The Selling Point Read online

  Yup. That was an arrow that hit the target. Darby had always gone out of her way to not be seen like that because she’d been on the receiving end far too many times. “I’m sure it seems that way,” Darby said softly as her shoulders slumped under the weight of Sue’s statement.

  She lowered her eyes and fought the tears that wanted to surface. She wasn’t there to cry and wallow in her hurt feelings. She was there to give Sue the apology she deserved so hopefully she could heal and put the pain Darby had caused behind her. As much as Darby wanted to scream and yell and stomp her foot until Sue heard how sorry she was, she knew that not only would that not help, but she certainly didn’t have the right to demand anything from this woman.

  When Darby lifted her gaze again, blinking back her tears, Sue’s shitty smirk had spread. She sat a bit taller, clearly proud that her comment had hurt Darby’s feelings.

  “It is that way,” Sue stated, refusing to consider that Darby wasn’t simply being vicious for the sake of making some sales. Leaning on the table, the loathing and resentment Sue felt shone bright for Darby to see.

  That old saying “if looks could kill” ran through Darby’s mind, because she would have died under Sue’s hateful stare. Darby wanted to look to the table beside her for reinforcements, for a little support, but she kept her gaze locked on Sue’s. If she saw the fury on Taylor’s face or the sympathy on Jade’s, she’d probably crack.

  “You think I believe this bullshit excuse?” Sue asked through clenched teeth and thin lips. “The only reason you’re apologizing to me is because people are calling you out for being a bloodthirsty bitch.”

  Darby lifted her brows. Ouch. She wasn’t startled at Sue’s merciless behavior as much as the implication that Darby wasn’t being genuine. If she considered Sue’s position, she could probably understand why she didn’t believe Darby, but she wasn’t even giving her an honest chance to apologize.

  Sue was on a roll and didn’t seem interested in hearing anything Darby might have to say. “If you were actually sorry, if you actually wanted to repent for your transgressions against me and the rest of the women you kicked in the face to make a buck, you would have shut your site down by now.”

  Darby simply stared. “But…that’s my livelihood.”

  “Your livelihood? It was my life that you were making fun of there. My broken engagement. My humiliation.” Sue scoffed and shook her head almost imperceptibly. “I saw that lame little apology note you posted online and how you deleted your cute little stories. As if that changes anything. It doesn’t. In case you were wondering. None of that changes anything. That apology was as fake as this one.”

  Again, Darby shot her brows toward the tiled ceiling. She again needed a moment to sort out what Sue was saying. All the times she’d been called fake in the last week, all the times she thought that accusation hurt, those were nothing compared to this one. She wasn’t being fake. Her soul was bleeding shame from what she’d done. The expectation that Sue may not accept her apology had done nothing to prepare her for being told her apology wasn’t sincere.

  “You don’t care about hurting others. Not really, do you?” Sue asked with shades of disbelief coloring her words. “All you care about is getting a few sales. Making a little money.” The last words practically dripped of the venom of her accusation.

  Falling back in the cracked vinyl–covered booth, Darby stared with wide eyes, recalling how she’d told Jade and Taylor that she was making sales so what she’d done couldn’t have been all bad. But she’d come to realize she was wrong. She understood now. “I apologized online because I realized I was wrong. I asked to meet you because I realized I was wrong.”

  Sue stared as if she didn’t understand the point Darby was making. “Apologies mean nothing if you don’t change your actions.”

  “I took the stories down.”

  “After what? Ten days? Ten days of feeding off other people’s pain? Ten days of getting hits and sales and upping your leverage for advertising? That’s not repentance, Darby. That’s not a real apology. That’s doing what needs to be done to save yourself.”

  “No—”

  “Yes. People are turning on you because the novelty has worn off already. People are starting to see how mean it is to laugh at other people’s shattered dreams. And you’re apologizing because they’re making you look bad online. Not because you’re actually sorry. If you were,” Sue said, “you’d take the damn site down.”

