Page 94 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
For a moment, I am distracted by the small selection of gifts just by the cash register. One of them is a small vintage hotel-style key chain that readsPLANT DADDY.
I take one to the counter and the teen running the register smirks as I hand her my card.
As I step out of the store into the small breezeway where I left the cart, someone tugs on my elbow and turns me to face them.
Uh-oh.
Veronica Balentine is mad. Very, very mad.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Maddie
Veronica Balentine is so mad that her lips barely open as her words grit through her teeth. “Please tell me I did not just watch my leading candidate buy Bram Loe aPLANT DADDYkey chain after she canoodled all over this establishment with him.”
“Ah,” I say, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “I much preferred you in your role as the Unsinkable Molly Brown.”
Beside us the automatic doors keep opening and closing, unable to decide if we are going in, out, or staying put.
“This has gone beyond playing with fire.” She shakes her head, features hard and unforgiving. Nothing about her feels almost warm like it did on Halloween night. “You’re done,” she says, and turns for the door.
This time it’s me who is yanking her elbow, forcing her to turn back. “No,” I tell her. “You can’t do that.”
She pulls away from me but still stands there in the open door. “You received strict instructions, and you were unable to follow them. Not only were those instructions—oh, I don’t know, actually important, but what does this say about your ability to cooperate in the future?”
“I’m not your fucking puppet, Veronica.”
“Oh, trust me,” she says, “you’ve made that very clear, and it’s actually what I like about you. But there is a game to be played, and either you’re willing to play or you’re not. If Bram Loe and his years of baggage are worth throwing away everything at your fingertips, then that’s for you to decide. You’re a big girl, Maddie.”
I cross my arms over my chest in an attempt to appear confidently defiant, but squared up against Veronica, I look defensive, like I have something to apologize for.
And the truth is that I do. Veronica is right. She never lied to me about the rules of the game. I let myself get to this point knowing full well that Bram and I would never be able to be anything more than—
“Physical,” I blurt. It’s a lie the moment I say it, but the truth I do know is that the only person who can guarantee my future is me. Even if I do love Bram Loe and I tell Veronica to move on to the next most eligible candidate, Bram and I could simply just not... work. It’s cruel, but it’s true. It’s a gamble I can’t afford. At this moment in my life, I am not in the position to say no to someone like Veronica and the people she works for. I wish I had the luxury of exploring what things could be with Bram, but after four years of belonging to someone to the extent that it was the first thing and most important thing to know about me, I can’t spend another moment making a decision that is not entirely for my own future.
“It’s just physical, Veronica. I’m—I was stupid and I let things get out of hand. I never should have gone out in public with him. But I’m done working for him in less than two weeks, and then we have no reason to even be in each other’s proximity. You can rest easy—Bram Loe and I will basically be strangers by December.”
She shifts from foot to foot for a moment and then rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms.
“I don’t give second chances,” she says, her gaze trained on some point beyond me, like she’s thinking of every version of this going south. She snaps back to me and points a finger, nearly poking me in the chest. “Do not make me regret showing you mercy. End it with the moss doctor. If you don’t, I will personally see to it that you are unelectable, and I don’t just mean in certain natural gas or big donor circles. I mean everywhere. There’s plenty of skeletons to choose from. Your brother marrying a sex worker. Lying on your mother’s medical forms several times. The video of you yelling during your lecture that I scrubbed from the internet. I could ruin you for the most mundane reasons, and I promise I would enjoy it. I don’t break promises, Maddie.”
“Neither do I,” I tell her. My heart hardens into a fist, and I want to hate her, but I see too much of myself in her narrowed eyes. I know that her sharp edges were all born out of necessity. “It’s over, Veronica. I promise.”
She gives me a single nod before disappearing into the parking lot, where I spy her son and her wife loading up a very shiny and very expensive SUV with pumpkins and gourds of all sizes.
I look down at the key chain that I’d been rubbing between my fingers for our entire conversation and I tuck it into the pocket of my jeans.
This is fine, I tell myself.This was never permanent. This was always about feeling good in the moment. Neither of us promised the other the future.
I walk outside through the electric door that’s been wide open for a few minutes now and as I turn the corner, Bram is standing there with his arms crossed over his chest. The same chest covered in coarse hair that I’d run my fingers through just hours ago.
“Strangers by December,” he echoes, his voice low and rumbling.
“Bram—” I start.
But he’s already turning around and heading toward the truck. “We should get back.”
The car ride is agonizingly silent.
