Page 74 of Make You Mine

I stomped down the road for a few minutes, collecting myself before making the phone call. I didn’t want anyone hearing this.

Scott answered on the second ring. “Oh, now you want to talk to me, Charlie?”

“There’s a three thousand dollar charge on my credit card!” I yelled.

“Right,” Scott said. “That’s your half of the magazine ad spot. Just like we talked about.”

“Like we talked about?” I shouted into the phone. “We didn’t talk about this at all!”

“That’s not true.” Scott had the same tone he took on when he knew he wastechnicallycorrect about something that was misleading. “The last time we spoke, I asked you to pay half of the magazine fee. You told me to go fuck myself, but right before that you said you didn’t care what I did. I took that to mean you were giving me the green light to make whatever financial decision I thought was best.”

“Yes! Withyourmoney, not mine, Scott!”

“You own half the business,” he said calmly.

I almost hurled my phone into the field next to the road. Somehow, I held back. “How did you even get my credit card number?”

“It’s on file with our business PayPal account. You were using it for other business expenses, so I assumed you wanted me to use it for this.”

I bit back another curse. “I’d been putting business expenses on my personal card becauseourbusiness card was already maxed out.”

“Well, you didn’t have to do that.”

“Ididhave to do that,” I shot back, “because we still had daily expenses for running the truck! Or do you think we could sell burgers without any ground beef or buns?”

“Please do not blame me for your financial mistakes,” Scott said. “If you did not want the card to be used for the magazine ad spot, you should not have attached it to the business PayPal account. I was merely doing what I thought was best for the business.”

My financial mistakes. As if him charging half the magazine ad fee to my credit card was somehowmyfault.

“Scott, for someone who is reasonably intelligent, there are times where you’re completely clueless.”

“I’m clueless because you left.”

I wasn’t expecting such an emotional response. Not from him. “I left?” I asked incredulously.

“Youleft,” he repeated. “You walked out of our dinner meeting and didn’t say a word to me. You just packed your things from the apartment and disappeared. I’ve been trying to call you so we can figure out what to do with the business. Just because you left Savannah in the middle of the night doesn’t absolve you of your responsibilities here.”

I reached the motel and went inside my room, locking the chain behind me. “What did you expect me to do? You told me you wanted to take a break to figure things out, and then you started seeing someone else. Did you really expect me to continue working on the food truck with you, pretending like nothing had changed?”

I heard him snort. “I expected you to be an adult about it, Charlie. You’re letting your emotions get in the way of purely financial decisions.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “It’s all my fault, like it always is. Scott, you maxed out my credit card with that purchase. I’m dead in the water here until you cancel the magazine ad.”

He made a humming sound. The sound he made when he was about to explain why something was a bad idea. “That would be a mistake.”

“I don’t care if it’s a mistake. I didn’t agree to it.”

“Charlie,” he said. Normally this tone of his was soothing, but now it sounded condescending. “You know it’s too late to cancel.”

“No it’s not,” I said through gritted teeth. “Call the magazine and tell them you’ve changed your mind. The purchase was made last night—it’s not like they’ve done any work yet. Heck, if you’re too afraid to call them, I’ll do it for you.”

“Going back on it would burn my connection at the magazine.” That same condescending tone. “Surely you understand that upsetting the largest food magazine in Savannah would be catastrophic for our business in the long-term. Listen, Charlie. I’m sorry you connected your personal card to the business PayPal. That was an honest mistake on your part. But the best thing for you to do now is get another personal credit card. Even if it’s just to get by in the short-term, that will help us—”

I hung up. I couldn’t listen to him gaslight me anymore. Acting like it wasmy fault, while he was just trying to do what he thought was best.

I sat on my bed and clenched my eyelids shut to squeeze the tears out. I was blind to it while we had been together, but now I could see just how manipulative Scott was. He would do something he knew was wrong for selfish reasons, then find a way to convince you it was allyourfault. When I watched him do it with some of our suppliers or clients who hired us for parties, I’d chalked it up to Scott being a smooth business negotiator.

In reality, he was just an asshole.

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