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When people looked at me, it was like they saw a ghost. It was giving me a completely different identity crisis. In that, I didn’t feel like I had one.
“Wonderful! Call the salon so we can set up a few practice sessions.” Miss Shaw waved as she headed out of the coffee shop.
I stared down at the flyer, wondering if I could make some excuse for bailing. I wasn’t my mom. I didn’t even remember her and now I was going to be compared to her again.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I blinked up at my friend. Had she read my mind? Did she know what I was feeling about my mom?
“About what?”
Isabella stared at me as if she wasn’t sure if I was being serious. After a beat, she listed on her fingers, “The wedding. The dance. Going home with Cash. His truck still being in your driveway this morning. Take your pick.”
“Oh, that.” I sighed.
“What happened? When you and Cash left?”
I moaned as I laid my head down on the table. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything after the family meeting. And even that’s fuzzy.”
“I can fill you in on the meeting stuff if you want, but first, you haven’t been on Facebook, have you?”
“No.”
“Oh boy.”
Oh boy. I knew that ‘oh boy.’ I’d heard it before. Like in eighth grade when Isabella saw Michael Silverman making out with Deidra Hill on our all girls campus after he’d taken me out on a date to The Frosty Frog the day before, which was the ‘it spot’ for pre-teens.
She’d asked if I’d walked through the quad on the way to English, which we had together. I’d said no and she’d said, oh boy.
Or sophomore year, the morning when the cast of Little Shop of Horrors was listed online and she showed up to school with donuts and asked if I’d checked the announcement and I said no, she’d said, oh boy.
“What?” I asked even though I honestly didn’t want to know the answer. “Just tell me.”
“Um, I think it’s better to show you rather than tell you.”
She pulled her phone from her purse, scrolled for a second then handed me the device.
There was a thumbnail for a video that was taken at the reception. I reluctantly pressed play and after about ten seconds of just watching, my shoulders began to relax. I saw myself in the back of the shot sitting at a table staring at the cup in front of me. I looked out of it, but it wasn’t anything too humiliating.
“Skip to six minutes thirty seconds.”
I dragged the toggle bar across the bottom of the screen. I watched as Reagan and Billy waved goodbye to the guests. And then the crowd began to fill the dancefloor. I stopped it at six minutes fifteen seconds. What I saw caused dread to fill my chest.
It was a close-up of Cash and he looked…worried. His jaw was tense and the vein in his neck was visible.
Cash was such an easy-going, calm guy. Nothing ruffled his feathers. I’d seen him deal with belligerent drunks, emotional drunks, loud and crazy drunks, and horny drunks. I’d witnessed people yell at him, spit at him, cry on his shoulder, hit him, try to kiss him and he never reacted. He took everything they did in stride.
But whatever was unfolding in front of him was obviously affecting him. And I had a sneaking suspicion that it had to do with me.
“Who was taking this?”
“It’s on Mallory’s timeline.”
Great. Mallory Belfort. She was in love with Cash. It was obvious to everyone but Cash. I’d asked if he was interested in her several times, and he always said the same thing, we’re just friends.
My fear was that they were friends with benefits. Cash had a reputation of being a Casanova, but I’d never seen any evidence of it. I assumed it was because he was a private person, which meant I had no clue what he was doing or who he was doing it with.
The camera panned the crowd and what I saw caused me to slap my hand over my mouth in abject horror. I was stumbling across the dance floor, pushing people out of the way, with my eyes on my target. Cash.
