“This is terrible,” I said.
Vern heard me mumble and asked if I need anything or had any questions.
“I’m fine,” I said.
I stared down at the card with the frog, in all of its terribleness. It was exactly like something my father would give my mother—that’s how bad it was.
But the dumb card was better than nothing.
As we drove, I started to get doubts.
Did I actually deserve an apology, regardless of how terrible the apology was? The cause of our recent fight didn’t seem obvious, in retrospect. First, I’d insulted his moth-eaten shirt. But he’d sprung some new information on me about stalking me. And I’d called him a liar, which was possibly true, but unsubstantiated. Then he’d tossed dog water on me before I could toss it on him. He did have a point that I should have said something sooner about the scooter, but I honestly had been trying to be easygoing.
And now I had a RIBBIT card.
I didn’t know whether to tear the card in half and toss it out the window, or put both card and torn envelope carefully in my purse with my wet jean skirt, to take home and start a scrapbook with.
CHAPTER 22
I brought the RIBBIT card with me to work on Monday morning.
A few times during the day, I’d pull out the card just to look at it. Holding the card in my hands made me feel like a kid at the end of a fantasy movie—the kind of movie where everyone says the events were just a dream, yet the girl unfurls her hand to find a shimmering, magical feather.
The RIBBIT card was my magical feather, and Dalton was real. The engagement was both fake and real at the same time. Thinking about that made my whole body ache.
At twelve-fifteen, things were going fine at the store when I got hit with a Lunch Break Returner.
I wiggled my toes inside my shoes to keep from screaming.
Lunch Break Returners are all about Getting All The Fucking Things Done, especially on Mondays.
If you open a retail business yourself some day, take my advice and find a way to not be there between twelve and one o’clock on Mondays. Put a scarecrow behind the counter, leave the door unlocked while you go for coffee, and put a help-yourself bucket of cash next to the cash register—like the honor-system candy buckets some people put out at Halloween.
Let them serve themselves.
The woman said, dramatically, “I was shocked and horrified by some of the words in this book.”
“Yes, I understand.” (She’d already stated the reason for the return, unprompted, several times.)
Like most Lunch Break Returners, she wore business casual dress and pumps that were a size too small, judging by the way she shifted back and forth on her feet. She probably wore the pumps into the office and kicked them off under her desk for most of the day. As I pondered all of this, I frowned inwardly that my keen insights into the habits of Beaverdale bookstore customers had very little value in the non-bookstore job market.
I asked, “Would you like the refund on your credit card, or store credit?”
She huffed, “Store credit, of course. It’s not YOUR fault these publishers allow words like this in books these days.”
I could tell she really wanted me to ask her about the specific words, but I wasn’t playing the game that day.
Slipping my hand into my purse, under the counter, I felt the raised lines of the word RIBBIT inside my card. It wasn’t a dream! I really was engaged to a famous actor, with a fabulous non-retail life ahead of me. Unless this was the dream, and Dalton was the dream within the dream.
“Will this store credit even be valid at the new location?” the woman asked, her voice sharp with suspicion.
“Nope. And we’re starting the move tomorrow, so you’ll have to use it before six o’clock today.”
Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. (You should never joke around in retail, especially not where the customer’s money is concerned.)
“Kidding!” I added quickly. “Of course the credit is good at our fabulous new location, and I hope you’ll come and shop often. We’re putting in a section of audiobooks.”
She said huffily, “Good. Your new location is more convenient for me, because my hairdresser is on that block. I don’t know why this store is all the way over here. There’s never any parking.”
I glanced out the window reflexively, then held my lips tightly together as I looked at the unobstructed view of a street with over half the parking spots wide open.
Honestly, one of the biggest obstacles I’ve had to overcome to be a decent retail employee is to resist the overwhelming urge to state the fucking obvious to people. For example, they’ll walk in as I’m sweating and dusty from organizing shelves and unloading boxes, and they’ll comment on how nice it must be to sit and read books all day.