CHAPTER SEVEN

THEINE

( — caffeine, especially when it occurs in tea. )

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          "I SCREWED UP, MOM," Michaela complains, as Yvonne exits the kitchen, standing by the doorway and cupping a mug of tea between her hands. Michaela's own steaming cup is resting on the coffee table in front of her, where it can easily be knocked aside by her cardigan if she moves too carelessly. She is careless and impulsive, let's put it at that. "I screwed up pretty badly this time."

          "You sure did, honey," Yvonne retorts, stepping inside the living room, her flats clicking softly against the wooden floor, and Michaela can't even find the strength to argue that she, out of all people, should side with her. Even though everyone can agree Michaela is at fault this time, the low voice gnawing at the back of her brain insists people should also acknowledge the effort she puts into everything she does. "Have you talked to Ginny again?"

          "Not since yesterday"—Michaela sniffles, sinking even lower into her couch, wrapped in a blanket—"after I ever so kindly hung up the phone mid-conversation. Not even Lincoln is talking to me. I'm not expecting Roya to answer my texts anytime soon either." She pulls her knees close to her chest and leans her forehead against them, exhaling. "God, Mom. I screwed up."

          "Baby." Michaela shakes her head, without looking up, and the air shifts behind her, with her mother's slender fingers tugging at her hair and twisting the strands into an intricate braid. "Ginny is your friend. I'm sure you two will manage to fix things." 

          Michaela has her doubts and knows they're justified. If there's one thing in Ginny's life she doesn't tolerate having it be messed with, that's her career and Michaela nearly ruined the story because she's a dirty coward. She doesn't even know how to word it differently, as she messed up by drinking too much and sleeping with Lennox; as if that wasn't enough, she chickened out instead of being professional about it like she claims to be regarding everything in her life.

          Granted, she could be doing a lot more to fix things with Ginny—and, to an extent, with Lincoln and Lennox—instead of moping around at home while feeling sorry for herself, but the storm that has struck New York still hasn't abated and she's at home with a silent phone.

          Not even Kelsey, who always manages to stay neutral during arguments who don't involve her, is talking to her, meaning Ginny has already spilled the details about what happened yesterday, and Kelsey must have decided it was something absolutely unforgivable.

          Needless to say, Michaela feels downright miserable, despite knowing she brought all of this upon herself by being a spoiled, judgmental brat, like Lennox said. She feels like she's not enough and too much simultaneously, a contradiction that dictates her whole life and locks her up in the awkward limbo between modesty and arrogance.

          "What do you think I should do?" Michaela asks, as her mother braids her hair. The head massage is leaving her too drowsy. "Besides apologizing, because I've done that countless times and she still hasn't replied to any of my texts. We both know she won't, so I could be talking to a wall and getting the exact same response."

          Yvonne pins back the last two strands of hair. "I don't know, honey. You know Ginny a lot better than I do, but, if she's still not replying, I don't think it'd be a good idea to keep pushing it. Maybe her phone died, or something, but . . ."

          "But maybe she's just ignoring me." Yvonne doesn't answer, but Michaela didn't feel the need to wait for a reply. She never has, knowing both Yvonne and Ginny share the inability to give proper advice in this sort of situation, which is something Michaela has learned to deal with since she was a child—if she had a problem, she'd find a way of solving it herself. "Yeah, there's that too."

          "Isn't there anyone you can talk to?"

          Michaela lifts her head, feeling her take a step back. She hates it when people adopt a condescending tone to talk to her, with her own mother being all passive-aggressive about Michaela's failed friendships and her inability to keep a relationship functional for too long. She knows what she has done and what she's capable of, much like she knows every single relationship she's in, regardless of its nature, turns into a time-bomb.

          She knew it was only a matter of time before her damn ego and emotional baggage would screw things up between her and Ginny—Ginny, the one person who has always stood up for her at Union Daily, the one who offered her help when her job was at risk.

          The only person she wants to talk to right now is Ginny. She's her go-to person when she needs comfort or advice, even if Ginny isn't really that good at it, but just being around her filled her with relaxation. They don't even have to speak, and Michaela knows the girl would drop everything she was doing to go help her. Before she nearly screwed up their story, that is.

          Her own bones feel about to explode.

          Michaela doesn't think she's an entirely bad person. That's not even the main issue. The main problem—her main problem—is how she knows she's not a bad person, but lets her bad parts overcome her good ones and is so terrified of commitment and all it entails that she purposely screws up her own happiness. That's why she's perfectly willing to mess up at work, despite knowing she needs this job.

          That's why she's still single. That's why she only has a handful of real friends, ones that she's, somehow, managing to alienate like she did to everyone who came before them. That's why not even Lennox, who was almost as terrible as her back in high school, doesn't want his name to be associated with hers.

          That's why Lincoln left.

          "No," Michaela eventually mutters, even when Lincoln's name flashes on her phone's screen, indicating an incoming call. "No, there's no one."

          "Michaela," Yvonne sighs, pressing her hands against the back of the couch when the phone won't stop buzzing and almost falls to the floor, "just answer the damn phone. Answer the phone, talk to him, and thank him for wanting to be here for you, even after everything." Michaela gulps, shocked by the sudden change of attitude. "I still don't agree with what he did to you, but I don't agree with what you're doing to your friends and to yourself either. Pick up the phone and talk to him. Even if things never go back to how they used to be."

