Page 91 of On the Run
Recently, I told a lie to a man I care about. It was a tiny lie. A lie of omission. To protect someone. And the truth was nobody else’s business. I had a billion reasons, a billion excuses. But in the end, when the lie came to light (and readers, theyalwayscome to light), I hurt this man I care about.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
When I should have owned up and apologized for my error, when I should have dropped to my knees and begged for forgiveness, when I should have barred the door (in a law-abiding, consensual sort of way) and insisted we not leave until we’d hashed out the truth, instead I let the lie stand and ran away to protect my heart… only to find I’d left the foolish thing behind in his keeping.
So, to that good man I hurt: I’m sorry I let you down. We are real. We are important. I thought you deserved someone more perfect than me, but it occurred to me that what you deserve is someone who really, really loves you… and there is no one who’ll do that better than I will. If you let me, I’ll prove it to you.
Readers, thanks for sticking with me, even when I mess up… because we all mess up.
Love always,
Hagatha
* * *
Look,it wasn’t like I’d been expecting Beale to storm the HiWire offices with a half-dozen buff, lightly oiled, and scantily dressed friends, each carrying a bouquet of red roses, to perform a highly choreographed flash-mob dance routine…
Or not exactly that, anyway.
For one thing, I was pretty sure he didn’t know where the office was, and for another, he knew my identity was a secret, for a third, I didn’t think he knew any Bruno Mars lyrics, which was kind of a requirement. And if that weren’t enough, there was the small matter of him never venturing farther north of Whispering Key than the Florida state line.
But I’d kind of expected a phone call.
Or a text.
Or a message delivered via trained plover.
Something.
I’d definitely expected something.
I’d woken up thrilled to greet the sun for the first time in weeks, so secure in the knowledge that I had fixed things that I literally sang in the shower. No, I will not tell you what song. No, we shall never discuss it again.
Fine, it was Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” if you must know, and I danced so aggressively that I bumped my elbow on the tile quite, quite hard, so that pain still radiated through my forearm even half a day later.
I’d skipped my way to the office—no, not literally—even stopping for coffee at Dot, my favorite local shop. Although there’d been a distinct lack of kitschy decor and overly friendly patrons, I’d managed to enjoy it, mostly because I told myself that soon enough the Bean would be my local shop.
When I’d reached the HiWire offices, Jeanette had actually come to the lobby to greet me. I’d had a momentary flash of panic, because her face had been contorted into a grimace unlike any I’d seen before, but I realized that was because she was over-Botoxed andsmilingin a way she hadn’t since the day I’d signed my contract.
It turned out, readers were flooding my latest post with (mostly) supportive comments and sharing the link on social media. Jeanette’s assistant heard some radio hosts chatting about how “Hagatha got personal” during her morning commute, and Buzzfeed had even done a little blurb under the heading “Agony Aunt in Agony,” which I believed was stretching the issue.
Pfft. By a lot.
But after my meeting with Jeanette, in which we’d come to an amicable conclusion about my future with HiWire, I’d walked home and looked at the clock—10:30 a.m. And… nothing had happened.
I’d strolled on the building’s roof deck. I changed my already clean sheets. I alphabetized the groceries in my nearly empty pantry and took a whole four minutes to decide whether water crackers should be shelved underWorC.
By then it was eleven o’clock.
I called Mason, just to see if Beale had made any exciting discoveries that morning, but Taffy, Mason’s assistant, said Doc Mason was with a patient.
I called Littlejohn, but he didn’t answer, and I remembered he’d mentioned an Extravaganza meeting last time we spoke.
In desperation, I called Jonquil, grateful when she chatted to me for thirty minutes about the mockups the graphic designer had sent her and unreasonably disappointed when she had to hang up so she could have tea—“and by tea I mean tequila, honey! Wish you were here!”—with the Mahjong folks.
I tossed my phone on the couch with a sigh and decided to water my houseplants but found I had none.
Who the fuck didn’t have a single living organism besides himself in his home? Never had such a busy life seemed so damn empty.
