I lurched from the booth without looking at him, grabbed my purse, and walked straight out the back exit to my car. Miles tapped on the window as I was buckling in.
“Ellie, talk to me.” His voice sounded like it was underwater through the noise-dampening features in the car.
I pushed the ignition instead, and the car purred to life.
“Ellie, come on.” He was louder now, more insistent, so I lowered the window halfway.
“How could you do that, Miles?”
“Do what?”
“Drag all of that up for her? Let her sit there and talk about it? She’s going to run that tomorrow, and everyone in my office, every client I work with right now, and probably every client for the foreseeable future, is going to know that’s me in that meme. It took me almost six years to live that joke down, and now people are going to throw that at me everywhere I go. ‘Don’t have a meltdown, Ellie.’ ‘Thanks for showing me this property, but it’s so not my thing,’ wink-wink. They’ll think they’re being funny, but every time it happens, they’ll be forcing me to live for a few seconds as the worst version of myself.”
“I know it sucked, but it won’t be as bad as you think. It’ll be annoying for a few days, but people will forget again. Play it off, roll your eyes, say, ‘So glad I grew up,’ and people will let it go.”
“Let it go,” I repeated, my voice flat.
“Yeah. You kind of have to.”
“What about the fact that everyone is going to think that I’m working with you because I was madly in love with you back then? They’re not going to take me seriously as a professional.”
“Miles?” called one of the lighting guys from the back door.
He took a step back from the car, casting a glance toward the building. “Ellie, I—”
“Go, Miles. You’ve got a lot to do.”
“I do, but I want—”
“Don’t worry about it. Take care of business. I understand.” I understood that Miles still didn’t get how hard those years had been for me, how I’d had to reshape my dreams and find new ones that I could chase without dragging the baggage of my single stupid moment with me. I understood that he had no idea how painful it had been for him to smile through Kyla’s ambush and treat me like a polite acquaintance for the sake of publicity.
“It doesn’t seem like you’re okay,” he said, not making a move to leave.
I banged my fists against the steering wheel. “Of course I’m not okay. My boyfriend just used the worst thing that ever happened to me as a PR move to promote his club. Nothing about that is fine. Move, Miles.”
He took a step back almost on reflex, opening his mouth to argue or defend himself, but I reversed and pulled away, not looking back.