          After a few seconds of silence, with the call being close to getting forwarded to her voice message service, Michaela picks up the phone. Lincoln sighs and apologizes for not calling earlier.

          She apologizes for not picking up. It's not nearly enough.

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          GINNY LOOKS LIKE SHE'S BEEN CRYING. Either that or she has a terrible case of allergies, but she knows for a fact they have the same allergies. Michaela isn't bothered by them in the slightest, so she tries not to think too much about the occasional sniffling that comes from Ginny's desk, on the other side of the room.

          No one in this room looks like themselves today. Michaela, for starters, is wearing jeans and a knit sweater under her trench coat, complete with knee boots. Lennox, whose desk has been placed in front of the windows, in a perpendicular orientation to Michaela and Ginny's, is slouching on his seat, scrolling down his phone.

          Ginny, her red, swollen eyes, and her refusal to look up when Michaela opens the door and steps inside towards her own desk. Lennox doesn't greet her either, but it's not like she was expecting him to; if she's predictable, he beats her by several points, even if the fiasco from Saturday morning had never happened. Michaela wants to talk to them, but there's so much she needs to apologize for she doesn't even know where to begin.

          If this were high school—or maybe even college, only to a certain extent—Michaela could take care of it. Her popularity status could save her from embarrassing social situations, with people being scared of her instead of respecting her, but this is real life. This is where people make it or break down, where their reputation will follow them around wherever they go, even if they switch jobs, even if they move to another state.

          There are things your status can't fix. There are things nothing can fix, period. People and relationships aren't broken vases, who can be put back together with super glue or duct tape—even if they were, things will never return to their previous form. The marks and the scars are there, with rough edges being forcefully pressed against one another and fighting the urge of repelling each other like the equal poles of magnets.

          Later in the morning, when it's close to lunch time, Michaela's stomach is grumbling and her dry apple slices just aren't cutting it, but it's one of the few things she allows herself to eat at work. Lennox still hasn't done anything productive, Ginny has gone back to Candy Crush, and Michaela has written exactly three hundred and forty-nine words.

          Kelsey also stops by for a quick visit to deliver Barbra Streisand's flowers to Michaela's desk. Today, it's daisies, which nearly brings tears to Michaela's eyes, as she'd accidentally let slip during the interview daisies are her favorite flowers, and, while it probably isn't Barbra herself who's sending the flowers and her team chooses them at random, Michaela would like to believe the woman remembered it. There's also a small package, exactly the size of A4 papers.

          She even winks when she slides it across Michaela's desk, marching out of the room with movements as graceful as a ballerina's, and Michaela finds out why when she picks it up, turning it around to see who sent it. There's a light-yellow post-it note glued to the front, and it's the first thing Michaela reads, simply because it catches her eye.

          Mickey,

          the first draft is done. Check it out maybe?

          Lincoln

          With her heart hammering against her rib cage, Michaela slides a finger under the flap of the package to open it and pulls out a stash of papers, stuck together like a notebook, with a spiral coil. She's holding it as carefully as a newborn baby, staring at the four bigger words on the cover page, and part of her wishes he hadn't written it on a computer. Granted, it would take him much longer to get all this work done—the book seems to be, at least, one hundred and fifty pages long on an A4 page—but she misses his handwriting.

          It's a book about her, yet it still feels so distant, so . . . impersonal. So businesslike. It's something she'd expect from her, not from him.

          Lincoln made sure to remind her it's the first draft, the first of many, knowing him like she does, but he also remembered to write something on the first blank page, something that stopped this draft from looking like it had been printed out just for his editors.

          Mickey,

          I'm sorry. Not only because this thing is stupidly unedited, and it creeps me out sending you something like this (please underline any grammar and/or spelling mistakes. Please. Most of it was written from two to six in the morning and I'm almost sure you could write a book with just those mistakes alone), but also because this still feels like a massive invasion of your privacy.

          I know you've given me permission to write this thing—written permission, even, so I'm almost sure your father won't shove me into court when he finds out about what inspired this book—but I'm still a bit iffy about it. I can't change the plot or the premise of it now, as they've already trademarked it all, but, if there's anything that leaves you too uncomfortable, please let me know and I'll do my absolute best to take care of it before it spirals out of control.

          With that being said, I hope you like reading this if you ever decide to do so. I'm assuming it must be weird to read about yourself and your relationship, even with all the changes I've written, but please try to look at it from someone else's eyes, at least as much as possible.

          I'm sorry. For everything.

          You know where to find me if you need me. Needless to say, this book is dedicated to you—my mousse, my moose (hah), my muse. However you want to spell it.

          Love,

Lincoln.

          Michaela closes the notebook. The note was typed on a computer, much like the rest of the book, but it's what reminds her this is the work of a person, of an actual human being, and not a machine built to replace him. She can picture him sitting in front of his laptop, trying to find the right words to say and deleting entire paragraphs in frustration, and she can see the relief in his eyes when it was finally done.

          He had it printed and mailed to her. He attached that little note to the package just so she knew he had been thinking of her all the way through the writing process—not that he had a choice, when he wrote about what he did—and it's what warms up her heart, even though she's not planning on reading it right away.

          She knows where they went wrong. She doesn't need to write a book to figure it out, as she might have caused most of it, but Lincoln has always been the one out of the two of them who actually bothers to sit down and think about his previous actions and the consequences they have brought.

          She jumped head-first into their relationship, anyway. He was the careful one, the one who thought for the two of them.

          That's reason number one. There are a million of them left.