Page 76 of Eye Candy

No one ever stayed.

I shoved my hurt down, because my fucked up sense of honor dictated that I try one more time to get through to her. For her father’s sake, if not hers.

“You should listen to me,” I said dully.

“You mean I should do what you say,” she retorted sharply. Then she sighed. “Chase, you’re always trying to orchestrate things so people are dependent on you. You think you can guarantee love by making yourself necessary. You try to obligate people to you so they’ll stick around.” Caroline reached over the counter and grabbed my face between her hands. “That’s why I can’t let you step in and take over. That’s why I can’t accept your help. Don’t you get that?”

“Oh, I get it,” I rasped, my throat tight. “Definitely.”

Her eyes softened. “I want?—”

Her phone rang, interrupting what was probably going to be a pretty platitude, the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head.

Her expression when she saw the caller was indescribable. She tapped the screen and declined the call.

“Is that him?” I asked, unable to hide my instant fury. “Is that Gerry?”

I imagined punching my stepbrother’s teeth through the back of his throat. I’d never felt rage like this before and I hoped I never would again.

“No. My friend Jessica. I met her at Gerry’s party. A slot opened up in a show she’s headlining here tonight—the place I took you to with the broken elevator? She wanted to know if I would fill it.”

I studied her face. “You want to.”

“I can’t. I have to pack.”

“So you’re going to go back to a place you hate and give up something you love”—burlesque. Not me. She’s made that clear—“for a life you don’t want. That doesn’t make any sense, Caroline.”

Caroline tilted her head, and the sympathy in her eyes made my gut roll. I knew that look—I’d grown up receiving that look—but I especially hated getting it from her.

“It’s not aboutsense, Chase. I make my decisions based on feelings. It would just feel wrong to stay like this.” She slid off the stool and disappeared into the bedroom. When she came out, she was dragging her pink wheeled bag behind her, running shoes on her feet.

She hesitated, as if she wanted to kiss me goodbye, but then thought better of it. Instead, she pressed her fingers to her lips and waved the hand towards me instead. It was a paltry substitute for affection, and thus, an excellent metaphor.

“Goodbye, Chase.”

When the door closed behind her, it was with finality.

I listened to see if I could hear her shoes as she walked to the elevator, but they didn’t make a sound.

As loudly as Caroline had arrived in my life, she disappeared in silence.

CHAPTER 28

CAROLINE

“Anything else, Todd?”

“Just the pie and the V, thanks Caro.”

“Eight fifty.”

Todd, a sheep farmer I’d known since I was stroller-sized, waved his phone over the machine and the transaction cleared. With one hand, he collected the can of energy drink and the brown bag with his savory meat pie and waved with an index finger. “See ya, Caro.”

Being back behind the counter at Levitate was like stepping out of a time machine. Last time I’d worked here, I’d been waging a war with teenage acne and saving to enroll in the Burlesque Studio in Wellington—from there, it was going to be a very easy and fast path to becoming an enormous success, with my own studio and my own apartment in the cool part of town. Teenage Caroline’s Magic 8 Ball had never given any indication things would derail as badly as they had.

Instead of fame, riches, and marabou, I had guilt, unusable airline miles, and a broken heart.

Nothing at Café Levitate had changed. Dad’s pride and joy was located down the end of Main Street. Our tables had laminated tops with black and white drawings of the Eiffel Tower on them—although neither the café nor the town had anything to do with Paris. The sign out on the shop face was brightly painted corrugated iron cut into the shape of a cup and saucer. The café smelled like coffee, and the blackboard above my head had the specials in spiky writing: today it was a bacon and egg pie and a medium flat white for six fifty. Bargain.

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