And of course, after all that, Sharon got a small fat-free scoop of vanilla first on a cone, then in a cup; then she decided she wanted nuts on top, and it wasn’t until after I poured the chopped almonds on that she said, “Oops, no, I meant the walnuts.” I got the same thing for Natasha without even asking, and when she started to protest, I shoved it at her with as much control as I could muster. “It’s yours now,” I said through clenched teeth. “Try not to choke on it.”
“Did you hear how mean she’s being to me, James?” Sharon said in that stupid faux-pouty voice of hers. “How can you stand to work with someone else’s castoff when she’s such a bitch?”
“Thanks for coming by,” James replied. “Watch your step on the way out the door. Wouldn’t want you to trip and break your nose.”
Wait a hot minute. Was he defending me?! He was defending me! My heart leapt, then quickly sank back down once Sharon realized that the tide had turned and her latest boy-crush wanted to toss her out on her ass.
“This is just the beginning,” Sharon hissed at me as she pushed her sunglasses higher up on her head. “You’re fucking finished at our school.”
“Yeah, way to pose in a paparazzi photo,” I glared at her. “That doesn’t look desperate at all, Sharon.”
She glanced over at James, who was ringing up the sale. “I don’t blame you for settling for her, James,” she said to him. “You look like the kind of guy who shops secondhand for everything.”
The adults in the room were already out of earshot, so I grabbed her change out of the register and shoved it into her hand. Then I leaned in and let my hair hide the side of my face. “Get. Out.”
Sharon grinned at both of us, but something had changed in her eyes. There was no flirtiness now. It was war. “Thanks for the ice cream, Audrey!” she said. “I’ll be back tomorrow!” She turned and walked out with Natasha a step behind, and I slammed the register shut so hard that it flew back open.
“I’m taking my break,” I said to no one in particular, then yanked my hat off and went to the only place where it was quiet: the storage freezer.
All I did was pace for a minute, my brain racing. I wanted to call Victoria and tell her everything. I wanted to call my parents and tell them to come get me. I wanted to call Evan and tell him I would freaking marry him if it meant the song would never exist and I could go back to having a normal life. I didn’t care anymore about VIP passes or free lip gloss or homemade gifts from fans. I just wanted to be normal, anonymous Audrey.
The day kept crashing over me like a wave and I sank down on a tub of Marmalade Madness and finally, finally started to cry.
The door opened a minute later. I didn’t even have to look up to know who it was. “What, does someone want an autograph?” I snapped at James as I wiped my eyes. “A picture? A commercial? Or do they just want to harass me and threaten me with social extinction while sampling twenty billion flavors?”
James took several slow steps toward me, and when I didn’t reach out and try to kill him, he sat down next to me and very, very carefully, put his arm around my shoulders. It felt like just a whisper of a touch, his arm was so thin and light, but when I started to cry harder, he moved closer and his arm grew heavier, pulling me back down to Earth. “This has been the worst day ever,” I said through my tears. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“I know,” James said, and even though he really had no clue, it was still a nice thing to say. He touched my hair again and again, barely stroking it, and I sniffled against his sleeve and tried to calm down. He was pretty cool about me crying all over him, too. Evan would always get really uncomfortable or say something stupid like, “Do you want me to go?” whenever I got upset. He certainly wouldn’t have sat on a tub of ice cream in a huge walk-in freezer with me, that was for sure.
But James would. And did.
After a minute or so, I finally got it together and sat up, realizing that I was not having my best-looking moment. “I’m really sorry if I got snot on you,” I said as I wiped at my face with my sleeve. “I’ll pay for the dry cleaning.”
He laughed and handed me a napkin from his pocket. “Don’t worry about it.” He had really nice teeth, not too perfect and not too wonky. Definitely a flosser.
“And I’m sorry that Sharon was a bitch to you.”
“Well, she’s a bitch. That’s what they do. They’re bitchy.” He shrugged. “I don’t really care about Sharon, anyway.”
The freezer got quiet then, the sort of quiet that makes every thought in your head amplify ten times in volume. It was so cold that we could see our breath, tiny cloud puffs that came quickly. “What do you care about?” I asked. “If you don’t care about Sharon.”
“You,” he whispered.
It was starting to feel warmer by the second, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
“Audrey?”
“Yeah?” We were so close that our noses were almost touching.
“Do you think maybe you’d want to go out some time? I mean, with me?”
“Yes.” The answer came so fast that I didn’t even have time to think about it. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Audrey?”