Chapter 31 Sam

" S how me the blog, or so help me, Lauren, I will come in and redecorate this townhouse in all neutrals. Beige and gray and chocolate brown."

The lack of sleep had caught up to me, and I was nearing a level of unhinged that I hadn't seen in a while.

"You're cruel. I just don't think it's going to do anything positive."

"Mhm. Show me."

I pushed my laptop across her counter. I'd been trying to just focus on myself and push Jesse out of my mind, which also meant ignoring the Christy Covington sighting from the festival. But now I had to know. Lauren flipped her hair haughtily and typed in the website: HeartlandHypeAndHappiness.com

Okay, not Barbie, but bleh.

I greedily took back the laptop and started scrolling. Most of her posts seemed to center around event planning, dinner parties, some recipes, and reviews of local places. It wasn't terrible, honestly.

She could use a better logo , though, I thought.

I clicked to open her most recent post, which was about hosting a Halloween party. Halloween was kind of my jam, so I figured it was a good place to start.

"Before you decide to host any type of Halloween event, you must decide what kind of Halloween you want to achieve. Is it slasher style blood and gore, old-school bats and ghosts, magical witches and potions, or more whimsical painted pumpkins and fairy costumes."

My jaw dropped in shock.

"She stole my fucking idea!"

"What?" Lauren asked, eyeing me warily.

"This... Christy, about Halloween. The explanation is mine!"

"You're going to have to explain."

I re-read the selection for Lauren before I launched back in time to re-live for her in painstaking detail the day that Christy Covington and I had our only real conversation.

I popped my headphones in while I dusted, pulling books off shelves and trying not to add to the stack of "books for Sam" any more than I had to. I saw a copy of Practical Magic placed in the wrong section, and I determined it was clearly waiting for me, adding another to the stack.

The bell above the door jingled me out of my very pleasant daydream about Jesse, and I pulled off my headphones to go help a customer. My salesperson-perma-smile stayed on my face until the customer turned around and I saw who it was. Christy Covington, Jesse's very recent ex. Plus her sidekick of the week, I thought I remembered her name being Paige. I swallowed painfully, really hoping this was a quick encounter.

"Hi, what can I help you find?"

Christy's eyes roamed over me, not unlike an appraiser would look at a counterfeit piece of art.

"I'm having a Halloween in July party, and it's completely impossible to find decorations. So, I thought I'd try here." Her words were innocuous, but her tone sounded like the store had already disappointed her.

"Gotcha. Do you know what kind of Halloween vibe you're going for?"

"Yes. Hal-lo-ween."

This girl was so pleasant.

"Right. Just, like, witches and potions, fairies and princesses, fake blood and axes, or skulls and spiders?"

Christy rolled her blue eyes and flipped her blond hair in a way every teen-movie heroine would have envied. "At this point, anything."

"Okay. We don't have much stuff out here on the floor, but I've seen some old Halloween inventory boxed up in the back. I'll pull it out and be right back." I quickly made my way to the storage area.

"Who even is she?" Girl-Maybe-Named-Paige muttered as I walked away.

"I don't know. The owner lady's chubby granddaughter or something."

I winced at that, though I hated that I did. I didn't really have an issue with my weight or my body— I was comfortable in my skin. Being that my mother was an artist, I learned to appreciate all kinds of bodies from the time I could toddle around a museum, but it still flustered me to hear people make comments or judgments about it, especially someone who had been with Jesse up until a month ago. I was resisting comparing my short, curvy figure to her tall, lean one so hard that I could physically feel it in my muscles.

I tried to physically shake off the reaction and pull down the boxes I'd seen earlier. There were quite a few packages of fake webbing and pumpkin and spider decorations. Aunt Zin hated the cheap crap all the stores put out at Halloween, but she also needed to stay in business and had to try to compete with their stock and prices. October was good for a business with broomsticks in the name. I dragged the boxes up front, by which time Aunt Zin was behind the counter, making the two girls uncomfortable with her patented brand of silent judgment. I bit my lip to keep from smiling at her.

"Here you go. Feel free to sort through what we have and see if any of it will work for your party."

Please just leave. As quickly as humanly possible .

Reading my mind, Aunt Zinnia went to the door of the shop to the hand-made broom she kept there, the handle wrapped with crystals, and flipped it upside down. A small, but usually effective, energy shift to get your guests to leave.

"Yeah, sure. I'll take all the webs and the pumpkins and five strands of the skull lights. Oh, and the inflatable cauldron," Christy added, looking up.

Flipped broom for the win.

I rang up the items, and I may have added an "inventory fee" for the fatphobic comments. They paid and left in a hurry, and my aunt flipped the broom back to its original state. She lit some juniper by the door for good measure.

"Hmph," was all she said before going back to the office to work on ordering stock for the following season.

I agreed with the sentiment. I took some deep breaths to rid my brain of images of Christy and Jesse together and focused on the fact that he was bringing me coffee in an hour.

"So you see... mine."

"Well, it does certainly seem like you made an impression."

"She's a plagiarizer."

