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Jeremy was the one who kept telling her those things, and she was starting to believe him. They messaged every day on her lunch break and in between her jobs, like right now. Today marked one week since their first exchange. She felt like she’d known him her whole life. She felt like she didn’t know him at all.
Online dating was strange. But she liked it.
She smiled until she saw the time displayed on her dashboard clock.
“Shoot, I’m late!” She sent off a quick goodbye message to Jeremy and jumped from her car, almost face planting in the snow piled along the edge of Artisan’s Hope’s parking lot. Maybe she was getting too caught up in her online romance. She was never late for work.
“Sorry,” she sang over her shoulder as she passed Debra’s office and her disapproving glance.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Get your act together, Mel.
Plastering a confident smile to her face, she marched into the playroom. Utter chaos welcomed her in.
“What’s going on?”
June’s eyes were wild, and everyone was talking at once. “Rolando quit.”
The room slid sideways around Melody. “What?”
She was doomed. Found out. The whole community would know what a pathetic excuse she was for a human being.
“Where is he?”
“He left ten minutes ago.”
She slumped down, fighting the urge to pull her hood over her head and tighten the strings until her face was hidden. Then stay there till she died. Instead, she called Rolando. He apologized but said it wasn’t working. He couldn’t memorize his lines. He was giving up acting. When Melody pleaded, he offered a few not-so-apologetic, choice words and hung up.
“Hequit?”
Melody raised her chin, and the room seemed hazy, but she made out Debra in front of her, hands planted on a plump waist. She nodded.
“What are you going to do?”
She shrugged.
“No, no, young lady. You need a plan. I answer to a board of directors. If this play gets canceled and we lose that revenue, they’ll blameme. Not you.” A finger jabbed at her face. “Fix this!”
Woodenly, Melody went through the motions. She had the minor characters practice their lines and offered June empty reassurances that it would work out. She knew better. Nothing in life “worked out” magically. Her childhood was proof of that.
When she got home, cold stiff from the wind blasting off the lake and spreading its icy particles through the city, she crawled into bed and curled into a ball.
She was a failure, just like her mom always said.
Tears drenched her pillow. Loneliness gnawed a hole inside her.
When she felt like this as a teen, she prayed. TJ had introduced her to Jesus. But she hadn’t stepped foot inside a church since her mom abandoned her the day she turned eighteen. If she wasn’t good enough for her own mother, she couldn’t possibly be good enough for God.
Whowasshe good enough for?
Jeremy flashed into her mind. Kind, sweet Jeremy. He always encouraged her, pointed her upward and out of herself. She needed that right now. She had never been the one to initiate conversation, but desperation spurred her to reach toward her phone. Opening the app, she looked at Jeremy’s intriguing picture. He looked so much like TJ.
That thought made it all pour out, like water from an overturned cup. She held nothing back. Then she paced her apartment for a minute, tension rising inside her until it nearly suffocated her. The only sound she heard was her mom’s voice, calling her all the things she always had.
All the things Melody was.
“No. No!” She tried to block out the words, but nothing stopped the deluge of negativity flooding her, the self-blame that made hatred snake through her being.
She couldn’t wait for Jeremy. She needed to do somethingnow. Praying didn’t help anymore. Now there was only one thing left that sometimes drowned out the words of her mother.
