“I’m going to quit,” I grumble. It’s my personal anthem, which I sing every day. “Job is in title only. This is stupid. It’s stupid!”

Caleb Ramirez nods in greeting as he walks by, likely on his way to Sunrise in the Smokies, where he works. Seeing him is like being stabbed with a very small pin, because he was the unwitting catalyst for Everything That Happened. Unfortunate, because Caleb’s such a great guy. The only bad thing about him is that once, several months ago, we shared a bag of popcorn together in the break room and he mentioned he liked my sneakers. I’m bad at receiving compliments, habitually reciprocating with a compliment of my own to erase the one given to me, and I said I liked his car. He grinned. I’ll take you for a ride sometime.

Gemma, who falls in love about a dozen times a year and falls hard, had a huge crush on Caleb. As I came to find out, on a deceptively ordinary Wednesday evening two months afterward, with Gemma snotting all over my shirt as she wrapped her arms around me and wouldn’t let me squirm away, she’d simply done what she thought she had to do. She was sorry. She was insecure and desperately in love. People who are in love can’t think straight, don’t act normally. Please don’t hate me. I couldn’t keep it going any longer, my hair’s starting to fall out and I’m losing sleep.

Gemma had catfished me with a fake Tinder profile.

I’m nursing some conflicted feelings over this because I wasn’t the victim of a personal vendetta; I was collateral damage in Gemma’s quest to keep the object of her affections single and available. Now that it’s over, I’m less surprised—a couple months before it happened, a guy loafing about the lobby asked me where the ATM was. While leading him there, we got to talking a little bit, just innocent chitchat, which culminated in his asking for my number. I was doing my job. Being friendly. I did not flirt with him.

But it definitely looked like flirting to Gemma, who, as it transpired, was casually dating him at the time. He claimed that she’d misheard him, that when he asked for my number he meant “what number of the month it was, like, on a calendar.” I told her I never gave him any of my contact information, and she said that she believed me, but if Caleb’s offering me a ride in his car was enough to make her pull some pictures of a random hot guy off the Internet and trick me into a long-distance relationship, maybe she still had some trust issues.

In Gemma’s defense (literally, she used this as a defense), she tried really hard to be a considerate fake boyfriend. Jack would “just know” when I was having a bad day and could benefit from a surprise delivery from my favorite takeout place. He played the ukulele, which I thought was so cute, and he was drop. Dead. Gorgeous. A giant who could probably crush pebbles between his fingers if he wanted, but he wore the sweetest smile and softest expression. My favorite picture “Jack” sent was a black-and-white one of him in formal wear, and when I envision my imaginary ex-boyfriend I still see him without color sometimes, like he belongs to a different era.

The longer our relationship went on, the more I wanted from Jack, and the harder it became for Gemma to keep the ruse up. I wanted to meet in person. I wanted more selfies of him. I wanted concrete plans. After a while it didn’t matter how gorgeous or supernaturally insightful he was (Gemma’s advantage of knowing me as well as she does was an awful, lovely, double-edged blade); I didn’t like that he wasn’t putting in as much effort as me. Didn’t he want to meet up, too?

Then Gemma met someone else, lost all interest in Caleb, and was tired of expending energy on this. She had to come clean. I feel terrible. I’m the worst person ever. Can you forgive me? I’m sorry I did it, but in a way it wasn’t all that bad because you were happy, weren’t you? You’ve been so happy these past few months! If you think about it, I gave you a gift.

She begged me not to tell her dad, but another housekeeper overheard the whole confession and told a pool attendant, who told everyone, and before I knew it I was shaking Paul’s hand and accepting a promotion. It was coded into Paul’s upbeat congratulations that the promotion hinged on my not making any waves. I’d keep to myself, and be sad in private, and it meant no more scrubbing wine stains out of carpets. Which was fine. Maybell Parrish doesn’t make waves. She doesn’t even make ripples.

As I wipe down the ice machine, I listen to the distant chime of a door opening up in the clouds. What’s your daily special? a patron asks. Mentally, I follow the sound.

A different Maybell smiles back at her customer from behind a glass case of pastries on display. Like me, she has round glasses with rose-gold frames and honey-brown hair growing out in a Rumours-era Stevie Nicks shag. She sports the same constellation of freckles on her upper arm that I do, and we both wear a dainty heart-shaped ring on our right index finger that our mother got us for our sixteenth birthday.

But this Maybell is smooth and confident. She has a devoted boyfriend, Jack, and an honest, authentic best friend called Gemma. No indentations on her lower lip from nervous nibbling; her fingernails are manicured, not the kind you’d hide in your pockets. Her fresh-from-the-oven donuts are famous in five counties. This Maybell Parrish knows how to stand up for herself and gets what she wants on the first try, her little corner of the universe protected by magic. She controls the weather, the conversation, the emotional mood, who stays in the café and who goes. Here, she is somebody.

Slipping away into the dream version of my life is sometimes a conscious decision. But frequently, I don’t realize I’ve been daydreaming until a loud noise jars me, and when I check the clock, I’ll find I’ve lost an hour. A whole hour, just gone. The more anxious or stressed or lonely I am in reality, the less time I’m inclined to spend in it.

It requires effort to resist spiriting away to my coffee shop. I choose to focus on a topic that will keep me grounded: Gemma. Enough time has passed that she isn’t embarrassed about the catfishing anymore. Now she thinks it makes for a good anecdote, spreading it around, adding embellishments as she goes. I’ve heard her tell Javier that Jack and I had even gotten engaged, which isn’t true.

I blink and center myself, ice machine drifting back into focus. I’ve moved past it and now I’m smearing Clorox circles onto the soda machine. The paper towel in my hand is soggy shreds.