Page 50 of Secrets That Bind Us
“Yellow?”
“Do notyellowme, Zo. There are fourteen fifty-pound boxes of coffee samples that were just delivered.”
“Oopsies.”
“Zoey! How are we going to try-“ I look at the list I was given, “Ninety-eight coffee samples?”
“By pulling all-nighters for a week straight.” She replies dryly but I’m very sure she’s serious.
“Zoey! You are very close to being murdered.” I whisper-scream into the phone.
I can hear the way she holds back a laugh by the way her voice trembles, and it’s strained. “It’ll be alright, okay? We can… we can go to every farmer’s market from… this weekend until opening and give out samples and keep a tally. The one that has the most is the one we’ll carry in-house.”
My face drops and I can feel my blood rush down to my toes.
“Has it occurred to you that maybe Ican’tgo every weekend to the fucking farmer’s market when I have a deadline, your wedding, the bookshop, I’m getting the barn ready for the wedding, Savannah hates me, Noah’sbeing weird, and I-I-I- oh my God, I can’t fucking breathe. Oh, fuck, I can’t breathe!” I try to inhale, but my lungs feel frozen– constricted and barely contracting. God this hurts.
“Shit. Verity. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. Okay, uhm,breathe.”
I roll my eyes, ignoring her, trying to avoid my very semi-public panic attack– in front of Will and his crew. Oh God, not here. Not in front of them, please. I lift my arms over my head, trying to expand my lungs as my cheeks go numb and tears well into my eyes. I blink them back rapidly.
“I was already on my way. I’ll be there in five.”
Zoey finds me on a chair that Will brought in for me from the dumpster outside to sit on after he called the paramedics who told me I had a panic attack after I told them that sometimes I have anxiety attacks.
Go figure.
While sitting on “the cleanest” chair from the dumpster is gross, I’m grateful. I can’t look at her right now. I’m fucking mortified. So no, I can’t look at anyone, really. Not while my cheeks are barely getting their feeling back.
“I really am sorry. I was just so excited.”
The thing about being friends with someone for almost twenty years? It’s hard to stay mad at them because you know how they are. So I know she wasjust excited.Her spontaneity when we were kids helped me get out of my shell in so many ways. There were times when I was in New York and facing something where I would just have to ask myself,WWZD?But sometimes, there was a price to pay for her spontaneity and I was often the one who had to pay out of pocket for it.
So, I nod. Just nod at the ground while staring at her…Crocs?“What… in the motherfuck… are those?” I rasp out.
“You can’t look at me, but you can judge my shoes?”
I glare up at her. “They’re hideous. Oh my god, Evan did this to you, didn’t he? They’re like those sweaty Jelly shoes you made me buy in 2007.”
She laughs.
I tilt my head. “Zoey, if he’s torturing you-“
“I’m not pulling out of this wedding again.” She assures me.“Besides, he’s pretty good at torture. Of thesexualvariety.”
I ignore that comment, not wanting to think of Evan as a sexual anything. “Well, they do say the third time’s the charm.”
She sighs and wraps her arms around me, rubbing my back in soothing circles. “Are you okay, Ver?”
I lean into her, feeling the tears springing to my eyes again. “Savannah said she hated me. Blamed me for Micah leaving. Said the ‘F’ word three times.”
“Big words for a twelve-year-old that doesn’t pay bills.”
I snort then shake my head. Then I proceed to tell her about the break-in, Dean coming to check everything out, seeing Savannah, to which she gasps and then scolds me for keepingthatfrom her which makes me feel shitty. I continue with admitting I haven’t made a move to have him properly meet Sav, nor that he left his cards all over the property and my car windshield wiper and now my stomach is cramping because God, I really am a horrible fucking person. A tearless sob chokes out of me, panic rising again. I shove my face into my hands. “God, Zo,whatam I doinghere?Whyam I here? Everything wasfineup there.”
“Everything wasnotfine up there and you know it. You’re here because the porch lights have been flashing for a long time. It was time to come home, Ver.”
“No, Zo, what am I doing here? Seriously. This is crazy. I took my kids away from the only life they’ve ever known. Micah is dead. Mama’s dead. My life isn’t here. This bookstore–“
