Page 104 of So Not My Thing
She nodded. We all were. I’d learned it from her and my dad.
“Anyway, he brought me over to this music center in Tremé to meet his business partner. Between the two of them, I believed in their vision for Miss Mary’s place. If I’d leased it to another restaurant, I would have always felt like it was falling short, that I should have found something better. It felt right to go in a different direction.”
She’d listened with tightly pursed lips. “All of that sounds like good reasoning until you get to the part that it’s Miles Crowe.”
“From a business standpoint, I stand by that choice. They’re going to be great in that space.”
“Then how is it you ended up on the news?”
“You are not going to love what comes next.”
“Spit it out, Gabrielle Marie.” But she gave my arm a gentle squeeze.
“We started dating.”
“Oh, Gabi,” she sighed. She only remembered to call me Ellie half the time. “At what point did you decide he was a decent human being? What could have possibly changed your mind?”
I stifled an impulse to defend him. The whole reason I’d run to her crying was because he’d proven that he didn’t want to be publicly associated with me now any more than he had then.
My phone went off. A text from Miles.Call me? We have gotten things so twisted.I turned it off and dropped my phone into my purse.
“Dylan stopped in when we were having lunch at Miss Mary’s once,” I said. “He told Miles who I was, and his reaction was different than I expected. He apologized, and he’d had no idea how much that whole mess followed me. He figured it had burned itself out after a couple of weeks when the next viral thing came along. And it had some pretty tough repercussions for him too.”
My mom snorted. “Like what? Million-dollar recording deals?”
“Yeah, like that. Because he got pigeon-holed as a teen idol, and his label wouldn’t let him move beyond it. He wanted to explore different sounds, reinvent himself, and they wouldn’t let him. He left and went indie, but without their giant machine behind him, he didn’t find the same kind of success.”
She smoothed my hair back. “Why am I only hearing about it now, and how did it lead to you crying on my couch?”
“We’ve been dating for almost two months. And I’m crazy about him. I’ve had hints that he’s not as into me as I’m into him. And maybe that’s subconsciously why I haven’t brought him around before. I didn’t want you to think this was me reliving my freshman crush and not see it for something real.”
“Butisit real?”
I slowly shook my head, my eyes welling again. I hated the burning feeling of the tears. She tucked a tissue into my hand without a word. “I should have known. Maybe I did. He’s never said he loves me. He sings me love songs, but he never says the words to me. I hoped it would be a matter of time. But then, this afternoon, Channel Five came to do an interview, and...” The tears spilled over, and I swiped at them with the tissue.
“Oh, honey. It’s okay. You can tell me when you’re ready.” She pulled me back into her arms and held me while I cried some more. This time it was a slow, steady trickle of tears that somehow tasted saltier and sadder than the first ones. I wasn’t sure how long I stayed there, cuddled against her shoulder, before those ran out too.
I straightened and pushed my hair off my cheek where the tears had stuck it. I reached for a fresh tissue and twisted it around my fingers, winding it up, straightening it out against my leg, winding it up again. I watched Miles in my mind’s eye as he spoke to Kyla, replaying his words on a loop.
“He told Kyla that it had been fun getting to know me and that I’ve been a major asset in helping them open the club.” The words left a pit in my stomach. Nothing about the nights we’d spent with the two of us at the piano, or daydreaming about the future of the club, or the countless kisses, from sweet to the scorching. “He still wants to keep his distance publicly. I may be his thing in private, but even he says that most of his public relationships are for publicity. I don’t fit his image.”
She pulled me down into her lap and stroked my hair like she used to when I’d gotten sick as a kid. “He’s not worth it, honey.” That was all she said about it. She pet my hair until I fell asleep and woke me with a gentle shake when my dad got home.
“I told him,” she said. “You don’t have to re-explain.”
He pulled me into a big hug, sat next to me, and turned on Animal Planet. It was a dog training show, and he sat with me in silence, his arm around my shoulders, while my mom made dinner.
She popped out at one point to say, “Dylan called. Said Chloe called him, worried about you. Better let her know you’re okay.”
I didn’t want to turn on my phone. I didn’t know what I wanted more: to find a dozen texts from Miles waiting for me, or none at all. “Can you tell Dylan to let her know I’m fine and I’ll call her tomorrow?” With Chloe and Dylan both knowing how to get hold of me, I could just email Donna to handle any clients who called the office and keep my cell phone off and buried.
My mom nodded and disappeared into the kitchen again.
An hour later, we had smothered chicken, and I was reminded again of who Dylan had gotten his talent from. It tasted like everything I needed: familiarity, comfort, love, all stirred right into the sauce.
“Can I stay here for a few days?” I asked. “I’ll run home and get some clothes tomorrow, but I need some space.”
“You never even have to ask,” my dad said.
