posture as only one trained to do so would, and smiled sadly at her.
“I’m not the first entrepreneur in my family.
My mother founded her own wealth management company in her mid-twenties and already had several high-rolling clients before she was even legally allowed to rent a vehicle in most states.
My father was a licensed therapist in the trauma therapy space, but he made his living by opening up several practices that employed other trauma specialists to do the counseling instead, while he ran the operations and handled the insurance.
My younger brother Anton has already started up and sold two different tech companies, and he’s working on his third. And me? I babysit plants.
“I’m sure you can imagine what our Thanksgiving dinners are like, but in case you’re curious, no, my family doesn’t ask me about my business, because they don’t view it as one.
Despite my company’s healthy profit margins, and despite me literally showing them the fucking receipts of my success, my interests still aren’t exactly legacy worthy in their eyes.
But they liked Alec, or his status, I assume, even if, deep down, I wasn’t entirely happy all the time I was with him.
So, when I saw Alec and you together, I was envious and .
. . hurt. And that led me to do some awful, stupid, desperate things. ”
Marisa’s body slouched forward as she shucked off her never let them see you cry battle armor and flattened her palms on the table to brace herself against the shock.
She was jealous? Of me?
Phoebe went back to fiddling with her coffee cup lid.
“Alec reached out to me. Wanted to clear the air, he said, and I couldn’t very well refuse since I still had his coat and I didn’t want to look at the thing any more than I had to.
So, I met with him under the guise of returning his belongings.
My former social media manager was aware of the meeting and suggested I record the conversation.
I wasn’t a fan of the idea, but I had already gone down an avenue that was so unlike my usual planning, I couldn’t risk going back, convinced that even awful plans might have some merit in them.
” Then she gave Marisa another sad smile.
“For example, I was the one who stocked up on all the Jamaican ginger extract, knowing you were on the hunt for it. Not one of my finer moments, and I apologize for that, too. Hell, I don’t even like ginger.
” She sniffed. “The pressure to be perfect really does suck, doesn’t it? ”
And that right there was the painful distillation of what Marisa’s candy making had tried so hard to battle against for so long.
Already, the heated tension that had ridden her hard on the way in had begun to ease slightly as it sought companionable relief in, of all people, the Plant Nanny.
An unlikely fellow member of People Pleasers Anonymous.
“Yeah,” Marisa breathed. “Totally does.”
Maybe matching headbands were in order or something.
They sat there in silence for a few moments, and Marisa tried to parse out what she thought she once knew with what she’d come to learn. Like any form of enlightenment, however, a ton of crap first had to be moved out of the way before one could get to the good stuff.
“You still recorded him,” Marisa reminded her. “Without his consent.”
The glimmer of camaraderie that had seemed to spark between them quickly extinguished.
“I did. I had already hit record by the time he sat down, and I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I was wearing the glasses by turning them off.
But almost immediately into our conversation, I knew I would never do anything with the recording.
” She twisted her lips. “He made me realize that it was doing neither of us any good to hold on to my anger. That by doing so, I was only dragging out our bitter ending, instead of cherishing the times early on when I was truly happy. He told me”—she cleared her throat and Marisa felt the urge to look away but didn’t—“he told me to be well, to be happy, and for the first time in so long, I finally wanted to. But my social media manager got to the footage before I had a chance to tell her I’d changed my mind. The rest is . . . regrettable.”
Then she lifted remorse-filled eyes to Marisa, and she was struck by the genuine truth of her words.
“I’m so sorry. I know sorry doesn’t fix anything, but I need to tell you regardless.
This is not who I am. This is not who the Plant Nanny is.
Not anymore, at least. That’s exactly what I told Alec when I spoke to him yesterday. ”
“You talked to him?”
She nodded. “Told him everything. Apologized. I needed to clear the air as much as I could, even if it meant pushing all the foul smog of my own making back my way.”
“I, uh, haven’t spoken to him since the Ball.” But the excuse that had once felt powerful and strong, like a true statement piece, now rang hollow in the light of his true involvement.
“You should. He cares about you. I can tell you’re important to him.”
Marisa wanted to believe that, she really did, but she couldn’t ignore the impetus for the secret meeting between him and Phoebe, the one he’d chosen not to include her in, despite her being a central figure in it all.
The thought pricked her eyelids, but she was helpless to blink away the memories.
I’m still not important enough to be trusted fully, though.
Marisa tried to bury her thoughts back down, but Phoebe was still talking, pulling her away from the mental dig site.
“ . . . focusing on my New York clientele will be better for me anyway. Jersey’s great, but I have more room to grow in the city. Denser populations and whatnot. Besides, so many of those high rises have restrictions on pets, so people there tend to load up on plants instead.”
“New York? What about Monica’s vendor list? Her referrals are legendary.”
Phoebe wrinkled her nose. “Didn’t get added.”
“No shit,” Marisa breathed, absolutely stunned. “I haven’t heard from Monica. I just assumed she went with you instead. That I had lost.”
“Turns out, we both lost. But hey, this whole situation could be worse,” Phoebe said, a new idea giving a bit of life back to her dull eyes.
“We might be people pleasers, but at least we can enjoy good Jersey pizza in the process. Alec’s stuck with whatever passes for Chinese takeout over in England. ”
Marisa’s almost-smile faltered, and her heart tripped over itself. “England?”
“Yeah. He flew back a few days ago.”