Page 81 of The Hanukkah Hoax
It was clear that neither of them was in their element, and the only thing Marisa could deduce from that situation was that they were finally on a level playing field.
Marisa pulled out the chair and sat down, but she kept the seat turned out and her left leg positioned toward the door in case more shots were fired and Phoebe intended to start Marisa’s year the way the woman had ended it.
“I didn’t have a way of reaching you, so I figured the contact form on your website was the next best thing.”
“You didn’t want to rifle through Monica’s vendor applications when she wasn’t looking and snatch my phone number instead? Seems like more your speed.”
Phoebe tensed. “I deserve that.”
“Yes, you do.”
The Plant Nanny’s deep breath was unexpected and only served to set Marisa’s nerves on edge even further. “I invited you out today hoping you would agree to speak with me because I want to apologize. For everything.”
Marisa narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “What?”
“The night Alec and I met at the bar . . .”
Oh, she did not want to hear this. No way in hell did she want to hear this. Hadn’t she heard enough about that night? Hadn’t the entire Internet heard enough?
“I remember exactly what you two talked about. You don’t need to reiterate.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know anything about that night, because what was leaked online was a fabrication.” Phoebe pressed a sternness into her words that Marisa hadn’t heard before.
Between the woman’s shrieking and blaming and threatening, each with their own vocal registers, she thought she knew all the flavors of Phoebe. But this one was new and smacked with an earnestness Marisa hadn’t thought the woman capable of.
“You two faked that entire conversation?”
“No. Alec’s words were his own, but they were taken out of context and mashed together in a different order.” Then she pinched the bridge of her nose, and for the first time, Marisa noticed the bags beneath her eyes and the frayed edges of her sweatshirt collar, along with some discoloration around the wrist cuffs and . . . Was that an old stain on one of the sleeves?
The Phoebe Marisa knew would rather die buried beneath her potting soil than be caught out in public, let alone in such a disheveled state at a bougie coffee shop.
The shock to her system was almost enough to make her miss the gigantic truth bomb foisted on top of her.
“I’m sorry. What?”
Phoebe’s shoulders rose and fell with a sad, shaky breath that seemed to humanize a woman Marisa had always thought of as untouchable. “Alec and I were together a long time, but we weren’t really together, you know?”
No, she didn’t know, but she would soon find out.
“Regardless, I still resented him for how it ended. I realize now that I wasn’t resentful of him so much as his ability to move on so easily, while I had been trapped inside the sunk-cost fallacy of what we had. I used to think that, if you put a certain amount of time into something, that thing then owed you in reciprocal dividends, which is foolish. Even a brand-new car decreases in value the second you drive it off the lot.”
She took a sip of her coffee and played with the little plastic tab over the mouth opening. “And then he started dating you. Or not dating you. I don’t know what you two ever were, to be honest, but seemingly overnight, there he was again, basking in his rugby glory once more, but this time, with a different woman to smile along with.”
Then Phoebe sat back, straightened her posture as only one trained to do so would, and smiled sadly at her. “I’m not the first entrepreneur in my family. My mother founded her own wealth management company in her mid-twenties and already had several high-rolling clients before she was even legally allowed to rent a vehicle in most states. My father was a licensed therapist in the trauma therapy space, but he made his living by opening up several practices that employed other trauma specialists to do the counseling instead, while he ran the operations and handled the insurance. My younger brother Anton has already started up and sold two different tech companies, and he’s working on his third. And me? I babysit plants.
“I’m sure you can imagine what our Thanksgiving dinners are like, but in case you’re curious, no, my family doesn’t ask me about my business, because they don’t view it as one. Despite my company’s healthy profit margins, and despite me literally showing them the fucking receipts of my success, my interests still aren’t exactly legacy worthy in their eyes. But they liked Alec, or his status, I assume, even if, deep down, I wasn’t entirely happy all the time I was with him. So, when I saw Alec and you together, I was envious and . . . hurt. And that led me to do some awful, stupid, desperate things.”
Marisa’s body slouched forward as she shucked off her never let them see you cry battle armor and flattened her palms on the table to brace herself against the shock.
She was jealous? Of me?
Phoebe went back to fiddling with her coffee cup lid. “Alec reached out to me. Wanted to clear the air, he said, and I couldn’t very well refuse since I still had his coat and I didn’t want to look at the thing any more than I had to. So, I met with him under the guise of returning his belongings. My former social media manager was aware of the meeting and suggested I record the conversation. I wasn’t a fan of the idea, but I had already gone down an avenue that was so unlike my usual planning, I couldn’t risk going back, convinced that even awful plans might have some merit in them.” Then she gave Marisa another sad smile. “For example, I was the one who stocked up on all the Jamaican ginger extract, knowing you were on the hunt for it. Not one of my finer moments, and I apologize for that, too. Hell, I don’t even like ginger.” She sniffed. “The pressure to be perfect really does suck, doesn’t it?”
And that right there was the painful distillation of what Marisa’s candy making had tried so hard to battle against for so long. Already, the heated tension that had ridden her hard on the way in had begun to ease slightly as it sought companionable relief in, of all people, the Plant Nanny. An unlikely fellow member of People Pleasers Anonymous.
“Yeah,” Marisa breathed. “Totally does.”
Maybe matching headbands were in order or something.
