She folds her arms across her chest. “So?”
I summon my best customer service voice and try to form kind words, but what comes out is more of a “You can’t return an empty jar.”
She glares at me. “You’re telling me you don’t stand by your products. I even have a receipt.” She tosses a white sheet of paper on the counter.
A brief glance down has me biting my lip to both stifle my laughter and prevent the string of profanities running through my head from making their way out of my mouth.
“You didn’t even buy the cream here.” The receipt is an email from one of those huge online retailers.
She scoffs. “That shouldn’t matter. You sell this product. You should stand behind it.”
I count to ten and then politely tell her to leave. She responds by threatening to ruin me with a bad Tripadvisor review. I tell her no one under forty uses Tripadvisor and to go right ahead.
It’s barely ten, and I’m already done with this day.
My next set of customers comes about fifteen minutes later in the form of three teenage girls. They wear matching blue V-neck sweaters and blue-and-gray kilts. I ask if they need help, but they completely ignore me until finally, one breaks away from the pack and comes over to my counter.
“Wow, you are so pretty. You need to tell me what you use on your skin.”
Now, I don’t normally think of myself as a vain person, but after spending a night with Sunny, my confidence is in need of a boost. I take my new friend through my skincare routine, showing her the products, even letting her sample a couple. I’m sure I’ve made a sale, but when I ask her if she’d like to purchase anything, she smiles with a “No thanks,” then turns and leaves with her two friends out my front door. It isn’t until I’m back behind my counter that I even notice something is missing. The cleanser I showed her when she complimented my pores has vanished. As have a toner, two lip gloss tubes, and a pot of hand cream.
“Those little bitches.” Or am I the bitch? I was duped. Lulled into a false sense of security with shameless compliments. My sole consolation is that those fuckers made off with the almost-empty jar of stink cream.
Now I’m really done with this day.
Tears brim my eyes, and when they threaten to fall, I squeeze my eyes shut until the feeling subsides. When I open them again, he appears like an apparition. Walking briskly down the sidewalk past my window, tall dark roast from Brewski’s in hand.
“Dax.” I only whisper the word, but it’s as if it reaches him anyway. He turns and raises his hand in a wave, and our eyes meet through my front window. I wave back, sending him subliminal messages with my eyes. Dax, if there is any part of you that recognizes how great we are together, give me a sign. He smiles. My heart fills like a helium balloon.
Because that right there is a genuine Daxon McGuire smile.
Chapter 9
The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day ends with nervous energy and a strong desire to avoid spending any length of time in my dark and dreary apartment. The sizable pile of well-loved runners in my bedroom closet hints that I don’t own a Peloton in this reality （who even am I?） and instead get my exercise from a good old-fashioned run. After questioning Other Gemma’s life goals for a few moments, I accept my fate and strap on a pair of Nikes.
By the time I reach the end of my street, I miss Cody’s motivational quotes. And watching Olivia’s perfect abs. And even Miss Calibrated, the high-five creep. Mostly, I miss knowing the exact resistance and cadence I need to burn my 405-calorie workout goal.
However, the soothing pitter-patter of my sneakers on the pavement is almost as good as therapy. By the second long loop around the lakeshore, the cool night air hits my sweat-soaked skin, and I stop stressing about the clusterfuck that is my life. There’s nothing quite like a runner’s high.
There’s also nothing quite like the hanger that rears its ugly head exactly thirty minutes after I get home.
I open the fridge with a beastly snarl paired with high hopes that my love of clean beauty products translates to clean eating. But other than a box of baking soda and my half-filled Brita water filter, my fridge is completely bare. As are the cupboards.
My shower, however, is occupied by a tiny black spider. I name him Frank. He absolves me for accidentally squishing his cousin and we make an agreement that if I vacate the apartment for forty-five minutes, he’ll skitter off back to his web and save us both the trauma of attempted murder by Kleenex.
I throw on my salt-and-pepper Roots sweatpants, pull my sweaty hair into a bun, and grab my old faded pink Abercrombie hoodie.