Shopping for a Billionaire 4 (3 page)

That makes him look at me.
Really
look at me. The first sign of hesitation flashes in his eyes. 

“In fact, if you can’t even listen to me try to explain what’s happened over the past day, then we never had one iota of what you claimed we had.”

His eyes soften.

“You said a lot of things to me, too, Declan. And I remember every one of them. And you know what I’m remembering most of all?”

He just stares at me.

“When we were kissing at the restaurant that first night, you said:
He has no power over you. He discarded you. Don’t give him that power back. You are worth so much more.
” 

Declan’s turn to look like he’s been slapped.

My own eyes narrow into tight bands as I take my time, letting his own words thrown back at him sink in. His jaw grinds but he says nothing, though his eyes are so conflicted.

“You know what? I
am
worth so much more. You don’t want to hear me out? Too bad. Coffee offer rescinded. Deal off and over. Everything’s off the table. Good day, Declan. Have a nice life.”

“Shannon,” he says as if making an involuntary sound. It’s not a groan or a growl or even a question. Just a statement.

“I’m either authentic and real or I’m fake and cunning. I’m one or the other. You don’t even get to choose anymore, Declan. You took that choice away from yourself.”

I turn on my heel to leave, and then casually throw my final words over my shoulder.

“You can’t have
both
.”

“I don’t want both. I want the real Shannon. And since
you
don’t know who that is…” 

A tingling red ball of rage takes over. Steve dumped me because I wouldn’t turn myself into a pretzel and
stop
being myself. Declan insists that the “real” me, whatever that is, isn’t enough either. I can’t win. 

So I’m done playing.

“You know what, Declan?”

Silence from him. Just that cold, green resolve in eyes that used to smile on me. 

“Go validate yourself.” It takes everything in me not to give him the bird as I walk away. 

Chapter Three

“This is the part where I’m supposed to say he’s an asshole and she’s so much better off without him,” Amy whispers to Amanda as I go through my seventh tissue in five minutes, “but I can’t honestly say that.”  

I am on my bed, wearing an old pair of velour pants that I think my grandma left at Mom’s house before she died. My torn pink shirt—the same one I wore the day I met Declan—is technically
on
my body, but I’ve been wearing it for three days straight now. It could animate of its own accord and walk away. Can bacteria become sentient? If so, my shirt has become a form of artificial intelligence. 

And I smell like bacon and cookie dough. Don’t ask.

“Whoever said breakups are a time for honesty?” Amanda whispers back.

“But I can’t even lie about Declan!” Amy insists. “The guy’s really perfect.”

Amanda murmurs something in agreement.

“I can hear you!” I wail. “And you’re right! That’s why this hurts so much!”

Amanda rushes over with the half-melted pint of ice cream. I can’t even bring myself to take a bite. That’s how bad this is—a breakup where I don’t eat myself into oblivion.

It’s the Breakupocalypse.

“Get it away from me,” I mutter. Chuckles comforts me by settling in my lap and rubbing his puckered asshole up and down my arm. Nice. Not only have I not showered in two days, I can’t touch ice cream, but now I smell like cat butt. 

I wonder if I feed him coffee cherries if I could make cat poop coffee from it and—

Then I remember Declan is the one who told me about cat poop coffee. I can’t even look at Chuckles’ butt without being reminded of the biggest mistake I ever made.

I make another mistake by saying that aloud. “Chuckles’ butt reminds me of Declan.” I sniff.

“She’s turning into our mother,” Amy whispers to Amanda without moving her lips.

“So it’s bad enough I lose Declan, now I’m turning into
Moooooooom
,” I wail. “That’s like learning your dog died and you have a bot fly larva growing on your labia.” 

Amanda peels my laptop out of my fingers. “Someone’s been watching way too many zit-popping videos on YouTube today,” she mutters.

“She’s been holed up in here all weekend, logging in to work and doing reports. She says she doesn’t need to step outside for anything for at least nine days because of a batch of new, overeager mystery shoppers who will do all the in-person work for her and she just has to manage paperwork,” Amy tells Amanda.

“When did you get a penis?” I ask my sister.

All the eyebrows in the room except mine hit the ceiling. “When did I what?” Amy asks.

