Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-two

I may be having one of the most tumultuous twenty-four-hour spans of my life, but the internet is having a damn field day. Yesterday the Revenge Exes were social media darlings, and now we're getting unceremoniously tossed into the meme fire to burn.

There's now a Twitter trend indicating I'm no longer Crying Girl, but newly dubbed Lying Girl. A TikTok from the same body language expert from before, pointing out all the "evidence" that Levi and I secretly hate each other, one of which was him scratching his nose. An article with a menacing headline— What Else Are the Revenge Exes Hiding? People from Their Past Reveal All! —that actually doesn't have much to it, considering nobody in Benson Beach would actually shit talk either of us beyond one quote saying Levi seemed "standoffish" in high school and that my "scones tasted dry." (Honestly, more offensive than whoever commented what's all the fuss over this dumb bitch about anyway??? by far.)

I know it's a whole lot worse than that, but I'd only been back from the beach for a few minutes before Sana essentially busted down my door and took my phone and computer away from me before I could get any further.

"I can take it," I say, burrowing into the couch. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not." She jerks her thumb back toward her own apartment. "I have a lovely ocean view from my window, you know. With free front seats to whatever break-up show you and Levi were putting on by the shore this morning."

I wince. "We're not broken up."

"Oh. Well, that was one hell of an emotional display for two people talking about the weather."

She starts rooting through my fridge and immediately locates the pizza box and pulls it out with two Blue Moons.

"It is eight in the morning," I remind her flatly.

She cracks open the two beers like she can't hear me.

"Sana, I have to get down to Tea Tide in, like, ten minutes."

"Oh, sweet summer June. You are not going anywhere near that cesspool of internet gremlins right now. There's already a blob of them waiting outside. Not a line, mind you. A full blob."

I sit up so straight the couch springs squawk under me in protest. "Well, then I really need to get down there. We've only got four people on staff."

"Mateo and Dylan are on it."

"Shit," I mutter, running a hand over the top of my ponytail.

I've barely spoken with either of them. I just sent them both texts on the way back from New York letting them know I was all right and I was coming home. I haven't even had a chance to explain the situation to them, and at this point, I'm not even sure how. "We were pretending to date and then we were kind of dating and then got publicly outed and now are in a self-inflicted limbo" doesn't sound quite as snappy as "the Revenge Exes" did. Especially since both of those just boil down to the same thing, which is: I lied.

"Hey. You basically organized their entire wedding this month," Sana points out. "They can handle a few unruly tea drinkers for a day while some of this blows over."

Instead of handing me the slice of pizza like a normal human, she slides it into my mouth like I'm an ATM. I bite into it as I take it from her, scowling, and she sets an open Blue Moon on the coffee table in front of me, taking a swig from her own.

"Oh. Wow. That felt… collegiate," she says, blinking.

I surrender, taking a cautionary sip of mine. My brain doesn't know what to make of it except to give in to the complete and utter anarchy. I take another sip, heartier this time, and immediately regret it. It aches all the way down, the taste of it sending me back to that night Levi and I spent at the bar a week ago. That night we spent tangled in the sheets of the bed I can see from my open bedroom door. Even the stupid pizza makes me think of him burrowed on this couch, and suddenly it feels like everything in the world goes straight back to Levi, Levi, Levi.

I set the pizza and the beer down, steadying myself. Sana nudges my knee with her foot.

"Tell me what happened."

So I do. I start with the interview ("That absolute fucknut," Sana mutters), get into my great escape ("The Drunk Bus never once let a girl down," says Sana, holding her beer up in the air), and then dive into the details of the entire conversation with Levi, down to the part where he told me he loved me, and I was still too terrified to say it back.

When I'm finished, Sana takes a sip of Blue Moon, staring at the coffee table in thought. When she looks back at me, I'm expecting her to tell me I'm being ridiculous. To go down and fix things with Levi right now, before it's too late. But she just nods and says, "I think you're both right. You need some time."

I nod, picking at the label on my bottle. "Yeah?"

"I mean, I ship it harder than anyone, don't get me wrong. But yeah. He's moving fast. You're moving slow. You've both got good reasons to do it. But I think some time is the only way you can meet in the middle on that."

"Thank you," I say. It doesn't make me feel any better, but right now it's the only thing stopping me from feeling any worse.

She narrows her eyes at me. "You are being remarkably cavalier about this whole thing."

I raise my eyebrows at her. "You forget this isn't my first public humiliation rodeo."

"I mean about this whole mess with Levi."

I turn away, because the more we talk about it, the less "cavalier" I feel. Like now that the shock of the conversation is over and the weight of it is settling in, I'm suddenly restless. Uneasy. Picking apart everything we said, the words each taking on their own weight, shifting against me like uneven stones.

In those few moments of quiet, my throat is already so tight that I know it's just a matter of time before it hits—the humiliation of last night, the ache of this morning, the anger I have for so many parts of it. I feel it looming like a shadow, a wave about to crash into me from behind.

I swallow hard, wondering if it's going to hit before or after Sana leaves. I'm hoping I can keep it together until then. As much as her comfort means to me right now, whatever is gathering inside me feels like something I need to ride out alone.

"Which, by the way, I have thoughts about," Sana continues. "An entire thesis, if you will."

But before Sana can get into it, there's a knock at the door. We exchange wary looks. Everyone we know who has the emotional clearance to knock without texting first is helping at Tea Tide right now. I get up to my feet slowly, squinting through the peephole, and mouth the word " Shit ."

"Just a sec!" I call through the door, then turn to Sana and hiss, "It's Nancy ."

"Well, now this really feels collegiate," she says, diving across the coffee table to hide the beers.

