The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(45)

It’s bad when you’re grateful for the cold shower.

And yes, I’m actively ignoring that invitation from Teague to use his shower yesterday.

I . . . haven’t earned it yet.

“Gigi, do we need some kind of approval from the health department before we cook for a lot of people?” Tavi asks.

“Only if we’re selling the food. We aren’t selling anything. We’re being good neighbors and giving it away for free.”

“Because it’ll be awful,” my mother murmurs over her cards.

“Will we have vegan options?” Tavi asks.

“I can cook,” Carter repeats.

I start to ask if he can also shut his damn music off before three in the morning, remember I’m trying to be the bigger person, and take a deep breath instead. “I didn’t know that, Carter. What’s your favorite dish to cook?”

He shifts suspicious brown eyes my way. “You don’t believe me.”

“Mom and Dad can’t cook. Tavi can’t cook. I can’t cook. I assumed you couldn’t either. I apologize. I shouldn’t make assumptions.”

The entire cafeteria goes silent.

Rule number three: A Lightly never apologizes.

It’s a sign of weakness. Poor character. An admission of a lapse in judgment, which a Lightly should never have.

Not if she wants to stay a Lightly.

Just ask Uncle George and his plea deal.

I refuse to shiver under the weight of my family’s shocked astonishment at my blatant disregard for the rules. “Good people apologize when they’re wrong. We won’t become better if we don’t acknowledge when we’re wrong, will we? And if we’re never wrong, are we truly good people? Or is this all for show? Do we all get to honestly improve, or do we just throw money and cleaning products and paint and temporary common-person hobbies at the problem until we forget that we lie, steal, cheat, insult, and stroke our own egos all the way to the top?”

No one answers.

Not even Gigi.

I rise. “I have to get to class. If one of you could be so kind as to leave me a note about the menu and what you need me to do and when we’re hosting this dinner, I would very much appreciate it. I’ll start painting the entry hallway when I get home. Or pulling weeds out front. Or whatever other task you need to assign me for having the gall to do something so beneath a Lightly as to apologize.”

I don’t have to get to class.

Class isn’t for another two hours today.

But I don’t want to sit in this cafeteria another minute.

Not when it all feels so fake and when I’m starting to question if we’ve always been fake.

Also—possibly I should leave for class now. Especially if I’m driving myself.

Teague drove me straight to the auto shop connected to Café Nirvana yesterday, and the SUV has a brand-new tire now. The kind gentleman there delivered the car back to the high school for me so that I wouldn’t have to pick it up.

Or more likely, the reason that Teague was on his phone while I was making arrangements for payment was because he was texting the man to suggest he deliver the car back where it belonged so that I didn’t take out any fire hydrants while avoiding squirrels in the road for the whole two-block drive from the square to the high school.

Whatever.

The most important part of my plan to leave for my classes early, though, is that I have a charged phone and a charged tablet, and unlike yesterday, I’m taking them to school today.

Gigi can’t prevent me from using the community college’s Wi-Fi.

In the interest of being a better person, I won’t lie and say I’m not also leaving because I desperately need to reconnect with my real world, even though I can’t think of a single person in my office who I actually miss or a single acquaintance in my social circle who I want to talk to, considering they’ll want all the gossip about Gigi and her breakdown and this ridiculous situation in backwoods Wisconsin.

Wait.

Why do I need to connect with my real world again?

Oh. Right.

Because Antoinette might think I’m dead. I need to assure my personal assistant that I’m not dead.

Actually, she might be glad if she thinks I’m dead.

I woke up in a cold sweat two nights ago after realizing I’d given her an outfit for her dog for Christmas two weeks after it had died. I had her place the order to send herself her own condolences flowers, and I asked an administrative assistant in another department to order the dog’s outfit in a rare bout of recognition that asking Antoinette would ruin the surprise.

Oh my God.

I need to apologize to Antoinette.

Can I do that?

I’m so deep in my own head at the stark realization that the Phoebe I’m becoming here might not line up with the Phoebe I am in New York that I don’t realize there’s a shadow outside the frosted-glass door I’m shoving open to get outside until it bounces back off a boulder.

“Oof,” Teague says.

Not a boulder.

A lumberjack.

“Oh my God, watch where you’re going,” I gasp.

He straightens and glowers at me as a hint of chocolate tickles my nose, making me question for the second time today if my taste buds are broken. One more sniff, and I get his pine-lemon scent again.

“I mean, I’m s-sorry,” I stutter. “I d-don’t need a ride to school today.” I didn’t stutter in front of boys who wanted their drivers to pick me up for school when I was seventeen, so there’s absolutely no excuse for stuttering in front of a grown man when I’m thirty.