Page 74 of You're so Bad

If so, he was right.

“Shauna,” someone calls.

It’s a woman’s voice, and I hate myself for being disappointed.

I turn on the path to see Shelly. I must be the biggest idiot alive, because a sob bursts out of me, and I walk right into her arms.

“Oh, my dear girl,” she says into my hair, rubbing my back.

I settle into her and take in her cookie smell like it’s mine. Leave it to me to waste two years of my life on a man because I’ve always wanted a mother.

“Come with me,” she says, and I let her lead me down the path like she’s the pied piper and I’m a braindead mouse. I gasp because the path leads past a grouping of trees to the edge of the pond, where a little gazebo waits like something out of a fairytale, vines grasping the wooden surfaces. There’s a dim solar light affixed to the top.

It’s much more beautiful than the one I went to for comfort as a child, and I know at once that I’d like to make it out of clay. Maybe with a tentacle gripping the bottom slats of wood, because monsters are everywhere, even in the water lapping beneath lovely places.

We walk inside silently, then sit on the bench, looking out at the water.

“I like your boyfriend,” she says kindly, and I laugh as I cry harder.

“No, you don’t.”

She tuts her tongue as she wipes under my eyes, clearing up the mascara, hopefully. “Maybe I don’t know him well enough to have an impression, but Idolike the way he’s been looking at you all night.”

I can’t take any comfort in that. Leonard’s told me on multiple occasions that he’s a good liar.

But I don’t want to think about him right now, so I just nod.

“Bianca isn’t my choice,” she says to me pointedly, meeting my eyes. “There’s something spiteful and small about that girl. I thought so from the first time you brought her around.”

I nearly choke on my own spit.

“But it isn’t my choice to make.”

“No,” I agree. I pause, my heart thumping. Then I figure I might as well hash everything out. “Why’d you act so interested in my art if you didn’t really want it in your shop? Colt kept putting me off, and then he asked me not to talk to you about it anymore.”

Her hand lifts to her heart, a sorrowful look on her face. “Oh, Shauna. Colt and I went back and forth on it several times, but he…he didn’t see what I did. And then he said you’d changed your mind and didn’t want your art in Craft Me. He told me not to ask you about it because it would make you uncomfortable.”

Which was exactly what he’d told me.

Anger floods me, burning away the tears, and I’m glad for it, because when I’m angry I want to break things. When I’m angry, I don’t feel so broken.

At the same time, I’m…relieved. Because even though I don’t get to keep Shelly—even though she’ll never bemyJelly Mom, at least she didn’t reject me the way I’d thought.

“Oh…” I say. “I see.”

She pats my hand, her face tight. “I swear, sometimes that boy acts just like his father.”

It’s not a compliment. Colt’s father left her two months after she gave birth to him.

“What can I do for you, honey?” she asks. “Can I bring you a beer? A snack? Get your man for you?”

“No,” I say, sounding harsher than intended. “I need some time alone. I think I’ll sit out here for a while.”

“In the dark?”

“It’s not dark,” I say, gesturing to the solar light on top of the gazebo and the stars and full moon over the lake.

“You got your phone?”

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