Page 27 of A Taste of Vanilla

My phone buzzes in my lap.

Marley.

I answer it before the second ring.

“Are you still in the car?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Doors locked?”

“Yeah.”

“Location on?”

“Yes, Marley.”

“Still near the Wawa?”

Oliver’s voice grumbles on the other line. “We’re watching her location right now, Mar. She’s still there.”

“Unless the Wawa is following me,” I tell her anyway as I look through the windshield at the sign.

“Okay, good.”

“Marley?” I ask with a sigh.

“Yeah?”

“I’m really embarrassed.” I sit with it, letting it seep into my bones. Embarrassment. Shame. Every name in the book.

She pauses for a moment, and when she speaks, her voice is softened in that way that makes me want to cry again. “I know, hon.”

“I dropped my ring into his coffee.”

Another pause.

“You did what?”

“His iced Americano. Technically, it was in a mug first. A monogrammed one. It felt symbolic somehow.”

“Halston,” she says firmly.

“What?”

“That is the hottest thing you’ve ever done.”

A laugh bursts out of me so suddenly that I nearly cough. “It didn’t feel hot, it felt deranged.”

“History is written by deranged women with good instincts.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“I think it is.”

I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and immediately regret not having tissues. I could walk to the Wawa sitting in front of me, but that would mean leaving my car on the side of the road and if my bad luck continues… I don’t want to think about it.

Instead, my center console is packed with lip gloss tubes, a few crumpled-up gas-station receipts, a pair of earrings, and a little packet of crushed saltines from some takeout soup I had back in March. But no tissues.