Not Your #Lovestory

  NOT

  YOUR

  #LOVESTORY

  SONIA HARTL

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  For Rebecca Podos, who always believed in me, even when I’d forgotten how to believe in myself.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  I SPENT SIX MONTHS planning for the Kansas City Royals game—quietly hoarding a few dollars each week, going behind my mom’s back to arrange the day off, finally getting my license so I could drive. She’d been a Royals fan since Gramps took her to a game for her fifth birthday, and she hadn’t been back to one since. Everything had to be perfect.

  When I handed the tickets to the man behind the booth at Gate D, he tipped his hat to me. “I hope you and your sister enjoy the game.”

  “Thanks.” He wasn’t trying to flatter us, and I didn’t bother to correct him. Trying to explain how my thirty-five-year-old mom had an eighteen-year-old daughter took a lot more energy than I was willing to expend on strangers. I’d learned that lesson a long time ago.

  Mom practically bounced on her toes as we stepped through the gates of Kauffman Stadium, into a sea of blue and white and the kind of buzz TV couldn’t capture. I didn’t have a Royals jersey, so I’d settled for the white peasant top embroidered with little blue seashells Gram had made for me to celebrate uploading my first YouTube video. Dozens of people milled around the food stands and carts selling hats and giant foam fingers. The scent of popcorn and fried bread made my mouth water. It had been a long drive from Honeyfield, and I hadn’t eaten breakfast.

  “Macy, I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe you did this for me.” Mom’s eyes shone in the bright sun. I didn’t want her to ruin her makeup.

  “Hey.” I handed her a napkin. “‘There’s no crying in baseball,’ remember?”

  “Right.” She sniffed, as if trying to will her precarious tears back in. “You’re right, as usual. What should we do first? Grab our seats?”

  “Food.” I took her arm and dragged her to the nearest hot dog stand.

  Once we loaded up with eats, drinks, and souvenirs, we headed down to Section 316, Row C. My hat didn’t fit properly thanks to my curly pigtails, and my blond hair wasn’t long enough to pull into a ponytail. Oh well. I mashed it down on my head anyway. Even in the shaded section, the plastic seat warmed my legs. Little kids with sticky cotton candy fingers toddled up the stairs with their families, while vendors tried to stay out of the way.

  The stadium filled up quickly while I took several photos of me and Mom with the field as our backdrop. I flicked through them, trying out different filters and found the best one to post on Instagram. The whole baseball vibe made me want to do a Royals theme for my next YouTube video. Maybe a group of Kevin Costner films? I shook my head. Fear of mentioning the White Sox under our roof, let alone crafting a uniform for Field of Dreams’s signature team, had kept me away from that particular review for years. I’d have to think of something else.

  A shadow fell over us. Mom groaned as a guy who had to be near seven feet tall took the seat right in front of her, practically blocking the prime view that had eaten up half my savings to secure.

  “Trade seats with me,” I said.

  She leaned from side to side, trying to see around the guy. “Are you sure?”

  “This is your day.” Plus, I wasn’t nearly the fan she was, much to her disappointment. “You know I’m going to get bored by the second inning and just start playing on my phone.”

  “I don’t know.” The worry line between her eyebrows appeared, though a faint outline had started to take up permanent residence on her face.

  “It’s fine. Honestly. Come on.” I stood, balancing my Coke and hot dog in one hand while I pulled her up with the other.

  I turned to my seat a little too fast, just as a guy was coming down the other side of the aisle. I stumbled, somehow managed to stay on my feet, but my Coke and hot dog were goners. Unfortunately, they’d gone all over the guy’s shirt.

  “Shi—” I glanced at my mom. She didn’t get after me for cussing at home, but she hated when I did it in public. “Shoot. I’m so sorry.” I picked up a few scattered napkins and dabbed at the KC on his shirt. He looked to be about my age. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “No big deal.” He pulled the cotton T-shirt over his head and draped it over the back of his chair. “See?”

