Page 105 of Famous for a Living

He’s traumatized by a woman who sounds an awful lot like me.

I clench my jaw.

Not just sounds like me.

Is me.

The memory of checking Instagram that very first night on Main Street flashes through my mind. Me, checking as I did every few minutes to see how I was faring as I drove through the snow, in front of the Honeypot. Right there in the same spot.

I’m just as guilty as this woman in Zaiah’s past. The only difference is I happened to get lucky.

The thought makes me sick to my stomach.

Makes my feet restless, forcing me to stand.

For someone who just one moment ago was willing to risk being freezing cold for the sake of keeping up conversation, I now find myself wanting to go inside. Wishing this conversation never happened.

Zaiah stands, concern on his face as he sees my arms wrapped around my chest. I didn’t realize I was shaking until this moment.

“I needed you to know where I came from, Cat. I need you to know my hang-ups. This is why everything within me hates the apps you use for a living. Because everything within me hates what they do to the people who use them.”

He is turning me down. All this, all the fireworks between us, and ultimately, he is turning me down.

“It’s fine, Zaiah. It’s your life. You don’t owe me anything—”

“Why I promised myself I would never, ever, pursue a woman who used them—”

I raise a hand, a white flag, in the air. “Really, Zaiah. I understand.”

“And then you came along.”

My mouth is open, the words on my lips ready to beg him to let me go, to let me leave this conversation and this bonfire with the last shreds of my dignity. But then I gather what he’s just said.

My tongue clicks on the roof of my mouth.

Halting.

“You and”—he pauses with a tiny lift of his lips—“your thousand suitcases.”

I feel the shift in the conversation.

The wind changing.

I have a choice here, to leave or to stay.

I raise my chin.

“For the millionth time,” I say, gathering my dignity, “it was a respectable six.”

“And your vegan oat milk.”

“Can you make fun of a person for lactose intolerance? It’s an actual thing, Zaiah.”

“And the way you can almost get yourself killed by taking a selfie with a moose.”

He had me here.

I press my lips together.