Page 38 of The Fall Back Plan
She smiles likeIsn’t this so fun?“Itisyou. I knew it. Sloane Oakley-Hunsaker. We went to school together.”
I want to say something devastatingly cool here, but my blood is pounding in my ears, and I can’t hear myself think.
Ry says, “That’s not her name.”
Sloane gives a silvery laugh. “Of course not, duh. It’s just a fun nickname. Although between friends, it looks like you got some work done. More power to you, sweetie.”
It’s the “sweetie” that does it, that jolts me out of my ear-buzzing paralysis. She says it like she’s speaking to the help, or someone much younger.
“It’s Jolie,” I tell her. “Next time you forget, you can check the Harvest High Wall of Fame. It’s inscribed on the valedictorian plaque, right above yours.”
Her eyes narrow for a split second. “That’s right, you did get that title.” She glances around. “Doesn’t look like it did you much good if you’re working as a bartender.”
“Bar owner,” Ry snaps, and I shake my head at him to let him know I have this.
“Don’t feel bad for the mistake,” I tell Sloane. “It’s probably hard for people who never leave this town to catch the vision of the ones who do.”
“I left,” she sputters. “I went to UNC and got a degree in computer science. What did you ever do?”
I rest my arms on the bar and lean toward her, so I don’t have to talk over the music. “I majored in finance and made more money than I’ll ever need in Chicago.” I make a lazy wave to encompass the bar. “Decided I’d start a new empire. Welcome to home base.” I’ve decided no such thing, but it doesn’t matter in my quest to put Sloane in her place. Every time I can tell I’ve gotten under her skin, my footing feels that much more sure, and I have the advantage now.
I want to keep belittling and undermining her the way she did to me for so long, but I won’t. It means becoming like her, and though Sloane would be shocked to hear it, I never wanted to be like her. I just wanted her to leave me alone. We’re having the moment I’d always wanted: me standing before her in all my success, and her having a hard time believing it.
It’s almost enough. Almost. I place a wine glass in front of her and turn to consider our wines before choosing a pinot noir and pouring it for her.
“Enjoy this on the house,” I tell her. “Then leave. And don’t come back.”
Her mouth drops slightly open, and even in the soft lighting, I can see her cheeks reddening. There’s a chuff from Ry—the sound of him fighting a laugh.
Sloane looks mad, not hurt. Her face says “Who do you think you are?” even if her mouth hasn’t found the words yet.
“You’re going to catch gnats,” I tell her. It’s the same thing she said to me when she’d pulled the flower wreath off my mortarboard at graduation. I hadn’t been able to afford a custom wreath like a lot of the girls got from the local florists with their favorite flowers, but I’d made my own so my graduation cap wouldn’t look so bare. It had been simple, made from wildflowers that grew on the undeveloped property behind our apartment complex, but I’d liked it.
“Oh, sweetie,” she’d said, “I can’t let you go out there looking so homemade.” And she’d pulled it off my cap while we milled around, waiting to be organized for our procession onto the football field. It had caused the bobby pins securing my cap to pull hard at my hair. “Close your mouth or you’re going to catchgnats,” she’d snapped.
My eyes had smarted, and a few minutes later, I’d had to lead the procession with Sloane right behind me, her waving like the homecoming queen she’d been in October, me hoping everyone thought my eyes were watering from graduation sentimentality and not Sloane’s straight-up meanness.
Her mouth snaps closed and her eyes tell me she knows exactly why I said it.
I nod at her glass. “It’s one of our best wines. Enjoy. But over there with your little friends.”
She sits there for a couple of seconds before she picks up the glass with a fake smile. “So interesting how some people let money change them.”
“So interesting how some people don’t ever change. Bye, Sloane.”
There’s nothing left for her to do but gather her tattered dignity and return to her friends.
Ry moves closer to me so the customers at the bar can’t hear us. “That was almost everything I wanted it to be. It could only have been better if you’d said it in front of her friends.” He holds up his hand for a high five, which I give him. “You’re not going to regret it now and wish you were nicer, are you?”
I snort. “No. That was completely satisfying.”
“That’s my girl,” he says.
“Go earn your tips,” I say, grinning at him. “I’m going to run the numbers one more time, and then I think I’ll head home early.”
“Good plan.”
In my office, the door closed safely behind me, my smile wobbles and disappears. I’m not at all sorry I told off Sloane. But that moment of paralysis when she first confronted me scares me because I’d felt a flash of fear. It was the old fear of never knowing what I could do to protect myself from her, and I haven’t felt that kind of vulnerability—the fear of being pushed around—in a long, long time. Years.