“You mansplained that perfectly. Over-explaining something that didn’t need to be over-explained, with just enough condescension to make me hate you. Perfecto!”

“She’s losing it,” Amanda murmurs out of one corner of her mouth.

“I already lost it. Lost him. Lost my dignity. Lost…everything.” I lean forward in a slumping motion. A cloud of fleas bounces around me. 

I really am ripe.

Or Chuckles is infested.

“He’s a shallow asshole!” Amanda says with about as much sincerity as Mom telling me she really liked my hair when I dyed it purple in eleventh grade. 

“He’s not. He’s so damn amazing, and I—he—we…” I snatch my laptop back from Amanda and pop it open. “I just don’t know what the hell happened. None of it makes any sense. All I know is it’s all Jessica Coffin’s fault.”

I navigate to a zit video that features a man who appears to have a white-nippled breast growing out of his love handle. A woman bearing a heated pair of tweezers and wearing purple latex gloves performs backyard surgery while a group of relatives sit around a picnic table eating ambrosia salad.

My people. These are my people. This video will be—

“AUGH! GROSS! TURN THAT CRAP OFF!” Amy screams. Chuckles gets up and sits on my keyboard, making the video fast forward with no sound. No satisfying mashed potato goo coming out of the skin of people who view pus as entertainment.

People like…
me
.

“What have I become?” I moan. “I’m one of those weirdoes who watches zit videos.” 

“You’re a woman who doesn’t understand why her asshole ex did what he did,” Amy soothes.

“And a weirdo,” Amanda adds. 

“That was last year. That was Steve. How can this happen to me again. How? Something is wrong with me. I’m damaged somehow. Invisibly damaged. I’m doomed to never understand why men flee from me. Why I’m not good enough. What the fatal flaw inside me is that drives men away.”

“It might be the lack of showers,” Amanda says softly.

I throw Chuckles at her and walk away.

“That was not supportive,” Amy hisses.

“I was about to shove Vicks VapoRub up my nostrils.”

“So it wasn’t just me?” Amy sounds relieved.

“I CAN HEAR YOU!”

“Then go shower!” they say in unison.

“A few more emails,” I mutter. A batch of new mystery shopper applications has come in. I routinely process them. It’s a formality, just a series of emails I have to open and read because— 

“Marie Jacoby?” I shout. Does one of the emails really say my mother’s name on it? 

Amanda presses her lips together to hide a smirk.

“Mom is now a registered mystery shopper with Consolidated Evalu-shop? What the hell?”

“She wanted to do the marital aid shops, and some others, so I walked her through the steps for certification.” In order to get the really good mystery shopping jobs, you have to take an online certification course. It’s not hard, but it’s no cake walk, either.

Pay a fee and boom—certified for a year.

“Mom did all that? It’s bad enough Carol does some of my shops, but MOM?”

“She said that if the company’s paying for her to try out new warming gels, sign her up.”

“I refuse to be her supervisor,” I say flatly.

Amanda looks alarmed, and then we both find the answer. “Josh!”

“Josh is a techie,” Amy says.

“He handles overflow,” I explain.

“Josh is so cute.”

“He’s gay.”

“I know!”

“So Josh can take over with Mom,” I say, forwarding her info to him. There is no way in hell I am mystery shopping nipple clamps with my mother. The sad part is, she’d be better at those shops than anyone else I know.

Sad.

“Quit stalling and get in the shower.” Amanda takes the laptop from me and shuts it firmly.

“I showered regularly for Declan!” I protest. “That’s not why he dumped me.” The steam rises from the shower head as I strip down. Amy and Amanda are in the threshold, like I’m on some sort of watch I don’t know about. Are they worried I’ll harm myself? The worst damage I could inflict would be eating two entire packaged of peanut-butter-stuffed Oreos, and if they think their presence will prevent that, well… 

Too late.

“Jessica Coffin has some blame here,” Amy says in an ominous voice. “Poking him on Twitter.”

“He never cared about Twitter,” I call out. The rhythm and flow of cleansing myself helps. Lather, rinse, lather, rinse, conditioner, leave it on. Soap and clean the filth off me. Rinse. It’s a ritual cleansing. Normally I’d cry in the shower, but my sister and best friend are outside sharing theories about Why Declan Dumped Shannon, and while there’s plenty of fodder for material, the way they’re talking is such a relief.

