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She’s not the girl who’s going to forgive me with one apology.
She needs to see that I’m all the things she deserves—that I believe in her. I believe in us. I believe in our future together, and I won’t ever leave her again.
I need her to see that this was just my fear that I needed to deal with, but it was knowing she’d be there on the other side of it that eventually showed me how to get the fuck over it. She needs to know I can’t and won’t go a single goddamn day without hearing her voice.
And maybe most of all, I need to show her that one simple question from my mother turned me into someone else.
I’m not the same guy who left two weeks ago for camp.
That guy would have heard her rejection and walked away. That guy would have believed it wasn’t worth fighting for.
I’m better than him. I’m the guy who’s going to fight to win her back…whatever it takes.
And I know just where to start.
She leaves, and I put my plan together. I make a few calls and get some things lined up.
I bide my time and wait for the next morning when I’m sure she’ll be at the bakery.
It’s my one day off before the local leg of training camp begins, and instead of taking the day to rest and relax as was recommended by our coaches, I’m on a mission.
I still have the spare key for her house, so I grab a few empty boxes and toss them in the bed of my truck before I jump in and head over. The house is quiet. She’s the only one who lives here now, anyway, and she’s at work.
I grab a couple of the boxes out of my trunk and head toward her closet. I have absolutely no idea what this shit might be worth, but I looked up a local consultant who was happy to take a look at the inventory and let me know what it's worth in exchange for a pair of tickets to an upcoming game.
Am I using my connections to try to get what I want? Fuck yeah, I am. What's the point of having connections if you don't use them?
I start emptying the shelves of the Radiance skincare products. There are hundreds of white boxes with black writing on them: cleansers, toners, serums, scrubs, soaps, moisturizers, haircare, suncare, retinol, makeup. At the beginning, I look at every single label. By the end, I'm tossing shit into the boxes, hoping that I brought enough empties with me to get all this shit out of here.
I navigate over toward the coffee shop where I agreed to meet this consultant. It's obvious which one is her since she has a giant sticker in the back window of her car that lets the world know she is a Radiance Independent Consultant—along with her social media handle to make it easy to find her.
She must really be into this shit. Ava clearly is not.
I get out of the truck. She must recognize me because she gets out of her car at the same time.
“Melanie? I ask.
“So nice to meet you,” she says. “Let's take a look at what you have.”
I open the boxes for her and show her all the stuff Ava has stored in her closet for who knows how long.
“Wow,” Melanie breathes. “This is…well, it’s a jackpot. It’s a tier five VIP box.”
It’s a little incredible she can look through a few boxes and know exactly what she’s looking at. “What does that mean?”
“All the consultants start out at fifteen percent commission, but each tier gets you a better rate. By the time you’re at the tier five box, consultants keep thirty percent commission.”
“What are you?” I ask.
“Tier five. It’s the max.”
“So…do you want all this shit?”
She narrows her eyes at me like calling it shit is an insult.
“How did you find all this? Is it…” She glances around. “Is it an underground, back-alley kind of thing?”
I can’t help but laugh at that. Do people really do that? “No,” I say as I hand her an envelope with two tickets in it to our home opener. “It’s my girlfriend’s. I’m just trying to help her offload it.”