  Darby held the oxygen in her lungs for a few moments. “I changed the site. I’m not using those stories anymore. I posted an apology. A sincere apology.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  Pressing her lips together, Darby shook her head. “Sue, I’m sorry that I hurt you, but what happened, the story I shared, that happened years ago.”

  “Why does it matter if it happened years ago or a week ago? You had no right to tell that story. My story.”

  After swallowing hard, Darby said, “I didn’t mean…” A long exhale left her as she put her words together. “I only mean that had I known you were still suffering from what happened, I wouldn’t have dreamed of sharing your story. I got caught up in the moment with Noah Joplin, and I said more than I should have. I see that now. I see that it was wrong.”

  Sue stared at her for several long, drawn-out seconds. “Did you get caught up in the moment when you put your website together too?”

  Darby nodded slightly. “In a way, yes. I was getting responses, and that made me think it was okay. I shouldn’t have let it go that far. I should have recognized sooner that I was causing pain for my former clients.”

  “Yes,” Sue stated flatly, “you should have. You should have recognized that much sooner.” Pressing her hand to her chest, tears glittered in her eyes and her voice cracked as she spoke. “I lost the man that I loved. The man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I lost my closest friends. They betrayed me in the worst possible way. And you know what, Darby? They apologized too. They said they didn’t mean for things to happen. Didn’t intend to go so far. They weren’t trying to hurt me.”

  Darby blinked back her tears. “I am sorry.”

  “You told the world about the most painful moment of my life.”

  “But…the only reason anyone knew it was you was because you went on Jennifer Williams’s show and told them.”

  Sue scoffed, and she stared for a long time. “You can’t be this dense, Darby. Chammont Point isn’t that big of a town. You think I relocated to Richmond for shits and giggles?”

  Another punch in the gut hit Darby. “I don’t know why you moved.”

  “Because my broken engagement was the talk of half the damn town and I had to get away. I had to leave because of what they’d done. And here you go, dredging it up all over again.”

  Another layer of guilt fell on Darby’s shoulders. “I can’t imagine how much that hurt.”

  Sue wiped her cheeks when tears fell. “No, you can’t.” After drying her hands on a napkin from the dispenser on the table, she wadded it up and carelessly tossed it aside. “What kind of friends sleep with your fiancé days before your wedding? In your canoe? And what kind of wedding dress seamstress uses that painful memory to sell the dress you were supposed to get married in?”

  Put like that, Darby couldn’t find the words to defend what she’d done. She realized the true depth of her mistake. “I can’t take back what I did,” Darby whispered. “All I can do is tell you how very sorry I am.”

  “But you aren’t going to take your website down,” Sue said. “You aren’t going to stop profiting off those dresses, are you? Because you aren’t sorry, at least not enough to stop. You truly are heartless,” Sue said coolly. Pushing herself up, she exhaled with an audible sigh. “I ran into one of my old friends not too long ago—one of the ones from your story. She apologized again and said the hardest thing she had to do most days was look at her reflection and know she’d caused me so much pain. I hope to God you have a hard ti
me looking at yourself too.”

  With that, she turned and walked out of the cafe.

  Darby’s heart lodged in her throat as she looked at the table next to hers.

  “You okay?” Jade asked.

  Darby shook her head. She’d known that was going to be brutal, but she’d hoped Sue would accept her apology. That hadn’t happened. From the sounds of it, that would never happen. She was determined not to break down in the cafe, but a choking sob left her.

  “Oh, baby,” Jade said as she sank into the booth beside Darby.

  Darby leaned over and let Jade hug her close as she cried. Of all the horrible things Sue had said to her, the one that had stuck the most was questioning what kind of seamstress would use a bride’s broken heart to sell the dress she’d intended to marry in. That one had hurt.

  That question had more than hit the mark; it’d gone straight through, and Darby’s soul was bleeding out. It was that comment that had really made Darby see how callous her jokes had been. Her stomach clenched, and she thought she might be sick. She probably would have been if Jade wasn’t gently rubbing her back and offering soothing words of support.

