Chapter Seven
Poetry night at The Prologue wound up being the most successful of all the events we had hosted throughout the month.
I should have been over the moon.
As I locked up the shop doors and then began to drag my feet across the pavement next door to Liam’s shop, all that I could feel was dread. A nauseating feeling had settled into the pit of my stomach earlier in the evening, and with every step I took, that feeling was only amplified.
As I stepped into The Galaxy Gamers Cafe, I felt less out of place than I normally tended to feel. Rather than the usual college-aged crowd, the shop was full of middle-aged parents and tons of young children.
Families occupied every game table, hovering over board games—most of which I couldn’t recognize. The loud shrieks and giggles of kids having fun filled the air. Preteens and their parents occupied all the big TVs along the back wall.
I had almost completely forgotten about the family game nights Liam hosted on Fridays.
My gaze drifted around the shop for a moment until it landed on him.
Liam was crouched down in front of one of the game tables, placing a plastic crown atop the head of a little girl who was probably no older than six.
He then pulled out a pink star-shaped wand and shook it over her head.
His grin was a mile wide. I found myself smiling too as he high-fived the little girl.
For the second time in my life, I was looking at Liam in a different light. I chewed on my bottom lip and willed that warm feeling that was rushing through me to go away.
“You came,” Liam said, tucking the wand back into his pocket as I approached.
“I told you I would, didn’t I?”
“You did. Still, I’m glad you came. Come on, I’ll show you the way.”
I glanced around the shop, which was still full of customers. “Are you sure? I can wait until you close up.”
“Yeah,” Liam chuckled. “Jace is going to close up for me today. Come on.”
My eyes widened slightly, but I followed silently behind him as he led me toward the stairwell. It seemed that in nearly every sense, Liam and I were so fundamentally different. I was sure that I wouldn’t ever be comfortable enough to let one of my employees close up shop for me.
I had a certain way that I preferred things to be done, and the only way I could guarantee that those things happened was if I did them myself.
The layout of Liam’s apartment seemed identical to the layout of my own, but the space was entirely unrecognizable. I had no doubt that they were both likely in similar states a few months prior. Dingy white walls, filthy, with a thick layer of dust coating every surface. But not anymore.
Liam’s place looked nice. Paint and wallpaper livened up the room.
Rugs, candles, and potted plants. His place looked like a home.
He even had furniture. Actual furniture.
A couch and a dining table, a desk in the corner.
He had started with the same canvas I had, but he created a masterpiece, and I had still barely touched mine.
A wave of shame washed over me as I slipped off my shoes by the front door. I had lost a competition I didn’t even know I was taking part in. I never would have let Liam set foot inside my sad, pathetic, empty apartment if I had known that his place looked like this.
“What do you think?” Liam asked in that pridefully arrogant way that always irritated me to no end.
I wanted to downplay how nice his place was and how embarrassed it made me feel about my own home, but not even I could get away with a lie that massive. So, through gritted teeth, I settled on, “It’s nice.”
Liam shrugged. “Don’t worry. It’s got nothing on your cardboard box and dead basil plant.”
He would never miss out on an opportunity to poke fun at me.
“I told you, it’s not dead,” I argued back, following him as he made his way into the kitchen. “It’s just dramatic.”
“Sure, Jessie,” Liam laughed. “Did you want to go over the winner before or after dinner?”
I thought for a moment. “After. I’ll let you enjoy one last meal before you accept defeat.”
He scoffed. “How generous. Go sit on the couch. It shouldn’t take long.”
Falling back into our typical routine of bickering with one another had me feeling more at ease.
I convinced myself it really had been a mistake earlier—that feeling.
Seeing Liam as the attractive man that he may have been was merely a slip-up.
Right now, he was still the same-old Liam to me, and I was certain that was all he would ever be.
I had to admit, there was something unreal about sitting on the sofa in his apartment, him and I talking back and forth while he boiled a box of noodles on the stovetop. For a moment, I let myself shut my eyes. When I did, I let myself imagine that not a day had passed since we were last friends.
A part of me wondered if this was the sort of life we would have, if only we had never started competing with one another in the first place. Would we have stayed friends all these years? If we had, is this what it would have looked like?
I blinked again, and Liam and I were eight years old. Children and the best of friends, playing video games on his parents’ old green sofa.
I opened my eyes once more, and I could feel how different everything was. Liam had grown up, and so had I, and everything was so, so different. There was no way to undo what had been done. Life was the way that it was. He and I were not friends. I didn’t think that we ever could be again.
“Don’t tell me you dragged me up here for jarred Alfredo sauce, Ashford,” I said, desperate to distract myself.
“Do you really think that little of me, Jessie?” Liam asked. “Believe it or not, I do know how to cook.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. I still remember the great grilled cheese disaster—”
“Okay, I was nine.”
“It was like a piece of charcoal by the time you were done with it. How do you even burn a grilled cheese that badly?” I teased, grinning at the memory.
