Page 70 of The Break-Up Pact

I glance at myself in the mirror—still in my running clothes, hair yanked into a ponytail, decidedly sleep-deprived—and discern that I look just enough on the human side of zombie. I plop a piece of gum in my mouth for good measure, turning to make sure Sana has erased the evidence of our early morning frat party when I swing open the door.

“Hey,” she says, looking far more put together than I am in one of her rotation of loud dresses, her bangles glinting against her wrist in the sun. My eyes reach her face and I feel that uneasiness in me start to stir with something fresh. Whatever this is, it’s not a casual drop-in. “Do you have a minute, Junebug?”

“Yeah,” I say, clearing my throat. “Yeah, of course.”

I glance back at Sana apologetically, and she gives us both a salute and heads out. I let Nancy inside, feeling clumsy as I shut the door too hard behind her.

“Can I get you some tea?” I ask.

Nancy is standing in the kitchen area, her eyes trained on me. “No, I’m fine. I’m actually—this is a quick visit.”

I still have a week left in August for the rent, but I say anyway, “I’m so sure we’re going to hit the three months today. I mean, you saw the people outside, right? We’re so close. I can get the check to you tomorrow.”

If the words spill out of me too fast, the silence that follows them is entirely too slow. I feel it stretch between us like it’s part of my own body getting pulled with it. I don’t know exactly what she’s going to say, but I can feel the wrongness of it in the air before she says it.

“You don’t need to do that,” she tells me. “That’s actually what I’m here to talk to you about.”

“Oh?” is all I can manage.

Nancy breathes in deep. “You know I respect the hell out of how hard you’ve been working. And I know it hasn’t exactly been easy, these last few weeks, with all this… internet stuff going on,” she says, making a vague gesture at the air in front of her. “And it’s smart that you’ve been using it to your advantage. But June, we talked about this. And I just don’t see any signs that this is going to work as a business model for Tea Tide in the long-term.”

My throat is suddenly so dry that it feels like all the moisture has been sucked out of the beach air. “Right. But I, um—I’ve been working on some ideas. Sending out some feelers for more community-based events.” My heart is hammering in my ears. “And you—you saw the new scones, right? Like you were saying, we’re revamping things again, getting people excited.”

She nods carefully. I’m so used to Nancy being loud and brash that it unsettles me even more, seeing that she clearly hates having this conversation as much as I do.

“Getting strangers excited,” she corrects me. “People who are coming to town for a show and aren’t coming back. It doesn’t fix the problem right here at home, June. All of this hullabaloo is making even your regulars feel unwelcome. The place is so packed that I haven’t been able to wait in line for a scone for weeks.”

I feel the pizza churn in my stomach. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen much of Nancy at all this month. Or any of my parents’ friends who usually come in for scones and loud gossip, or any of my own high school and college friends who come in for scones and even louder gossip.

“But it’ll die down soon. Yesterday was kind of the big—finale, I think,” I say, wincing at the word my brain settled on. “Everything’s going to calm down.”

Her expression is sympathetic, but her voice is firm. “I remember us having a very similar conversation the last time Tea Tide had a big surge like this. That you were going to address it once everything calmed down.”

For the first time in ages, I feel like a kid again. Like I’ve slipped into an old June and I’m just a bundle of unfinished bones and Nancy isn’t just my landlord, but one of a sea of grown-ups in charge of me.

“But we said three months’ rent, and I’ve got it,” I say, my voice pathetic in my own ears.

“You offered the three months’ rent, but I said a clear plan to make Tea Tide more sustainable. I don’t care about the money half as much as I care about the businesses on this boardwalk having long-term, beneficial impacts on our community—not just during the peak of tourist season, or blips like this, but all year round.”

She pauses momentarily for me to absorb it, but I can’t. I seize on the silence instead, asking, “What can I do?”

Because it can’t be too late. It can’t all just end like this—not after the whiplash of learning how to run Tea Tide on my own, not after the years of struggling to keep it above water, not after this entire summer of letting the internet tear my personal life to shreds just to try to save it. Not after the silent promises I made to Annie to keep it safe, to keep it the way she left it, like it meant I could keep a piece of her here, too.

“You have a few options,” Nancy says cautiously, like she wasn’t expecting the conversation to get this far. “You could consider closing shop. Maybe trying something new.”

I have to stop breathing for a moment so my eyes don’t fill up with tears.

“Or moving Tea Tide somewhere else,” she says. “If you’re open to the idea, I can give you some contacts.”

Her words sound like a distant humming in my ear because none of them are the ones I want to hear. None of them are going to keep the original Tea Tide intact, our vision of a tea shop by the shore, the dream Annie built and I let slip through my fingers like the sand beneath it.

She reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it, a phantom of her usual boisterous hugs. I don’t blame her. I probably look one good hug away from falling apart.

“I’ll let you think it over,” she says. “Don’t be a stranger. I’m happy to help in whatever way I can.”

I nod numbly. She lets herself out, and I want to be furious with her. I want a concrete urge, like to throw a pillow or yell at my reflection in the mirror or hit the beach and run for miles and miles. I want to be able to break down and bawl out a river the way I did when I was Crying Girl, a quick, brutal, ugly kind of relief.

But the ache settling deep isn’t a loud one. It’s guilt and it’s grief and it’s so, so quiet that all I can do is stand there and let it seep into me, one awful drop at a time. It’s understanding that there’s nothing to get angry at because there’s only one person to blame, and no amount of throwing or yelling or running is going to separate me from myself.

---