  Darby closed her eyes tight so she couldn’t see Taylor cycling through emotions. She didn’t seem to know what to do. She seemed torn between running after Sue and telling Darby she’d been warned her actions were as terrible as Sue had said.

  The fact that she’d been warned, even if it’d been gentle nudges from Taylor and Jade, made the feeling so much worse. Darby couldn’t stop chastising herself. Why hadn’t she just listened? Why hadn’t she stopped for one moment, like Sue had said, to consider what she was doing?

  The shame filling her chest grew, and she leaned deeper into Jade’s hug as she cried harder.

  Instead of making things right with Sue and easing some of the guilt she’d been carrying around for days, Darby had made things worse. Even though she had tried to explain her mistake and all but insisted she hadn’t meant to embarrass anyone, Sue hadn’t given the forgiveness Darby had been seeking. In fact, Darby felt sadder than ever before.

  As soon as Jade and Taylor led her from the diner, she sank into the back seat of Jade’s sedan and sniffled to herself the entire ride back to Chammont Point. Jade and Taylor had tried to cheer her up with encouraging words and jokes that might have been funny any other time, but their efforts were no use.

  Darby felt like crap. And rightfully so.

  Sue had been brutal in her honesty, ripping away any rose coloring Darby had tried to paint over her decision to use the so-called funny anecdotes on Un-Do’s website. And then to reiterate them on The Noah Joplin Show.

  Sue had lost her would-have-been husband and two of her best friends. And Darby had used that to make a few bucks. The shame Sue had piled onto Darby for those actions was well-deserved and didn’t feel like it’d be going away anytime soon.

  When they got back to Chammont Point, Darby had wanted to curl under a blanket and let the world pass her by. Her friends wouldn’t allow it. They made her sit on the water’s edge of the cove, and though there wasn’t much conversation, they hadn’t left her alone.

  She loved them for that, even if she’d rather be burrowed on her couch and dwelling on what a loser she was. As appealing as that sounded, she’d known—as had they—that she needed to be surrounded by people who loved her and weren’t judging her nearly as harshly as Sue had.

  Since Taylor and Jade refused to leave her alone, she told them they had to cook dinner. She wasn’t up for it. They had gladly agreed, and any other day, their routine of Taylor grilling and Jade tossing together sides would have felt normal.

  Nothing felt normal on this day.

  Darby sat back as Jade put a bowl filled with fresh-cut salad onto the table. Even this was normal because on nights when Darby was supposed to be hosting dinner, Jade tended to do most of the cooking. Darby would flutter about setting dishes and utensils and Taylor would ramble about her day, which hadn’t consisted of much lately since she’d lost yet another bid for a project and didn’t have anything else lined up.

  This was how dinner always went, even when it was Darby’s turn to cook. While she loved making finger foods and fun appetizers, she never quite knew what to do about creating an entire meal. Trying to get all the food done at the same time was more than she could manage. Her dinners tended to be a hodgepodge of things until Jade had not-so subtly started giving more direction.

  Darby was glad for that, but as she sat at the table watching her friends easily fill the roles they’d taken in their friendship, the feeling that the world was off its axis grew.

  Self-pity had sunk in before they’d even left the cafe, and Darby’s mood had done little to improve since. Watching her friends take care of her, she felt like this wasn’t where they wanted to be or what they should be doing with their time.

  While Darby could make the table pretty and fix any mixed beverage they could think of, that didn’t feel like nearly enough to balance the scales of what they did for her. While she was quick-witted and able to crack Taylor’s serious exterior or Jade’s tendency to overwork, she didn’t feel like that was enough. Because on some level, she had always been convinced that she wasn’t enough. That feeling was boiling over after the ten days.

  As if sensing where her mind was going, Jade pulled her into conversation. Though Jade was perfectly happy to drink her juice straight, she asked what kinds of drinks—nonalcoholic of course—Darby could make. Something with cranberry juice. Jade drank cranberry juice like fish drank water.

