Jack & Lucy

Lucy

I started to get annoyed over the fuss made over my face when a regular told me it was nice to finally see me happy. It took some eyeshadow and foundation for people to assume I was finally happy. Like my lack of trying before made me sad and single.

It was Jack's comment that finally put me over the edge. It took him three years to tell me I was pretty and it wasn't until I didn't look anything like myself that he said it. He didn't notice me until I looked like every other girl that hangs all over him. I think I have to accept that I am not Jack's type nor will I ever be his type. That's probably why he friend-zoned me hard after we started working together. I had hoped his feelings would change when we started hanging out outside of work, but he seemed to always have some girl hanging all over him at the lake, and then I had to watch him shamelessly flirt all through work. Unrequited love is torture. 

The thing with Jack is that he's smart, rich and insanely attractive. His dad and uncle own an architecture firm here in Phoenix and Jack is following in their footsteps. His parents have also been both financially and emotionally supportive of everything Jack does, so everything just seems to come so easy to him. Girls, money, happiness, math.

I finally get the door to my pathetic square open and throw myself onto the futon. I usually shower after a long night, but tonight I just don't have the energy. I don't care about skincare routines or sticky skin. I just want to crawl under the covers and ignore everything else. I have tried to make this feel like a fresh start, but the familiar faces and shitty living situation reminds me I am no better off than when I left. Why did I let Blake consume a year of my life? 

I remember the night I met Blake. I had come straight to work after being with Jack in the sun all day. I was glowing from prolonged sun exposure and on a high from having so much fun with my epic crush. I remember I was cleaning up bar glasses from pub tables when a guy with a backward Yankee's cap came over to me and asked if I was a dancer. I had laughed and asked how he knew.

"My sister is a ballerina. You all have this way of walking that exposes you. You're graceful," he said as he leaned into my ear.

"Oh, well, not graceful enough for Julliard apparently," I joked back, feeling the sting of rejection again even though it had been years.

"Ah, Julliard. The name that haunted my household," he said back and then added, "My sister always thought she'd go there."

"Really? I asked, "Did she?"

"No, she wasn't accepted. She still lives in New York though. That's where I am from originally, came out here for work. I'm trying to get back out there though." Hearing New York come from this attractive stranger's mouth tugged on my soul. Oh, how I had longed to meet someone who loved New York as much as I did. 

"Oh no way, I'm from New York! My mother was a violinist in the New York Philharmonic until her arthritis moved us here. I went to Julliard for a couple of years though and then wound up back here," I told him, as I realized I still had dirty glassware in my hands. 

"I grew up on 57th. Near Lincoln Square."

"Oh, no way! I was on 46th. Near Rockefeller." I was shocked that we grew up ten blocks from each other in the same part of the city and were now in the same bar in Phoenix. He then started talking about his favorite spots in the city and I talked about how much I missed it and I stood there talking to the handsome stranger until Jack shouted that he needed backup at the bar. It wasn't until Hannah handed me a receipt that I realized his name was Blake and saw his number scribbled in blue pen at the bottom. It was the first time I had ever gotten a number while working. The first time I had ever connected with someone so quickly and it wasn't through a text box on a stupid dating app or a setup by Stella. Not only was he charming, but he was from New York and was desperate to get back there. It seemed like fate at the time. 

I roll over and squeeze my face into my pillow. Tears slowly spill onto the cotton and I am still angry at myself for being so stupid. I found out later he had only come over to talk to me because he was trying to avoid his Tinder date that had just shown up and realized he wasn't attracted to her. He used me to avoid her. When he confessed this, I once again said it was fate intervening because what if he had met her and she ended up being 'the one'? Then we'd never have met. My brain never connected that it wasn't fate. Blake was just an asshole.

Looking back I keep seeing red flags that I ignored. I liked that this handsome accountant was into me and I ignored my gut. Things felt so easy at first that I thought it was all meant to be. My parents loved that I had found someone financially stable who had connections to New York. They shoved me toward him because it was moving me toward the life they wanted me to have. My mother longed to be back in the city, she left her heart in Manhattan and hated her body for forcing her to leave the harsh weather. When she found out Blake's parent's apartment was within walking distance to Lincoln Center, she gave me the same look she gave me when I got accepted to Julliard. 

Blake also supported my plans to open a bakery and encouraged me to bake until he noticed I wasn't counting my sugar intake. He supported me in opening a bakery until he realized I still had two years of schooling before I had my business degree and my knowledge of baking was self-taught by running a Youtube channel. I hadn't properly learned to bake from culinary school, I had just perfected a sugar cookie recipe and Stella forced me online. My hundreds of thousands of followers across all of my platforms meant little to him because I wasn't making the money that New York demanded of me. My cute unique sugar cookies weren't putting smiles on anyone's faces for another couple of years unless I found a partner to take on my lack of business experience. I immediately got hired at a bougie bakery through one of his acquaintances near Time Square, but I ended up mostly making large batches of frosting and stayed hunched over for hours while I piped out macarons onto baking sheets.

Gone were the days of creating fun cookie shapes and an array of colors for frosting. Blake hated piping bags littering the kitchen and was always moving my ring light and tripod off the counter. He didn't realize how much time photographing and uploading content to my channels took and he wanted me focused on opening the bakery as I had planned. I think he started to get embarrassed when I would advertise my cookie channel to people at his work gatherings. He would quickly add that my followers were just waiting for me to open that bakery. That I was a businesswoman first, baker second. Then he'd mention that I had gone to Julliard for ballet and just as my parent's friend's used to do, would become more interested in that aspect of my life.

I'm so irritated that I can't sleep. The hard-as-a-rock futon is making it impossible to get comfortable so I throw my top sheet off and cross into the kitchen. My anger has finally made me see that I cannot let Blake ruin the one thing I enjoy doing. I cannot lose my beloved followers and neglect my channels because of a cheating asshole. I whip the small fridge open and see that I have exactly what I need to put a smile on my face. I came back to Phoenix to focus on school and growing my cookie business and that is exactly what I intend on doing.