CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ARIELLE
By Saturday, strangers had turned my worst week into a series.
Part one was Cam and Sade.
Part two was Kye sleeping with him in senior year.
Part three was Jori’s voice note.
People who had never met me were asking when the next episode dropped.
I stopped opening comments after somebody wrote that I deserved to be cheated on because I looked high maintenance.
At work, a girl I recognized from campus walked into Muse with her friend, picked up a dress she did not want, and whispered loud enough for me to hear.
“That’s her. The birthday girl.”
Her friend glanced over. “She is pretty.”
Like the title of the post had been a question.
I folded a sweater that was already folded.
My manager, Simone, came beside me. “You want me to ask them to leave?”
“They buying something?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Then, give them five minutes to finish the documentary.”
Simone looked at me. “You don’t have to be funny.”
“I’m not. If they touch the white rack with makeup on their hands, then put them out.”
She squeezed my shoulder and walked away.
The girls left without buying anything.
I kept working.
Heartbreak still had a schedule.
The store opened at ten. Shipment arrived at noon. A customer needed a size fourteen even if I had cried in the bathroom five minutes earlier.
At one thirty, a woman came out of the fitting room wearing a green wrap dress and looked at herself like the mirror had insulted her.
“It’s too tight,” she said.
It was not.
The dress followed her body. Soft stomach, wide hips, full arms. She pulled the fabric away from her middle as if space would make her deserve it more.
“Can I bring you the next size?” I asked.
“Then, it’ll be loose up here.” She touched the neckline. “My birthday is tonight. My friends said this one, but I look...”
She stopped.
I waited.
“Big,” she finished.
I looked at her reflection, not her body.
“Do you feel good in the color?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you sit in it?”
She sat on the fitting-room bench, then stood. “Yeah.”
“Can you breathe?”
“Obviously.”
“Then, the dress fits. The question is whether you want to spend your birthday fighting your stomach all night.”
Her eyes met mine in the mirror.
“How do I stop?”
She had asked like I was somebody who knew.
“You might not stop before tonight,” I said. “But you can decide not to punish yourself every time the thought comes.”
She looked at herself again. “You think it looks good?”
“I think you look good. The dress is lucky.”
She smiled.
Ten minutes later, she bought it.
I went into the stockroom and sat on a box of denim because my knees felt weak.
I gave strangers more room than I gave myself.
That realization did not heal me.
It irritated me into trying something different.
I opened Instagram.
Cam had posted a black screen with white letters.
People weaponize old mistakes when they can’t control your present. I know my truth.
He had not used my name.
He did not have to.
The gossip page reposted it within minutes.
I began typing a response.
You cheated for two months.
You lied in my face.
You used my insecurity every time I questioned you.
The paragraph grew until it looked like evidence.
I pictured strangers choosing lines, making videos, debating whether I sounded angry enough or too angry.
I deleted the whole thing. Then, I went into my settings and limited who could tag or message me.
I had plenty to say. Everybody had not earned access to it.
Silence because everybody had not earned access to it.
At three, the blank account appeared again under a different name.
No profile picture.
No followers.
Six screenshots arrived.
Kye’s old messages to Cam.
She don’t even know you like I do.
You only picking her because everybody think she prettier.
Wait until she start crying every time you don’t text back.
She care more about how y’all look than how you feel.
The messages were dated four years earlier.
They still knew where to cut.
I locked myself in the employee bathroom and read them twice.
Kye had told me there were ugly messages.
Knowing they existed had not prepared me for seeing the exact shape of what she thought about me.
Spoiled.
Exhausting.
Pretty enough to be chosen but too insecure to keep anybody happy.
The same things strangers were saying now.
I pressed my fist to my mouth until the first wave passed. Then, I forwarded everything to the officer number Kye had given Jori and sent the screenshots to Kye without comment.
She called immediately.
I declined it.
KYE: They real. I am sorry.
I did not answer.
A knock hit the bathroom door.
“Ari?” Simone asked. “Cameron is at the front.”
Heat rushed to my face, but my hands went mean and steady around my phone.
“Don’t let him back here.”
“I already told him you don’t want to speak to him. He says he brought your things.”
I looked at my reflection.
Mascara had smudged beneath one eye. My hair was still neat. Lip gloss still on. Face still pretty enough for anybody who did not know what was happening behind the door.
“Tell him to leave the box with you and go. If he doesn’t, call security.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
I waited inside until Simone texted that he had left the mall.
When I came out, a brown box sat beneath the counter.
My college hoodie.
A pair of slippers.
The charger I always left at his apartment.
A framed picture from our first anniversary.
On top was an envelope with my name in Cam’s handwriting.
I did not open it.
At the end of my shift, I put the gold bracelet into the same box, removed the picture, and sealed everything else.
I kept the picture because my smile in it belonged to me too.
The bracelet did not.
On Monday morning, I mailed the box to Cam’s apartment with a signature required.
No meeting.
No final speech.
No chance for him to watch my face and decide which version of himself might work.