For his sake as much as my own, I plaster on a confident smile and slide out of the car with watery joints. I’m going to hate doing this, maybe more than I’ve hated doing anything I’ve ever not wanted to do, but I can’t wait to be the version of myself who is on the other side of having done it. The Maybell who stands up for herself. Who cares if I’m about two months too late and this mission probably looks batty from the outside? It’s never too late to make waves.
I am, right this very moment, becoming the kind of Maybell who walks calmly across the parking lot, and the kind of Maybell who pushes through the front doors. The kind of Maybell who stands in the lobby of the building where she spent her entire adult life.
Nothing has changed. The rocking chair that seats eight fully grown humans is currently occupied, camera light flashing, and the lobby smells strongly of chlorine that launches a dozen memories. I can hear splashing and yelling from the indoor water park. What was I expecting? Of course it looks the same. It hasn’t been that long since I was here, even if it feels like a year has passed.
I square my shoulders. On behalf of the miserable Maybell who spent Christmas day handling stiff sheets from the honeymoon suites and having ten minutes shorted from her already pathetic lunch break, I am going to walk up to Paul.
I am going to say,You were a bad boss. You spent all day on Russian dating websites instead of doing your job. You promoted me to event coordinator and then wouldn’t let me coordinate events, and for that, you suckprofusely.I want you to know that I quit because of you.
After that, I imagine Christine will happen by, scowling like always. I’ll tell her to go to hell and it will beeverything. I’ll astral-project into orbit, lighter than air. A feather on the breeze, whipped cream on a cupcake. A living sunbeam.
That’s the high note I’ll leave on. And I won’t, no matter how tempting, glance back at their stricken faces. It’s like heroes in an action movie ignoring explosions going off behind them.
And that will be that. A proper quitting story.
“I’m so happy to see you! Oh my god!” I blink rapidly as someone crushes me in a hug. “You’re back!”
Gemma.
“You looksocute,” she squeals. “Are those shoulder pads?” She pokes my shoulders. I’m so thrown by her presence, which has blown up my vision of how this would go, that I simply stand there and gawk. The only thing about Gemma that’s changed is the new card attached to her lanyard that reads:event coordinator. “What have you been up to? Tell me everything.”
I meet her wide, expressive eyes, holding my breath. And then I realize.
I’m not here to quit after all.
“I am here to tell you,” I say, voice quavering. My hands curl, nails biting into the plump flesh of my palms; the sensation is an anchor, keeping my feet flat on the carpet so that I can’t vacate my body. Then, with a steadiness I do not feel, I start over. “I am here to tell you that you hurt me. And that it wasn’t okay.”
Gemma’s eyebrows jump up her forehead. “What? How did I hurt you?”
“You were supposed to be my friend. But you tricked me, playing with my feelings, and after the truth came out, my hurt feelings still came second to yours. I am aperson, Gemma. You treat other people badly. So I think somebody ought to tell you.”
Her smile slips, lips parting in surprise. I watch her vibrant inner light go out.
“I trusted you,” I go on, trying not to cry. It can’t be helped. I’m not sad about what she did anymore, but baring my emotions like this has me on the edge of myself, and I am so intensely exposed that the tears arrive without permission. “You lied. You embarrassed me. Used me. Took advantage of me. I don’t know how it ever got from you confessing you’d tricked me to us just pretending it never happened and you acting like everything was okay. Everything hasn’t been okay for me.”
“I’m—” She’s sputtering. “I’ve already apologized—”
If I let her interrupt, she’ll take control of this conversation and I’ll never get it back. Somehow, I’ll end up comforting her. “You wanted me to forgive you because you didn’t want to have to feel guilty anymore,” I say in a rush. It drops like an anvil, and she snatches her hands back from where she’s been wringing them in front of her, waiting to be held. Coddled. “Wanting to be forgiven isn’t the same as being remorseful.
“I know you could be incredibly nice,” I go on. “You bought me a birthday cake. We went to the movies together. We went shopping. And that was fun! But I think the reason you went out of your way to be extra, extra nice was so that you could then get away with occasional cruelty. I never called you on it. I shouldhave confronted you, but I didn’t, because even as the protagonist in my own life, my feelings came second to yours.”
Her face is changing color, but the impossible has happened: Gemma Peterson is speechless.
“I let you think that your apologies were enough, even though they were empty, and I could tell you didn’t appreciate the full extent of what you’d done, how awful you made me feel. I should have stood up for myself. The quick forgive-and-forget wasn’t fair to me.” My chest is unbearably tight. I do not feel lighter than air or that all has been made right with the world. Just the opposite: I’m tasting my breakfast all over again. The room spins.
But this has weighed heavily upon my heart, and I persevere. “So here I am,” I finish quietly, “better late than never, to tell you that your forgiveness is not the point. You need to learn how to be a better friend. If you keep treating people like their emotions don’t matter as much as yours, like they’re just background roles in your life, you will end up all alone.”
A pregnant pause follows, in which I expect Gemma to land on habits and gush apologies like she used to. Meaningless ones, because she wasn’t sorry at all—she only wanted sympathy.
She does not apologize. Instead, she is angry.
“Well, I am sorry you feel that way—” she spits, complexion going red and blotchy.
I give her shoulder a mild squeeze. “You don’t have to say anything. Just sit with it, okay?”
When I walk away, I look back once. She’s already walking away, too, in the opposite direction. She is going to go find the nearest person and complain about me, and garner their sympathy. There will be crocodile tears. I’ll be the villain in her story for a while, but then hopefully, as time passes, what I’ve said will sinkin. Maybe not consciously. But maybe she’ll start to do better by others. That is going to have to be enough for me.
Out in the parking lot, I find Wesley pinning my hotel brochures under somebody’s windshield wipers. Little pink rectangles wave in the breeze on every car in the first two rows. He revolves to take me in, squinting against the sunlight. “Well?”