  “I do see.” I nodded slowly, trying to figure out a discreet way of checking to see if my jaw was still attached, or if it had come unhinged and fallen to the ground.

  The guy had abs, like body-spray-commercial abs. The kind of abs that created shadows in the ridges of his muscles. I had a strange urge to poke him in the stomach to see if it felt as hard as it looked. A woman in the row behind me had an enormous pink bow tying her hair in a half ponytail, and she giggled as she caught my eye and winked.

  “Looks like we’re going to be seatmates for the next few hours, so no point in getting hung up over an accident. I’m Eric, by the way. This is my buddy Rod.” He stuck his thumb out to the shorter guy behind him I’d just noticed.

  “I’m …” What was my name again? “Macy. Evans. The Third.” I wasn’t the third of anything. Why did I just say that? Did the glare coming off his abs fry the portion of my brain that controlled coherent thought?

  “Cool. You look familiar, Macy Evans the Third. Liberty High?”

  I shook my head.

  “Eric Dufrane.” He pointed at himself. “I just graduated from there yesterday.” He sat, spreading his legs out until they spilled over into my seating area, which made him at least 40 percent less attractive. Bummer.

  “I just graduated too, from Honeyfield High, up north. I drove down here so I could surprise my mom for her birthday.”

  She bent forward and gave a little wave. “Sorry my daughter is a klutz.”

  “No problem, Mrs. Evans the Second.” He flashed a Colgate-worthy smile, but she’d already abandoned her chair to chase down the guy selling foam fingers in the aisle.

  Eric settled into his seat, taking up even more room. “Wow, your mom is hot.”

  Gross. What a waste of perfectly good abs.

  After the anthem, the opening pitch, and that mortifying moment where Mom tried to get everyone to do the wave, which petered out after five people, I opened my YouTube app. I tried to watch the game. Honestly. But between tall guy and the manspreader with abs, I had zero chance of enjoying the experience.

  The John Hughes/Molly Ringwald review I’d uploaded a few weeks ago of Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and The Breakfast Club had topped out at twenty thousand views, better than my other videos, which had barely gotten over ten thousand. A respectable number, but not enough. I needed at least a million to attract sponsors and start making real money. I already dressed like characters from the films I reviewed, but I needed to do something more to stand out.

  Two days ago, I’d uploaded my take on late-nineties rom-coms: She’s All That, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Never Been Kissed. The
white feathered top Drew Barrymore wore in Never Been Kissed had been a nightmare to construct, and 10 Things was the only movie that really held up. My comments section agreed. It had also been my best editing job to date. I had high hopes, but the ticker moved slow. Three thousand views so far. Only 997,000 to go.

  I wasn’t even alive when most movies I reviewed were made, but thanks to my job, I had access to the best and worst of the VHS world. And if Hollywood ever stumbled upon my YouTube channel, they’d have a whole road map for how to remake those films, especially if they wanted to do better by women.

  Treating us like human beings instead of objects would be step one.

  “What are you looking at there?” Eric leaned over. He smelled like beer cheese and bug spray. “My little sister is into those old movies. I watch them with her sometimes on Netflix.”

  I soften at the mention of his little sister. Nice abs and an appreciation for the VHS era was a formidable weakness. “I review them on YouTube.”

  “No way. If my sister isn’t on Netflix, she’s on YouTube.” He sounded genuinely impressed, which gave me a little bubbly feeling in my stomach, even if I still thought he was kind of a douche. “Maybe I’ve seen one of yours.”

  “I doubt it.” I wasn’t well-known. Not yet anyway. But one day I’d take Misty Morning, the persona I’d created to host R3ntal Wor1d, all the way to the top of the YouTube food chain. I tucked those thoughts away, though, reminding myself it would take time to build my audience. “I just uploaded one a few days ago. Do you want to see?”

  “Yeah, why not?” His arm brushed mine as he tried to get a better view of my phone. All my nerves prickled with awareness. “Why are you calling yourself Misty?”

