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She climbs into the car beside me, closing the door quickly behind her.
A moment later, she holds out one of the thermoses for me to take. "Here," she says a little forcefully. She's obviously in full Mom Mode.
"What is it?" I ask, grasping the thermos and feeling its immense weight.
"Your medicine. Take a bit of it, and then we'll talk."
I shake my head. "Sheila, I have to drive home after this. I can't drink."
"You can stay here tonight. I'll tell the kids to leave you alone. Now come on."
At her insistence, I twist off the thermos cap and pour a large gulp of wine into my mouth. Sheila does the same.
Though it comes out airy and half-hearted, I snicker at her. "Sheila, I really think you have a wine problem."
"Never mind whatever issues I've got," she says. "What's going on? You wouldn't tell me what's going on over text."
"Sorry, it was just too hard to explain over text."
As I tell her about the blog post and the awful fallout, she listens quietly, her brow falling lower and lower with everything I say. By the end, she looks so angry I would believe she could breathe fire.
"Well, shit," she says once I've finished. "What an entitled woman. Fuck her and all her stupid followers."
"Yeah," I agree. "I wish I could, but I have a reputation now. All of Tinsley Simon's followers are watching this too."
"Maybe you can't fight back, but I can. Fire with fire," Sheila says, her eyes growing dark. "Two can play her game. Hell, if anyone on this planet is qualified to run a mommy blog, it's me!"
I let out another airy laugh into my next sip of wine. "I don't think it works like that. Brittany told me to just sit back and let it happen. These things run out of energy eventually. And I think that means you shouldn't do anything either. You pick up a blog, and they'll trace it back to me or something."
"I was just kidding," she says, before adding, "kind of. But we've got to do something. At least to take your mind off it."
Gesturing with the thermos, I say, "Honestly, the wine is kind of helping."
"More than that, Denise. You just… you look so defeated."
"I feel defeated."
"You can't give up," she insists. "Like you said, you have your reputation. You have Tinsley's wedding to think about."
"Well, maybe not…."
Her fingers clench around her metal thermos, her knuckles turning instantly white. "What did you say?" she asks. "That sounds like… the bakery…."
I nod. "Yeah. I might not have it for much longer." I swallow, feeling the burning of tears in my throat again. "A new landlord took over the building. I got a letter from them that I never renewed my lease. I thought I had, but things have been so crazy that I don't remember if I did. They're planning to kick me out at the end of the month."
Sheila looks like she's about to spout fire again. "They can't do that. Besides, it should be an easy fix. It's not the end of the month yet—you still have time to renew it."
"That's just the thing, Sheila. In the letter, they said they're not interested in renewing."
As I say it, I can't look at her. Instead, I look down the barrel of the thermos into the deep red pool within.
Despite her confidence in me, and despite her willingness to defend me, to continuously put me on an unearned pedestal… Sheila is the one person I didn't want to admit any of this to. Telling her about these problems, revealing to her the precipice I'm standing on, is indescribably painful. I wish for a moment I could take the words back, snatch them back out of the air, and go back to teasing her over a stupid thermos of wine.
When I told Brett about the blogger over the phone, I wanted the comfort only a boyfriend can bring. I wasn't afraid to tell him about that. And though the call didn't go as I'd hoped, I could still believe things would be better in person. That talking to him face to face, feeling his breath, lips, and body on me, would take all the bad feelings away.
He does that better than anyone else ever has.
But even face-to-face isn't better when it comes to Sheila. Admitting to Sheila that I've jeopardized our mother's bakery feels like dragging my soul across a thousand knives. And as her silence extends, tears finally begin to prickle up into my eyes and pour across my cheeks.