  Though she saw through the deliberate distraction, Darby was thankful to think about something other than the disaster she’d created. She skimmed Jade’s fridge and gave her a few ideas. Though nothing she came up with was out of the ordinary, Jade acted like Darby had been brilliant to suggest a cranberry and pineapple juice blend.

  Darby’s spirits did lift a little, she had to admit. Jade’s praise always made her feel a bit warmer inside. She truly was a good person, and while she tended to sugarcoat, she didn’t lie. She wouldn’t be Darby’s friend if she hadn’t seen something in her. And Taylor wouldn’t be nice just for the sake of being nice. If she hadn’t truly cared about Darby, she wouldn’t stick around. Though she lost sight of those truths when the ugly voices in her head toyed with her emotions, she could always find a way to come back to them.

  Jade and Taylor really had become like Darby’s family and did wonders to keep her grounded and focused on the better parts of life when the darkness wanted to creep in and take over her mind. Had they not come into her life, she likely would have moved away from Chammont Point by now. She had a way of scurrying from one place to another when she felt those depressive cycles starting. Relocating and starting something new had always helped her cope.

  Her hometown always called her back, though. She’d be gone for a year, maybe two, and then she’d come back and find a place to rent. The last time, she’d decided she was making her stay permanent and bought her cabin. Then she’d had the bright idea to buy the one next door when her elderly neighbor was moved to an assisted living facility. She thought she’d gotten a great deal because her neighbor loved her… Turned out she’d been sold a money pit. While that had been a bit of a disaster, she didn’t regret it. Her short-lived venture into property management had brought Jade and Taylor into her life.

  However, as Darby stirred a can of ginger ale into the cranberry and pineapple juices, she was questioning whether that was enough. She wanted to run away and hide. Far, far away from Chammont Point. Far from where people knew her and had tied her to the Un-Do Wedding Boutique. If she started over somewhere else, she could remake herself into someone no one would ever connect to this disastrous misadventure. Someone who had never opened an online bridal consignment shop.

  “Earth to Darby,” Jade said as she pulled a bright yellow cob of boiled corn from a pot. She offered a sweet smile. “What’s going on in your head?”

  “Thinking about runnin
g away,” she admitted. “I hear New Zealand is nice. I could buy a cottage in the woods, plant a garden, and live off the land forever.”

  “Good luck,” Taylor said as she eased a platter of grilled chicken breasts and veggies onto the counter. “You can’t even keep an orchid alive.” She added a grin and a wink so Darby would know she was teasing.

  “Orchids are tricky,” Jade offered. Due to Jade’s healthy eating, Darby consumed far more vegetables than she used to, but she still liked to douse them in dressing, so Jade added a bottle of ranch to the table before sitting. “But rather than running away, why don’t you stay off the Internet until all this blows over? It’s the middle of summer, sweetie. Spend some more time on the beach and less time focused on what’s happening online.”

  Darby looked at the meal Jade and Taylor had cooked but didn’t think she could bring herself to eat any of it, even with the ranch dressing Jade kept on hand for her. The elephants were still wrestling in her tummy. “What if it never blows over?”

  “It will,” Jade stated firmly and filled a plate. “You’ve posted your apology and explained that you thought the descriptions were funny but you hadn’t considered how hurtful they might be to the would-be brides. You explained that you didn’t think things through.”

  “Sue…” Darby’s voice creaked like she barely had the strength to speak. Her throat grew tight as her stomach twisted into a knot. She looked at the plate when Jade held it out to her. Forcing herself to continue, she said with a quivering voice, “She said if I were truly sorry, I would close the site.” She looked up at Jade for some kind of confirmation or denial. Something. “Do you think…”

  “You have to make that decision,” Jade said and pushed the plate closer, silently instructing Darby to take it. “Nobody else can do that for you.”

  Darby sighed as she accepted the dinner, and she wished someone would give her the answers. But then she sighed again because Jade and Taylor had given her the answers. Days ago. They’d told her to take the descriptions down days ago. They’d told her she might hurt someone.