  “It’s like a stage name.” I had Instagram and Twitter accounts under my real name, but those were just for me. Misty Morning and R3ntal Wor1d were for something more.

  I watched him watching my video. It was a weird experience to be sitting next to someone while one of them played. I didn’t even let my friends watch while I was in the room. I thought it would be easier with a stranger, since strangers watched me every week, but nope. Every tic or movement on his face threw me into overanalyzing. Was he drawing his eyebrows together because he didn’t get my viewpoint? Or was he just concentrating extra hard? Did the pulse in his jaw mean he was working up the courage to tell me it sucked? Or was that just his regular pulse? Did he think it was silly and immature? So many questions rolled around in my head, I nearly shut off my phone mid-review.

  After it ended, I pulled my phone back and sucked in a deep breath. “What did you think? It’s okay if you think it sucked. I’m still new at this. I’m sorry it wasn’t good.”

  “Slow down. Breathe.” He laughed, which made me want to shrivel up and roll away. “You have some good thoughts. Really good. What’s your channel called? I’ll tell my sister to look for you.” He took out his phone and opened his Notes app.

  “It’s R3ntal Wor1d.” I had to explain that I needed the 3 in Rental and the 1 in World because Rental World was already taken. At which point it occurred to me that I could’ve offered to text it to him. A perfectly reasonable excuse to get his number, but he’d already taken it down and now it would just be awkward.

  I literally had no game.

  I’d just pulled up my John Hughes/Molly Ringwald review when Mondesí hit a line drive down the middle. Eric launched out of his seat, screaming and hollering with the rest of the crowd as the Tigers shortstop missed the catch and sent Merrifield home. Mom grabbed my arm, cutting off my blood supply as she jumped up and down. The overwhelming presence of the shirtless wonder almost made me forget why I’d come here.

  Mom didn’t get a lot of breaks. As a full-time waitress at the diner, this was the first Saturday she’d had off in over two years. She’d gone to night school when I was a toddler, and even got an associate degree in business, but there weren’t a lot of jobs in Honeyfield. We couldn’t afford to move somewhere else. So she stayed at the diner.

  She never wanted that to be me, to barely get by, soaking my feet in salt water and trying to fight lines around my eyes in my twenties. Though here in Kauffman Stadium, she looked younger and happier than I’d seen her since the Royals went to the World Series. It made all the saving and planning worth it. I tucked my phone into my back pocket, vowing to get more into the game and really make this a day she would remember forever.

  I put Eric out of my mind—okay, to the side of my mind—and focused on trying to get the crowd hyped to do another wave. Because it was goofy and made my mom smile. I grabbed another round of Cokes, and somewhere around the fifth inning, I really had to go to the bathroom. I shifted in my seat, not wanting to get up. I had a serious aversion to public restrooms. But after five straight minutes of squirming, I finally stood.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked Mom.

  “Somewhere over there.” She pointed toward the food stands. So helpful.

  The lady with the enormous pink bow behind me tapped Eric on the shoulder. “You’ve been here loads of times, right? Why don’t you be a dear and show this young lady where the restrooms are?” She gave me a conspiratorial look that made me vaguely uncomfortable.

  “No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m sure I can find it.”

  “Oh, hey. No worries.” Eric jumped up. “I’ve got to go too.”

  Before I could protest, he shuffled me past an aisle of spectators until we reached the stairs. I walked beside him, and he put his hand on the small of my back, steering me into the short hall that led to the bathrooms. I took a careful step to the side to shift away from him.

  His arm skimmed my shoulder as he pointed to the women’s room, like I could miss the giant stick figure in a dress, and I didn’t know if he was trying to flirt or if he really thought I was that helpless. I looked up at him. “Are you going to help me pee, too?”

  “Only if you want me to.” He gave me the kind of grin only a boy cocky enough to know how good he looked could give. Like he’d spent his whole life getting whatever he wanted with just a few smiles.

