Page 51 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

It stunned me to hear my past dragged up now, a decade later—a decade during which I had proven myself to be a damn good mother, no matter how young I’d started.

“How rude,” I said. “You might want to watch what you say, Estelle, or those strawberry candies could be your last.”

Estelle clutched the bag of candy to her chest protectively. “I’m seventy-seven. You can’t blame me for what comes out of my mouth these days. I might even be going senile.”

“You’re as sharp as you were at twenty-seven,” I said. “And that didn’t sound like an apology to me.”

“Maybe I was senile at twenty-seven, too. You don’t know. You weren’t even born yet.”

Lillian rolled her big brown eyes behind her glasses. “Shut up and eat your candy, Estelle. Don’t you go getting us into trouble at Sweet Things. I want my gummi worms. Anyway, Kate is a sweetheart.” She smiled at me. “Don’t you mind Estelle, baby. Her blood sugar is low. Makes her crabby.”

“I had sex when I was seventeen,” Maud said cheerfully. “I just didn’t get caught.” Estelle and Lillian turned their heads slowly to look at their friend. “Don’t give me that look. I wasn’t the only one. Anyway, don’t forget, they canceled that sex ed class on account of the parents who complained it would lead to children actually having sex, so maybe Kate didn’t even know better.”

“Of course she knew better,” Lillian argued, handing over cash for her candy. “She had the internet, didn’t she? Everything is on the internet.”

“Condoms aren’t on the internet,” Maud said. “Not if you’re under eighteen, because you need a credit card to purchase things online. And you can’t just buy them at the pharmacy here in town, because Mr. Dixon keeps them locked behind the counter.”

I choked back a laugh as the ladies argued about teen pregnancy rates and the inaccessibility of condoms. Who knew the septuagenarian mafia was so passionate about birth control?

I leaned forward, unable to resist adding a little gasoline to their fire. I gave the ladies a somber look. “Did you know that the rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis in adults over sixty-five have doubled in the past decade? Condoms don’t just prevent babies, you know.” I enjoyed the expressions of gaping shock the ladies stared at me with. “Here’s your gummi worms, Lillian. Y’all have a great day now.”

I watched them go, feeling triumphant. But then my smirk faded.

It wasn’t just Steven who disapproved of me being with Max. Apparently, the whole town felt some kind of way about it. That was to be expected because everyone had loved George.

But I hadn’t expected to be chastised like I was seventeen all over again. Like I was still a cautionary tale. I didn’t want to be that Kate again. I liked being liked. Maybe being the town sweetheart had its drawbacks, but it was better than being the town screw-up.

For the first time in years, I felt…unsure. Lost. I knew who I had been then, before George. I knew who I had become after he died, who I had continued to be up until a month ago, when I had met a handsome stranger at a bar and gone back to his room. And now?

Now who I had been then and who I was now had collided inside me, but neither seemed to fit.

But at least both Kates agreed on one thing: This was Max’s fault.

Max

I jumped at the loud pounding on my office door. It was past five o’clock; the staff had all gone home for the day. As far as I knew, the school was empty, except for the janitor.

I got to my feet, because whether it was an irate parent or student, I wasn’t one to greet threats sitting down. “Come in,” I said cautiously.

Kate stormed in, halting abruptly when she saw me, and narrowed her eyes. “Elbow patches? Seriously.”

I blinked, pushing my glasses higher on my nose. “What’s wrong with elbow patches?”

She looked away, muttering something about incongruent hotness, whatever that meant. I thought my chunky cream-colored knit cardigan—yes, with leather elbow patches—was entirely appropriate for the crisp autumn weather. There wasn’t anything incongruent about it.

Something was off. I came around my desk, then leaned against it, arms crossed, and studied her. She paced around the room until she came to a sudden stop in front of a motivational poster of a gray tabby kitten clinging to a branch by its front paws, a cheerful Hang in there! underneath its dangling hind paws.

“I hate this with my whole heart,” she announced. Fervently.

Cutesy motivational posters weren’t my taste either. I had removed the principal portraits, relegating them to a hallway near the theater, because every time I looked at Mr. Tingle I wanted to draw a dick on his face. My office walls had remained bare for a week, until last Friday, when Christine Liebowitz, the PTA president, had hung the poster herself, to “brighten up the place.” But still, the way Kate said it made me think this wasn’t about the cringiness of the poster.

“You’re in a bad mood,” I remarked.

It was the wrong thing to say.

She rounded on me, brown eyes narrowed to angry dark slits. “I am not in a bad mood. I am never in a bad mood. I am the person who always says yes. Cheerfully.” She glowered. “I own a candy store. I am a goddamn delight. Ask anyone.”

“Sweetheart, right now—”

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