Liam gave in, laughing as he said, “Remember how freaked out my mom was when the smoke detector went off?”
“That part was not as funny.” My gaze trailed over him as he began to pour the heavy cream into a pan and whisk it vigorously. When had Liam become so muscular? Had his arms always been so veiny like that? “Your mom can be scary,” I said, snapping my gaze away.
“You’re not wrong there. Hey, remember that terrible Alfredo they had at Ziggy’s?”
I let out a breathy laugh. “You mean the overcooked noodles drowning in oily cream? Yeah, it was terrible.” I could still vividly remember the one time I was brave enough to try it. That Alfredo was still the most disgusting thing I had ever eaten.
“Yeah,” Liam replied. I could hear the smile in his voice. “Still not as bad as that one time my mom tried to make us—ugh, what was it?”
I let out a gasp as the memory hit me. “The beet casserole? I almost completely forgot about that! Fifteen years later, and I still haven’t touched a beet since. Didn’t she have to buy new plates afterward?”
Liam laughed. “Yup, it stained all her white plates and her favorite casserole dish.”
Twenty minutes passed that way. Us tossing memories back and forth, with me on the couch and Liam in the kitchen as he cooked over the stovetop.
Then we ate.
It was easily the best chicken Alfredo that I had ever had, not that I would ever let Liam know that.
We ate it on plates that were far nicer than the paper ones I kept in my own kitchen.
We sat at his dining table, reminiscing about our youth as if it was something that could only be looked back on fondly.
Half of me was enjoying myself. The other half was drowning. Liam was perfect. He always had been. Years later, even when my life was more put together than it ever had been before, I still couldn’t measure up to him.
“Well,” Liam said after dinner. “Let’s hear it, Jessie. How many sales did you get this month?”
He and I were both sitting on his couch, each of us with our sales sheets in hand.
“Alright, don’t start crying or something when you lose, though,” I joked, eliciting a snicker from Liam as I unfolded my papers. “This month we had exactly 2,457 sales,” I said proudly. It was a number that a month ago I never would have dreamed of.
The moment a grin spread across Liam’s face, my heart sank.
I knew what he was about to say before he even opened his mouth.
In an instant, I was twelve years old again, and he was holding his first-place ribbon for the science fair.
I was seventeen again, and he was named captain of the soccer team.
I was eighteen again, and he was receiving an award for being an exceptional student.
“The Galaxy Gamers Cafe had 3,758 sales.”
My jaw dropped. “How?” I asked. Boiling hot envy and rage were already coursing through me.
“Because I’m awesome,” Liam said with that stupid, goofy smile on his face. “And because we sell trading cards. Whole lot cheaper than books. Some people come in and buy a hundred at once.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, “So you cheated?” I felt like a child.
It seemed that was how I always felt when Liam was around, but I couldn’t convince myself to feel any other way at that moment.
Even if he hadn’t cheated, he had manipulated things—tricked me into agreeing to that competition with the sole purpose of making me look like a fool.
I knew that he had some sort of trick up his sleeve.
He rolled his eyes, which only infuriated me more. “I didn’t cheat. I strategically chose a competition that I knew I’d win.”
“That’s cheating if I ever heard it.”
An overwhelming rush of humiliation coursed through me. A prickling feeling that raced from the back of my neck down to the tips of my toes.
I was eighteen again, sitting on that stage and listening to him give the valedictorian speech that should have been mine.
“No. Morally questionable? Perhaps. But definitely not cheating. You did agree to the terms, and you had been in my shop before. You knew what I sold.”
He was right. It was absolutely sleazy, but not outright cheating. I lost. I lost, and I felt so ashamed. All the inadequacy I had felt throughout my entire adolescence came pouring back into me like a dam within my own mind had broken.
“Alright,” I told him, trying to hide the absolute hurricane of emotion that was swirling around inside me.
It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t Liam’s fault, and I knew that. But logic didn’t matter at that moment. It wasn’t the logical side of me that was burning with hatred. It was my weak, overly emotional heart.
“Well, congrats. I’m picking the next competition,” I said as I stood up.
I needed to leave. Unlike earlier, when I wanted space between Liam and me because I had seen him in a new light, at that moment, I needed space because I had realized that he was the same as ever.
We would compete until the day I died. I would try to best him until the day I died. And I would likely die feeling as inferior as I did at that very moment.
“That sounds fair. Where are you going?” Liam asked, sounding almost confused.
“I need to get home. Work tomorrow.”
A look of realization washed over his face.
There in an instant and then gone just as quickly.
It was replaced with a stone-like expression.
There was a glimpse of something akin to disappointment in his eyes, which only aggravated me further.
“Okay. Um, I guess let me know when you figure out the next competition?”
I nodded. I was out the door before I could inhale one more breath of the thick, suffocating air that flooded his apartment.