Lauren practically scoffed at me. "I know that you know that's not what that word means. And you're projecting your frustration with your mom, your job, Jesse , onto a girl you've spoken to once. Granted, she was a bitch then, and she was probably jealous that you had boobs and an ass, and she didn't, but I digress. I'm just saying that if we're going to sit here and do a deep dive into your emotional baggage, can we at least make it about the real shit and not the made-up stuff?" Her gaze nailed me to my spot.

"Only if you tell me what's going on with Jeremy." I thought this might at least buy me some time to think of reasons why she was wrong.

"Sure. He's hot as fuck, has a wicked sense of humor, and he's my brother's best friend, and he has kind of a reputation from when he was younger, which is why I'm sure Jesse is such a buzzkill anytime Jer flirts with me. He's never said anything serious, asked me out, or made me think that he's interested in anything more than being friends, and even if he were, I don't think he'd be willing to cross Jesse. So that's that. Go."

"Why must you be the way that you are?"

"Just lucky, I guess."

"Well, I still want to read for you about Jeremy. But fine." Lauren just looked at me expectantly and ate a cookie. "I've been working through this ‘shadow work' book that Zin gave me, which is just like, questions to make you examine all the shit that's wrong with you and why... so therapy without the trained professional."

"That sounds promising."

"Oh, for sure, it's an excellent idea to sit in all my feelings every night and write down how messed up my brain is. I love it."

Lauren snorted lightly. "Tell me some of the questions."

"Hmmmm, one was about figuring out what my childhood-self wanted more than anything in the world, another was the same but for my inner teenager. The teenager one was a little rough because all I wanted then was..."

"Jesse. Same rules apply to this conversation. Vague generalities, nothing specific."

"Understood. I guess it was a hard one because it made me wonder if I'm trying to satisfy my teenage self or if there's still something real there as an adult Sam and Jesse."

"This sounds like a truly horrible book."

"You're telling me. My most favorite so far is that I had to write a journal entry from the perspective of my mother on the topic of how she feels about me, or what she thinks when she looks at me. That one took a full business day to recover from."

Lauren sighed. Loudly.

"I know that things with you and your mom are complicated on a good day, but Sam, you know she is just pushing her own bullshit onto you, right? Like she's always wanted to be this big-time artist, and so yeah, living a ‘normal' life might feel suffocating... for her . But that doesn't mean it is for you."

"I... I do know that she's trying to fit me into a vision that has very little to do with me. But Laur, it's so hard to try to let it roll off my back. She is my mother , and she thinks I'm failing at life. It's... it's a lot. I wish I could say I don't care and that she's just a bitch, but she's in my head."

"I get it, I really do. I just want you to know that for every negative thing she says, I could say ten positive things about you, your talent, your life . So just try not to let her thoughts drown out all the others. Okay?"

"I'll try. Yeah."

"So has any of this soul-crushing ‘shadow work' done anything to help you figure out what you want to do?"

She pushed the box of cookies across the counter to me, and I happily partook.

"It's made me at least take my head out of the sand. I've been looking at job listings for full-time graphic design work anywhere from Chicago to Toledo to Lansing. I don't know if I want to move further than that. I'd like to be able to drive back to Emberwood if I leave. But the listings are so depressing. I'll have to completely start over as an assistant, and I won't get to do any real designing for possibly years. I guess it's just hard to remember anything I liked about my old job. I always just liked the idea of where I'd eventually be, not where I was."

"Barf."

I laughed, surprised. "Barf?"

"Yeah. Honestly, just cross that off your list."

"You're completely serious. Just don't even consider the job I went to school for."

"So so SO serious. I mean, you can design, obviously. You've been creating designs since you got here. But can I tell you that when I go to work? I'm generally happy to be there. Like, yeah, I have some clients that annoy me. But making people feel great about themselves is just fun. I like the conventions, I like the people I work with, well, mostly just Christian because he's snarky and fabulous, but that's working anywhere, right? I just can't imagine getting up every day and not liking where I was going or just waiting for it to get better for years . I'm not a psychic, and I don't read tarot, but I'm telling you that I'm right about this."

"Am I just completely obtuse that I've never even thought about it like that?"

"Yes."

"Shut up." I tried to sound mad, but I laughed anyway.

Can I just take it off the list?

"Do you hate going to Broomsticks every day?"

"Of course not. It's just not a real job."

"Does it pay real money?"

"Yes, but—"

"Has your aunt lived off of the profits from said business for decades?"

"I mean, sure, but there was also my uncle and—"

"It's a real job. You're a weirdo."

I frowned, contemplating her questions.

"I do like ordering books. And I liked organizing the event and doing readings and stuff. Though it literally has nothing to do with what I've been working toward for the past five years."

"And? Design your own deck of tarot cards and sell them at the shop. Create less-conspicuous book cover jackets for all the shirtless man books so women can read them in public without feeling weird. Design t-shirts. Jesse runs a hardware store, and the t-shirts might be the best-selling item there.

"I'm just saying maybe it doesn't all have to fit into one box. You can have multiple boxes and just pull from each of them when you want. And for the record, because I can't let this one go— there is something there for grown-up Sam and Jesse. I won't be taking questions on that at this time; there just is."

We each stared at the other for a good ten seconds, Lauren daring me to contradict her. In the end, I didn't.

"I will take your suggestions under advisement. Now give me another cookie."