Chapter Fifteen #2
My eyes drifted over to him. Liam looked so dejected, his attention fixed on the floor, his hair messier than it had been minutes ago, as if he had been running his fingers through it. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, dear, I was simply telling—”
“Jess, can you give us a minute?” My eyes widened as Liam interrupted Grandma. He had been around her long enough to know that interrupting her was never a good idea.
She looked a little taken aback, but didn’t say anything.
“Why? What’s going on?”
Liam still refused to meet my eyes, but he glanced up at Grandma. “I’ll be right back. Please wait until we can discuss this a little more.”
Liam stepped toward me and wrapped his fingers around my arm. Then he led me away.
He waited until we were out of earshot before he whispered, “Sorry.” Liam’s voice sounded off in a way that I had never heard before.
“Sorry?” I echoed. “Seriously, what’s going on? You practically ran away from me, and then I find you having a weird secret conversation with my grandparents? What’s happening?”
Finally, our eyes met. “I wasn’t running away from you. I had to deal with something. Don’t worry about it.” Liam’s face was flushed, like he was about to break out in a sweat. “But you should go,” he said, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair. “It’s almost midnight.”
Those words felt like an icy bucket of water being poured right over my head. “What?” The secret hope I had come to his shop with originally—one of sharing a kiss with him at midnight—vanished in an instant.
He was back to refusing to meet my eyes. “We can talk later. You should get back to your shop. Like your grandma said, someone might need you.” His teeth chewed on his bottom lip as he reached up to mess with his hair once more.
I caught his hand before his fingers could rake through his hair. “Seriously, what is your problem?” I asked. “Why are you being all cagey and weird? And why are you trying to push me away?”
Liam looked at me helplessly, but before he could respond, the sound of microphone feedback screeched throughout the room. The gaze of everyone in the shop shifted to the source of the noise. At the very center of the shop, a microphone in her hands, there my grandmother stood.
“What is she doing?” I asked Liam, almost in disbelief at what I was seeing.
Liam looked as if he had seen a ghost. “You should go,” he said once more, pleading. “Please, Jess.”
A part of me knew that I should have listened to him. That he was trying to shield me from the hurt that was sure to come. But I couldn’t. I was frozen in place. It was as if my body felt that I needed to face whatever it was that she was about to say.
“Welcome,” Grandma said into the microphone. “I hope you are all having a lovely evening and a great time welcoming in the new year.”
All remaining side conversations throughout the shop seemed to quiet as Grandma went on.
“I am so grateful to every one of you for showing up tonight for Liam and Jessa. While this may not have been what we envisioned for either of them, my dear husband and I do wish to support them. I’d first like to offer a toast to Liam.”
Grandma raised her glass. I hadn’t even noticed she was holding a flute of champagne until it was being lifted up in the air.
Many people followed suit, holding up their own glasses.
“I have known Liam since he was a young boy…” Grandma began to say.
She then went on to give the longest, most drawn-out toast I have ever heard in my life.
As she neared what I could only assume was the end, she said something that made my breath catch in my throat.
“All that goes to say, while I may have wished that God would have blessed me with a grandchild as wonderful as Liam, that isn’t quite what happened.
” Her laughter echoed throughout the room.
Comedy. I realized at that moment that I was a joke to her. No more than a one-liner in a comedy routine.
A hand gripped mine, but I barely noticed it.
“My granddaughter, Jessa, is the shop owner of the little bookshop next door. When she had told my husband and me about it, we both tried to warn her what a grave mistake it would be. Nothing short of detrimental to her future. But…” she paused to make some gesture that I couldn’t see through the tears glossing over my eyes.
This had been her plan. To make a fool of me in front of a crowd.
Willing myself not to cry, I bit down hard on my lower lip until I could taste blood. It still wasn’t enough. Tears of humiliation stung like shards of glass in my eyes.
“Well,” Grandma said. “Children. They’re always going to do what they want to do. Whether it’s what’s best for them or not. However—”
I could not stomach listening to another second. I could not stand there while my grandmother degraded me in front of an audience. A microphone in her hand and a grin on her face.
I snatched my hand back from Liam and made a break for the door.
“Jess, wait,” Liam called after me.
“Oh dear. There she goes now,” Grandma sighed. “Dramatic as ever.”
As every pair of eyes in the room shifted to look at me, I froze.
One brief, wide-eyed, frozen moment.
Then I ran. That always seemed to be what I was best at.
Even with the thick tension of the room weighing down every step I took. Even as my heart squeezed in my chest and my tears began to trail down my cheeks. I ran.
I needed to get out of there. I needed to breathe.
“There’s quite a lot I could tell you about Jessa—” was all I heard before the doors to The Galaxy Gamer’s Cafe shut behind me. The tears on my face felt as though they could turn to ice the moment they hit the frigid air outside.
I knew that it was not the action of a good host or a good shop owner, but I ran straight through The Prologue. I stopped only when I caught sight of Lily, who was lingering around the door to the stairwell, holding a plate piled high with appetizers.
“Lily.” My traitorous voice cracked when I spoke.
“Jess,” she said with a gasp. “Oh my god! Are you okay? What happened?”
I nodded. “I’m fine,” the unconvincing lie fell out of my mouth without a second thought. “Just—can you lock up for me tonight?”
Her face scrunched up into a look of confusion for a split second.
I had never asked one of my employees to lock up before.
It was one of the many tasks I preferred to do myself.
But I couldn’t. Not tonight. Not when the ground beneath my feet felt like it was crumbling and ready to swallow me whole.
“You got it,” she said.
“Thank you.”
I made my way straight toward the stairwell. I couldn’t be seen like this around people—around my customers, my employees, my friends. I couldn’t bear it.
Tear-streaked and pathetic.
“Jess,” I heard his voice bounce off the walls of the stairwell. I was already halfway up the stairs—he must have caught the door right before it shut.
“I need a minute,” I said, frozen in place. “I just—I’ll be down in a minute,” I lied.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have asked her to do this,” Liam said, sounding exasperated.
I turned around slowly. Liam’s face was stricken with guilt.
“What?” I asked, my voice hardly louder than a whisper. I somehow knew that whatever it was he was about to tell me, it was bound to be devastating.
Liam didn’t answer straight away. “I… After that night, the Christmas party. I just—The look on your face when you told me that you thought your grandma loved me more than you. I couldn’t get it out of my head.”
I stared at him expectantly.
Liam ran his fingers through his already messy hair.
“I asked her to—Well, I told her that she should really start being a better grandmother to you. That you deserved more than how you were being treated. We got to talking, and somehow it evolved into this mess of a party. I thought—I thought that maybe it would be alright. You seemed so happy getting to plan it with her. But…”
Liam sighed deeply, like with his breath, he was expelling his very soul into the air between us.
“Then she wanted to make a speech. I knew it wasn’t going to go well. I tried to stop her, but then you came, and I couldn’t. I’m sorry, Jess.”
It was not Liam’s fault. That was an unwavering truth. Still, I found that familiar, burning hot sensation of pure hatred flooding through me and coursing through my veins.
“I want you to leave,” I said, turning my back to him and continuing my trek up the stairs.
“Jess,” he called after me. “Jess, please.”
“No, Liam,” I replied weakly. My fingers twisted around the doorknob to my apartment. “I need you to leave me alone. Please.”
He didn’t say another word. Even if he did, the door shut behind me before I would have had the chance to hear it. I threw my back against the door, slumping down to the ground.
Then I welcomed in the new year alone, sobbing into my knees on the floor of my living room.