Except by Meryl.
I flip back to our text thread and spot a message I haven’t had the guts to respond to.
MERYL
My 35th birthday is coming up. Literally the only thing I want is a weekend with my girl. You, me, Paris. No kids, husbands (with or without mullets). No brothers/exes in sight! It’ll be like old times! Pretty please, Kay?
It’s bizarre to be sitting here, waiting to find out how this town will decide my fate when I could be planning a trip to one of my favorite cities with one of my favorite people.
But I can’t keep pretending our friendship can go on when everything has changed.
I will never be her sister.
And I can’t keep wishing otherwise.
“Morning,” a voice says, and I look up from my phone to realize I’m not the only person here anymore.
Not that the woman who said that was talking to me. She’s setting up a table with labels and markers for the event, talking to someone who just came in. And she warmly greets the next person, too.
“Morning, Pastor!”
He grins at her.
And when he nears me, I give him a wave. “Hi, Pastor. How did the food drive go?”
He pauses and gives me a smile that’s not nearly as big as the one he just gave the other woman. “Very nice. Your contribution was appreciated. Though I’m not sure what we’ll do with a truck full of extra produce.” He gives me a half smile.
And I want to kick myself. It was too much, like always. I didn’t realize you could give out too much food at a food drive. “I’m sorry. I should have asked how much you’d need before ordering it.”
He pats my shoulder. “Your heart is in the right place, Mrs. Carville.”
That’s all he says before he walks by.
Panic spikes in my chest with every new voice and laugh. Every footstep feels like it’s part of the universe’s countdown clock, ticking away until my public humiliation is complete and the team is taken from me.
I’m pacing around in a flowy pantsuit the same deep red of the Mudflaps logo. I hope people will subtly connect the two, because heaven knows, if I were to actually wear my own jersey, people would lose their own minds about how I’m pandering or manipulating emotions, or some other nonsense.
Of course, now they get to congratulate themselves for the fact that I’m the out-of-touch billionaire wearing a three thousand dollar pantsuit. What is wrong with me? I’m handing my firing squad ammo! All my sincere efforts and earnest outreach has been twisted to make me look like a Disney villain, complete with a fancy car and fabulous wardrobe.
This is what I get for trying too hard to fit in:
Kicked out.
The front door opens, letting in a wave of heat, humidity, and hostility. I spot a few of Serena’s friends, who giggle about me as they pass. I drop to a padded bench under a faded painting of a sunrise over the ridge the town is named for. Across from me, a folding table holds name tags and printed agendas. Behind that, a volunteer adjusts her reading glasses and calls out greetings to nearly every person who enters.
Not many people greet me.
A group of teenagers snickers as they walk by. I doubt they’re actually tuned in to local town happenings, but they have no problem parroting whatever their parents have said.
No mind. They’re teens. Not the town council itself. It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is freaking fine.
But when a woman in a knit cardigan looks me over like I’m covered in boils, heat climbs up my throat.
I cross my legs and bounce one foot, pretending not to care. Pretending my stomach isn’t roiling. Ignoring how the blood pumping from my heart feels both too fast and too sluggish, like it’s somehow superchargedanddiseased.
I’m going to be sick.
I’m about to hop up and run for a bathroom to splash cold water on my face when I see a boy I recognize, maybe six or seven, wearing a Mudflaps tee that’s two sizes too big. It came from a T-shirt cannon on kids’ night. All of the swag we gave away that night was in kids’ sizes, unlike at most baseball games, where they’re Adult Unisex XXL. I was walking around the concessions when I heard him talking to his mom about how the bigger kids kept snagging shirts before he could.