Because they’re just as perplexed as I am.

The lesbian thing? He knows I’m not. His fury at thinking I’d been using him to climb the corporate ladder and land a big client? C’mon. Couldn’t he tell by how my body, my heart, my lips, and hands responded to him that I was—am—sincerely falling for him? 

Is he a commitmentphobe? Am I just a fat chick he decided to bone because he could? Does he harbor the same snotty pretense that Steve has about wanting a more refined woman? Did my bee allergy turn him off? What what what?

My mind is my own worst enemy, looping frantically through every possible scenario to understand what my heart already knows:

He’s gone.

But why?

And if I can’t have him back, then how can I get through the minutes that become hours, the hours that become days, and the days that roll out and on and on without sharing a look with him? A hug or a kiss, or a casual wink that holds so much promise?

Who else on the planet could I meet with my hands down a toilet and have them ask me out on a date?

(One without a toilet fetish, I mean. There are 588 people on FetLife looking for women who put their hands in toilets. That’s not an imaginary number—I checked.)

I turn on the waterproof radio Amy uses when she showers. “Ain’t No Sunshine” pours loud and proud through the tiny bathroom, and that?

That gives me permission to cry in the shower. Big, fat, ugly tears of pain and abandon. Of promises that just died, of hope that was murdered, of the sound of his name rushing in to fill all the cracks in my mind.

Declan.

How do you drive away the very thing you once welcomed so eagerly just weeks ago?

You start by letting it leak out through your eyes.

I hear the door close quietly and I cry under the hot water for as long as I have tears. My mouth is so dry it should have sand in it. Maybe this is how I try to block out the last few days: death by intentional dehydration via tears.

A soft knock on the door shocks me. “What? You don’t barge in on me anymore? Oh, dear sweet Jesus, am I that bad off that you’re walking on eggshells around me?”

“Mom called,” Amy says.

“And?” I shout, turning the water off.

“She wants you to go to her yoga class tonight, after you’re done with work. Says it will be good for you.”

As I dry off, I groan. “All those old ladies will ask where Declan is!”

“Think of it as a Golden Girls gripefest.”

“That’s not helping.”

“Mom will take you out for ice cream afterwards.”

“Not helping either.” I am sliding my underwear on over my hips and it appears they have shrunk.

“It’s really bad,” Amy says to Amanda.

“I can hear you through the door, you know! Those cheap hollow core pieces of crap Dad’s always complaining about are about as effective at hiding your comments as Mom is at being tactful.”

“Yoga. 7:15. That’s the message.”

“Fine!” I choke out, talking to the steam. “I’ll meet her! But I’m getting toffee
allllll
over my double chocolate chip ice cream and she has to tolerate the crunching!” I shout. 

“I’ll text her for you so she can bring ear plugs.”

I make a sound of disgust so deep in my throat I think I’ve inherited a hairball from Chuckles.

“Amanda and I are leaving now,” Amy declares. 

“But we’ll be back tomorrow!” Amanda shouts. 

“Of course you will,” I call back. “You have to deconstruct my failure.”

“With pad Thai! My treat!” she shouts back. I hear the front door close.

Yoga class, huh?

An image of Declan’s tight, muscled ass in workout clothes at the only yoga class he attended makes my heart race, my mouth feel like sandpaper, and parts farther south get moist. Moister than they are from the shower. And then the tears return.

One of the hardest parts about breaking up with someone is that moment when you realize they will never, ever touch you again. Not once. Not one stroke, one love pat, one kiss, one lick, one thrust—nothing. Dry and barren defines your new relationship, and the deep intensity, the push and pull, the dance that was all-consuming in getting to know them and defining and redefining boundaries, it’s all…gone.

Just gone.

All done.

Over and out.

Forever.

I’m never going to have Declan lace his fingers through mine.
Never
rest his palm on my ass and squeeze.
Never
thread his fingers through my hair and tug gently as he kisses me with such urgency you’d think we had to make love before the house stopped burning.

Never.

Never
is a long time.