  “I’m fine, thanks.” I pushed open the bathroom door and an uneasy feeling hovered over me. As if I’d just walked into a room and everyone stopped talking.

  When I came out of the bathroom, I was surprised to find him waiting for me. At my questioning look, he said, “Just in case you couldn’t find your way back.”

  “Thanks?” If he was flirting, he really sucked at it. Maybe he’d never had to hone that particular skill, since his strong jawline and ridiculous abs did all the work for him.

  This time, I walked ahead of him. We passed a popcorn stand, and I made a mental note to pick some up on the way home. We headed back to our seats, and had just reached our row when the crowd got to their feet. A middle-aged man nearly hit me in the face as he stretched his arms, and I turned in time to see a baseball headed right for me.

  Instinct had me whipping my hat off. I stretched my arm, reaching as my pulse hummed. The crowd, the movement, the noise around me faded to a blur. My vision narrowed on that single white speck in the sky. As if I could mentally coax it closer. Someone tried shoving me to the side, but I kept my feet planted, my eye on the ball.

  And I caught it.

  The swelling crowd jostled me around, and I stumbled, cradling my hat with the ball in it against my chest. Eric kept me upright and grabbed my hand, thrusting it into the air as he screamed with the rest of the crowd. We appeared on the jumbotron and my head went light. I’d never had a rush like that in my life.

  People patted me on the back as I made my way to Mom, who was bawling. The “no crying in baseball rule” went out the window when it came to fly balls. I handed it to her, and she hugged me so hard, my back cracked. Best birthday ever.

  The lady with the pink bow gave me a satisfied nod. “Good timing.”

  “The best.” My smile practically touched my ears.

  “Nice of you to be there with the assist,” she said to Eric.

/>   He blushed, which was cute enough to make me forget my earlier annoyance with him. Besides, he had kept me from face-planting on the jumbotron. “She made a great catch.”

  Mom passed the ball over to me so I could let Eric get a closer look. He took a selfie with it, the field behind him, and handed it back to me. Then I took a similar selfie and handed it back to Mom so I could get a shot of the two of us and the ball.

  The lady with the pink bow raised her phone and sort of pointed it toward me, but when I caught her eye, she quickly lowered it and whispered to the man next to her. Weird. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up for a second, but she was probably just taking a picture of the players on the field, like everyone else. I dismissed that feeling as adrenaline, and I turned back to my mom.

  This would definitely be a day we’d remember forever.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  THE NEXT DAY, AFTER I rolled out of bed and got ready for work, I curled up on the sagging recliner in the living room. We had a couch and a love seat in pristine condition, but because Gram refused to take the plastic off, I never wanted to sit on them. I unlocked my phone to check my YouTube channel. My latest upload had five thousand views. Not bad. I was already set to outpace my John Hughes/Molly Ringwald video, and if I could hit a hundred thousand, maybe I’d be able to buy more fabric instead of relying on leftovers from the Bees.

  I counted my Goodbye Honeyfield stash this morning, the bills I kept carefully tucked in my underwear drawer next to the package of condoms I sadly hadn’t needed to open in months. I only had a few hundred dollars, and it had taken me nearly a year to save that. The Royals game bit into my savings, but if my viewership kept growing at this rate, I’d be able to put away a little more than fifty dollars a month.

  At first, I’d wanted to go to LA, to get as close as I could to the movies, but that felt too far away. I still wanted to visit Mom and Gram whenever I had a full tank of gas, so my plans shifted to Chicago. Eventually I wanted to expand my YouTube channel into live coverage of independent film festivals along with reviews, and Chicago had dozens of festivals every year. Not to mention, thousands of jobs that paid more than minimum wage. Just looking through Indeed had my fingers itching to apply. Not yet though. I promised myself I’d stay in Honeyfield a full year after graduation to save money. I’d start my new life off right, which included being able to afford a roof over my head.