Just My Type(9)

“Grande caramel macchiato with extra caramel for Member!” Karen shouts a few minutes later, as she moves away from the coffee machines, holding my cup up while she looks out into the sea of customers standing around me.

With a sigh, I wave my hand as she distractedly hands me my cup, which has the word Member written in black Sharpie up by the lid.

“Seriously? You thought I said my name was Member?”

Karen doesn’t even answer me. She just shrugs and moves back down to the cash register to help the next person.

Fucking Karen.

As I make my way through the crowded coffee shop and snag the last empty table in the corner by the window, I look around at all the people sitting at tables, talking, laughing, and having a grand old time. Taking a sip of my coffee helps me swallow past the lump in my throat before I start crying in the middle of a crowded Starbucks on a Monday morning like a total loser.

I’m so tired of feeling alone. I know I have Brooklyn, and Clint, and my parents, and I talk to them all the time, but it’s just not the same as having someone sitting right next to me, holding my hand, and giving me hugs and support when I need it the most. I miss walking down the street and being stopped every couple of feet because I know everyone and they know me. I miss walking into any single business on Main Street in White Timber, and everyone shouting my name, and they’re generally interested in how my day is, not just asking because it’s one of the five things they were taught to ask during employee training to make the customer feel special, when they don’t even give a shit about your day. I’ve only been able to go back home twice since I moved here. The first time for Brooklyn’s bridal shower, and the last time for her wedding to my brother. I haven’t been able to afford going back since then. Brooklyn and Clint and the girls have come here to visit a bunch of times, but it’s just not the same as being home.

And they never stay long enough. Like, forever.

I miss having friends. I miss being social. I miss being able to call up anyone I could think of, and they’d drop whatever they were doing to meet me for coffee, or dinner, or drinks, or just come over and sit in my living room to talk. It’s not like I haven’t tried to make friends here. I tried so fucking hard in the beginning I’m embarrassed for myself when I think about it. I toned down my sarcasm and my fifteen-year-old boy sense of humor, and I did whatever I could to fit in with Brandon’s co-worker’s wives, and the moms at Lincoln’s fancy private school that Brandon insisted he attend. They took one look at me and knew I didn’t belong in their circle.

Recent misery and depression aside, I’m not always a slug who never showers and wears the same clothes every day for a week. But I’m also not a fancy-ass snob who only wears designer clothes and six-inch Louboutin’s to run to the grocery store for milk. I’m a small-town, country girl at heart. I like my jeans, I like my T-shirts, and before I moved to Chicago, the only time I put on a dress was for a wedding or a funeral. I worked on a farm all my life, for fuck’s sake. What did I need fancy shoes, clothes, and purses for? But still, I filled my closet with all that crap when we moved here to make Brandon happy. I put on the fancy clothes, the fancy shoes, and I toned down the dick jokes, and cut back on the F-bombs. I faked my smiles and my laughs, but still, no one let me in.

The first time I walked Lincoln to his private school, everyone thought I was his nanny. I wore a Hastings Pumpkin Farm hoodie, a pair of leggings, and tennis shoes, like a normal person walking five blocks before 9:00 a.m., who’s just going to turn around and walk right back home to do laundry, clean toilets, and plan dinner. When I tried to make a joke with the other moms about how I didn’t realize school drop-off was a fashion show, they wanted nothing to do with me. Who the fuck walks their kid to school in a Prada pantsuit anyway? Fancy-ass, snobby people—that’s who.

I would give anything to be able to just pack up Lincoln’s and my shit and move back home, but I can’t. Thanks to the jerk I married, and the fact that we had lived in Chicago for three months when he asked for a divorce, this is where I have to stay according to the custody agreement. As long as Brandon is here, we’re here. I have to start making the best of it, instead of wallowing in misery and wishing I could leave. Lincoln hasn’t had an easy time of it either, all thanks to that damn school and asshole kids who bully him because of his size, and because he likes talking about the farm where he grew up. How can I continue to tell him that he’s amazing, and perfect, and he needs to stand up for himself and be proud of who he is, when I’m not doing the same? How do I expect him to settle in and be happy here in this big city we’re still not used to, when I’m not settled in or happy, even though I fake it as best as I can in front of him? I want to actually be happy. I want to have fun. I want to stop faking it and actually do it.

Setting my coffee cup down on the table, I pull my cell phone out of my purse that’s hanging on the back of my chair and open my email app.

Clicking on the email from the Shit Mouth/Baker guy, I read it five more times as I sip my coffee, on top of the hundred or so times I glanced at it on the walk here, and the four times I read it to Brooklyn over the phone while I walked. Even though it says right in the online employee handbook that it’s against the rules to communicate back and forth with a client, and Just My Type even sent out an email telling us not to communicate personally with a client, it’s not like I hunted this guy down and stalked him. He emailed me, because of their screw-up. At this point, it would just be rude not to reply, especially if he still wants me to do his transcription work. And shit mouth aside, I really hope he does. I need this money. And his email made me genuinely smile for the first time in a long time. I need more of that too.