I glance at myself in the mirror—still in my running clothes, hair yanked into a ponytail, decidedly sleep-deprived—and discern that I look just enough on the human side of zombie. I plop a piece of gum in my mouth for good measure, turning to make sure Sana has erased the evidence of our early morning frat party when I swing open the door.

"Hey," she says, looking far more put together than I am in one of her rotation of loud dresses, her bangles glinting against her wrist in the sun. My eyes reach her face and I feel that uneasiness in me start to stir with something fresh. Whatever this is, it's not a casual drop-in. "Do you have a minute, Junebug?"

"Yeah," I say, clearing my throat. "Yeah, of course."

I glance back at Sana apologetically, and she gives us both a salute and heads out. I let Nancy inside, feeling clumsy as I shut the door too hard behind her.

"Can I get you some tea?" I ask.

Nancy is standing in the kitchen area, her eyes trained on me. "No, I'm fine. I'm actually—this is a quick visit."

I still have a week left in August for the rent, but I say anyway, "I'm so sure we're going to hit the three months today. I mean, you saw the people outside, right? We're so close. I can get the check to you tomorrow."

If the words spill out of me too fast, the silence that follows them is entirely too slow. I feel it stretch between us like it's part of my own body getting pulled with it. I don't know exactly what she's going to say, but I can feel the wrongness of it in the air before she says it.

"You don't need to do that," she tells me. "That's actually what I'm here to talk to you about."

"Oh?" is all I can manage.

Nancy breathes in deep. "You know I respect the hell out of how hard you've been working. And I know it hasn't exactly been easy, these last few weeks, with all this… internet stuff going on," she says, making a vague gesture at the air in front of her. "And it's smart that you've been using it to your advantage. But June, we talked about this. And I just don't see any signs that this is going to work as a business model for Tea Tide in the long-term."

My throat is suddenly so dry that it feels like all the moisture has been sucked out of the beach air. "Right. But I, um—I've been working on some ideas. Sending out some feelers for more community-based events." My heart is hammering in my ears. "And you—you saw the new scones, right? Like you were saying, we're revamping things again, getting people excited."

She nods carefully. I'm so used to Nancy being loud and brash that it unsettles me even more, seeing that she clearly hates having this conversation as much as I do.

"Getting strangers excited," she corrects me. "People who are coming to town for a show and aren't coming back. It doesn't fix the problem right here at home, June. All of this hullabaloo is making even your regulars feel unwelcome. The place is so packed that I haven't been able to wait in line for a scone for weeks."

I feel the pizza churn in my stomach. Come to think of it, I haven't seen much of Nancy at all this month. Or any of my parents' friends who usually come in for scones and loud gossip, or any of my own high school and college friends who come in for scones and even louder gossip.

"But it'll die down soon. Yesterday was kind of the big—finale, I think," I say, wincing at the word my brain settled on. "Everything's going to calm down."

Her expression is sympathetic, but her voice is firm. "I remember us having a very similar conversation the last time Tea Tide had a big surge like this. That you were going to address it once everything calmed down."

For the first time in ages, I feel like a kid again. Like I've slipped into an old June and I'm just a bundle of unfinished bones and Nancy isn't just my landlord, but one of a sea of grown-ups in charge of me.

"But we said three months' rent, and I've got it," I say, my voice pathetic in my own ears.

"You offered the three months' rent, but I said a clear plan to make Tea Tide more sustainable. I don't care about the money half as much as I care about the businesses on this boardwalk having long-term, beneficial impacts on our community—not just during the peak of tourist season, or blips like this, but all year round."

She pauses momentarily for me to absorb it, but I can't. I seize on the silence instead, asking, "What can I do?"

Because it can't be too late. It can't all just end like this—not after the whiplash of learning how to run Tea Tide on my own, not after the years of struggling to keep it above water, not after this entire summer of letting the internet tear my personal life to shreds just to try to save it. Not after the silent promises I made to Annie to keep it safe, to keep it the way she left it, like it meant I could keep a piece of her here, too.

"You have a few options," Nancy says cautiously, like she wasn't expecting the conversation to get this far. "You could consider closing shop. Maybe trying something new."

I have to stop breathing for a moment so my eyes don't fill up with tears.

"Or moving Tea Tide somewhere else," she says. "If you're open to the idea, I can give you some contacts."

Her words sound like a distant humming in my ear because none of them are the ones I want to hear. None of them are going to keep the original Tea Tide intact, our vision of a tea shop by the shore, the dream Annie built and I let slip through my fingers like the sand beneath it.

She reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it, a phantom of her usual boisterous hugs. I don't blame her. I probably look one good hug away from falling apart.

"I'll let you think it over," she says. "Don't be a stranger. I'm happy to help in whatever way I can."

I nod numbly. She lets herself out, and I want to be furious with her. I want a concrete urge, like to throw a pillow or yell at my reflection in the mirror or hit the beach and run for miles and miles. I want to be able to break down and bawl out a river the way I did when I was Crying Girl, a quick, brutal, ugly kind of relief.

But the ache settling deep isn't a loud one. It's guilt and it's grief and it's so, so quiet that all I can do is stand there and let it seep into me, one awful drop at a time. It's understanding that there's nothing to get angry at because there's only one person to blame, and no amount of throwing or yelling or running is going to separate me from myself.

I settle back on the couch, listening to the distant sounds of Tea Tide opening below. I close my eyes and try to memorize the rhythm of it, try to hold it while it's still here. But I don't recognize the voices. I can't follow any pattern in the constant, almost violent jangling of the front door bells. If I went down there right now, I wouldn't know a single face. And slowly, dimly, I understand why it isn't crashing down on me all at once. I may have lost Tea Tide this morning, but the truth is, the Tea Tide I was trying to hold on to was already gone.