The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

Anthony’s loaner.  Car?  That’s what I had said, that it was made of car?  No, it was plastic or something equally flimsy.  And it had broken and bent like when my brother had lined up full pop bottles in the road in front of our house and he and his friends had driven over them for their video channel, the one that was supposed to make them rich and famous.  My mom had watched the liquid spew and applauded from our front porch, not minding how much of her money was running into the ditch at the side of the road.  She was always proud of Anthony.

Luckily, despite the damage, my brother’s car still started, and I drove slowly home to my condo, listening as something under it seemed to scrape along the pavement.  But I didn’t listen to the one minute and forty-nine second message, and I didn’t even look at my phone at all.  When I pulled into my parking lot, I tried to see what had been dragging as I drove, but it was already pretty dark.  I had watched the sunrise while waiting for the stadium doors to open but the sunset had passed while we were in the auditorium with Rylah.  It was also pretty cold to be crawling in the parking lot while wearing tangerine-orange and rhinestone dance shorts.  It was only early spring in northern Michigan, but really, it was never a good time to mess up a nice piece of spandex.  I left the car to worry about tomorrow and trudged toward my building, my tired legs dragging my tired body.

My phone rang again as I hid my hands in my sweatshirt sleeves and started up the steps, very ready to get into the shower and then get into my bed, where I planned to stay until maybe I rooted permanently.  I looked at the screen with a mixture of excitement and dread, but sighed as I saw the name and picture.  Unlike the previous call, I had to pick up this one.

“Hi, Mom!”  I tried to sound upbeat and peppy, cheerleader-ish.  It was good practice for if I made the team.  I had always been a generally positive person, but lately, that had been hard.  I hadn’t really been feeling it, and faking it was sometimes necessary now.

“Gabriella, where have you been today?” my mom started in immediately.  Without really waiting for me to reply, she told me what she had been busy doing with my nephew.  “We started out at the ice rink, because it’s closing soon for the season and he just loves to skate so much.  Then it was his martial arts class, then we went for cupcakes at the new bakery in Leland.  Do you know the one I mean?  And the girl at the counter thought Case was so cute that she gave him a lollypop, too.  He got that little smile and said thank you when I reminded him and…”

She went on about my nephew, who really was very cute, and it gave me time to get into my house, turn up the heat, and check my face carefully to see if the sweat and anxiety of the day had aged me.  I couldn’t afford to look a day over twenty-one, not among those other women trying out for the team.

“And we’ll see you tomorrow for dinner,” my mom concluded, and I remembered to pay attention to the conversation.

“For dinner?” I repeated.  “Um, no, I can’t tomorrow.  Or any night this week.  Remember how I’m helping out with Marley?”

There was a long silence and I could feel the anger in it, floating through the air at me like the cell phone signal, or however that worked.  “You’re going over to a friend’s house instead of being with your family?” my mom asked, her voice very chilly.

I held back the sigh.  “I’m going to stay with her for a few days to babysit.”  Marley was the foster daughter of my best friend Hallie and her husband Gunnar.  They needed to go visit his family in Minnesota, and rather than them pulling Marley out of school, I had volunteered to stay at their house and keep an eye on things.  “I’ll be at their bookstore sometimes, too, to help manage it.”

There was another long, unhappy silence.  “Instead of spending your time on rebuilding your own career, you’re going to work for free at their business?”

It wasn’t for free, because Hallie was insisting on paying me, and I wasn’t in the position to refuse the money.  “It’s actually an amazing growth opportunity!” I told my mother, resuming my perky persona.  “I’ll be able to use their newly-renovated office and equipment to work on my branding.  It’s really a perfect, um, synthesis of necessity and, um, innovation.  And, um, iterative processes.”  I didn’t think that made much sense, but it was how my brother talked all the time.  He had said that last thing about iterative processes when we’d all had dinner together the week before, and my mom had nodded and smiled as if she agreed with him and loved that kind of process herself.  I hoped she would agree with me now.

She did.  “Well, as long as you’re working on your brand,” she said, mollified.

“I’ll do that.”  I would definitely be working on my own stuff while I was at Holliday Booksellers.  I could make some money for Hallie, peddling her merch, and also polish my sales techniques.  When there weren’t any customers, I would use her new computer and all her other nice equipment to try to get my own business off the ground.

I managed to hang up the phone after many more remarks from my mom about my career and my future prospects, about what I’d been wearing and eating, and about the men I wasn’t dating.  Finally, I stepped into the shower.  I tried to wash away that conversation and the other stresses of the day by using a tiny squeeze of the expensive