Page 74 of Just For Her

“What hashedone?” Tove asked. “Isn’t that something you should be asking yourself? Is it true? That you only wanted me for money that I don’t have?” She cut Kayla off before she could speak again. “That you’re a fuckinggold digger?”

“Tove…” Kayla shook her head. “I don’t understand. You’re a Fredriksson. Youcontrolthe money in your family!”

Tove’s mouth dropped. “I’m the stupid accountant! Where do you think my own retirement money comes from? Some inheritance? Kayla, Ihaveno inheritance. Aunt Kiersten pays for my mom’s care because I can’t. It’s always been like that!”

“How could you have nothing? Even those spoiled brats who come into my restaurant have more money than they’ll ever know what to do with!”

“I don’t think you’ve ever understood my family’s dynamic.” Tove took a large step forward, although she’d be damned if she laid a comforting hand on the woman who threatened to smash her heart in two. “The side of the family with money is descended from Gustav!”

“Aren’t you?”

“No! I’m descended from Fredrik Fredriksson! The second son of Hans!” Tove couldn’t believe she was shouting this in the middle of a wooded Portland pavilion, on this, her supposed wedding day.I’m yelling at a bride in a white dress.A dress that Tove had paid for on her credit card, completely understanding that she’d have to dip into savings to pay that off before the interest kicked in. “Gustav was the one who inherited the mills and made all the money! My great-grandfather… well, he was a drunk who got himself killed before he made anything of himself.That’swhere I come from!That’swhere my mother came from! Why do you think we lived in a trailer, for God’s sake? Because my mom was some Bohemian who couldn’t be tied down? She kissed feet and asses alike to keep us fed! Because the only thing worse than being a Fredrik in my family is being a singlemotherFrederik. She was a goddamn pariah back in the ‘70s. The only one who would help her was Aunt Kiersten, and that was why I came crawling back to her when my last relationship blew up in my face and I had nowhere else to go!”

“But…” Kayla slapped her hands on either cheek. “You own your own house. You bought it when you were thirty!”

Disbelief made Tove speak as if Kayla were thirteen instead of thirty-three. “This may be hard to believe, but the economy was a very different thing in the early 2000s. I bought my house for ninety grand. With amortgage,and only because it was a bit of a dump out in the country that needed fixing up. I just paid it off a few years ago.”

Grady approached his sister with a gentle hand. “Kay…”

She shook him away. “I can’t believe this is happening.” Kayla looked at Tove as if for the first time, truly seeing her for what she was.Not a Gustav, that’s for sure.Tove felt that every time she went to the country club or the vacation home in Hood River.I’m an outsider. A charity case. Someone to use, because I’m desperate.If Tove was good at one thing besides accounting, though, it was keeping up appearances. Being polite was a weapon in her family, and she found ways to kiss asses that her mother had never achieved. Outside of her return to Bend, Tove had never begged for anything. She had negotiated. She bartered her skills in return for favors, like access to the vacation home that had been built by a Gustav descendent.

Tove witnessed the weight of reality coming for her before it crushed her body.Strike me down now. Please.If there were a God, she hoped He might take pity on her and wink her up to the afterlife in an instant. Such death was better than seeing the look on Kayla’s face.

It was over. There was no coming back from this.

“Tove…” Kayla attempted to follow when Tove marched out of the pavilion with hot tears in the corners of her eyes. Not only was Tove too fast for her, but Grady held his sister back with words that Tove could not hear. She was too far, too checked out to give a shit anymore.

The officiant and photographer saw the look on her face and knew that they at least got to keep the deposit. Tove had lost more than love that day. She had lost her dignity… and the goddamn deposit.

Chapter 21

ChrissyandHueyletKayla stay in their rental that night, but they had no idea what they volunteered for when they brought back a jilted gold digger who had nobody but herself to blame for being left at the altar.

“Tove, please…” Kayla left her second voicemail of the night while pacing in the lounge area. “You’ve got to believe me. I was surprised, that’s all. I don’t… I don’t only love you for your money! Please, please, please pick up…”

She felt like she was in those older movies where the protagonist called an answering machine while the object of her affection drank herself half to death on the couch.The camera pans over Tove, half-dressed on her sofa… then there’s me, ringing the phone again. I hear the words,“Hi, I can’t come to the phone right now,”and start sobbing right after the beep.

Except this wasn’t a movie. The best Kayla could do was text and leave voicemails, both of which went unanswered as the night progressed.

She had returned to the hotel to discover the concierge holding her belongings. Tove blocked her number before midnight. When the reality of the situation finally hit Kayla, she sank onto the couch in her friends’ rental and heaved one sob into her hands before discovering she had nothing else in her to give.

Kayla was still in shock. Perhaps the panic would fully grip her the next day, but for now, all she could do was stare off into space and ignore Chrissy’s offers of friendly solace.

“She thinks I’m some gold digger.” Kayla slumped down the couch as Chrissy served ice cream that Huey had brought back from his walk. “She thinks I only care about her money…”

Chrissy’s movements slowed as she used a spoon to scoop “Maraschino Merengue” into a small porcelain bowl. “To be fair…” she said, and Kayla knew exactly what her best friend would say next, “thatiswhy you started dating her. I seem to recall that her perceived fortune was your sole reason for seducing her that night you were snowed in with her.”

Kayla crossed her arms, incapable of looking her friend in the face. “That’s beside the point. Iactuallylike her.”

“Kayla, sweetie…” Here came the bitter condescension. “You lied about being bisexual.”

That night, Kayla was left awake on the couch while Huey and Chrissy turned off the lights in the rental. As their voices faded into sleep, Kayla wrapped herself in a spare blanket and stared at the small refrigerator not too far from where she lay. Every so often it buzzed to life, creating a kind of white noise that drilled right into her brain.

She deserved it.

I lied to Tove from the beginning…Kayla was a victim of her own making, condemned to watch the images replay in the darkness before her eyes.I told her I liked women. I told her I was a vegetarian. I even lied about being able to ski…Each item on the list was another reason to cringe. The lies Kayla had spun were already liable to twist out of control, yet it hadn’t stopped her from ingraining herself into Tove’s life. She had seen a lonely middle-aged woman with (perceived) cash and tapped into the ruthless sugar baby within her. The one who only understood one mode: survival.

Not every sugar daddy had been gracious when it was time to move on. Some had called Kayla all sorts of names, and others had threatened her safety before Grady or others got involved. These were men who had initiated the breakup, or who Kayla thought could handle her breaking up with them when it was time. Most often, though, they were ready to move on to someone younger or prettier, or they were leaving Portland, or they ran out of money to keep her around. Yet none of those breakups sent her into shock like this one. Not even the sudden ones that shook her very sense of security.

---