Page 123 of Overtime
I shake my head and fiddle with my gold Sharpie that matches the pretty crown on the cover of my debut book. I’ve been so overwhelmed the past few weeks with school, tutoring, finishing my hockey romance so I can start preparing it for self-publishing after graduation, a PCOS diagnosis and the ensuing research, reconnecting with Mom and… and um, the whole thing with a certain boy… that the launch day crept up on me. Don’t get me wrong, I did as good a preorder campaign as I could on a student budget and with limited support from my publisher. But this goal that had felt so out of reach, so far away for so long, is now realized.
It occurs to me now that graduation is just around the corner, which will put the wordsThe Endto the college chapter of my life. And I’m not ready to say goodbye to this life just when I was starting to have fun with it.
Great, now I’m teary again.
The doorbell chimes, signaling a new customer, and I automatically plaster on a smile, hoping it’s a potential reader. But the person who walks in is the very last one I expected.
I blink really hard. “Rebs?”
She gives me a tentative smile that looks like a grimace, and something about it tells me this isn’t a coincidence. She must’ve seen my posts about the event on my author social media pages. I figured she had unfollowed me when I moved away. I sure unfollowed her.
Stretching to glance around her and out the windows, I don’t see neither hide nor hair of the other mean girls. Huh.
“Um, hi,” she says as she approaches the table.
Mom, who now knows everything that went down between Rebs and me, gets in the way with her arm raised to the side. Words dripping with sarcasm, she says, “Excuse me. Strangers must stay behind this line.”
“Yeah, we have to protect the talent,” Justin gruffs behind me.
“Oh, okay.” Rebs clutches something against her chest, and I only catch a glimpse of what it is as she extends it toward Mom. “Can I please get an autograph?”
It’s my book. Rebs preordered my book.
A gasp is all I’m capable of. I meet her eyes, and she bites her lip.
“I’m sorry, Maddie. I’m sorry it took me so long to understand that I should never have traded you for popular girls. You left my name in the acknowledgments, and it nearly broke me, you know?”
Choked up, I confess. “To be honest, it was sent to print months ago. It was too late to change it.”
“And you would have?”
I cringe. “Probably.”
Here she is apologizing, and maybe I could’ve lied for her benefit, but I’m done with lying to myself to please others.
Rebs doesn’t seem offended. She nods as if she expected this answer. I reach over and hold my hand out, and for a moment, no one moves.
“I’ll sign it.”
She springs into action and hands me the book. Mom leans over to catch what I’m about to write, so I hunch over and use my hair as a curtain to hide my scribbles. Once I’m done, I sign with an extra flourish, set the marker down, and return the book with a salesperson smile.
“Thank you so much for coming to my signing. I hope you enjoy the book!”
Rebs picks it up, and with one final watery smile, she turns around and marches out of the bookstore with her shoulders drooped. She doesn’t know yet that what I wrote is:
To Rebs,
The protagonist’s best friend was based on you, because you were mine. We may never go back to being exactly that way, but we can start over and go on a new journey, just like the leads of this book.
Your friend (and now published author—squee!),
Maddie
PS I miss our couch.
I’m sure she’ll text me when she reads it, and I’ll read the text because I never blocked her on my phone. I always left that channel open for her, and for her only, because I always knew deep down that she was also a victim of the others.
Realizing how far I’ve come, I sag against my chair with a sigh. All I need now is a pizza from Romano’s with my family, maybe a movie at home with Ryan, and a nap that lasts for three days.
