20. Sable
CHAPTER 20
sable
T he sun was too bright for my mood. It filtered through the curtains of my tiny office at the back of the Wildflower, its cheerful glow jeering at the mess my life had become.
Heath’s words kept playing in my mind, looping endlessly like a broken record I couldn’t shut off.
“Your tavern is struggling because you’re inexperienced. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
He was right. I didn’t know what I was doing.
His words stung, all of them.
But what hurt the most was that it was all true.
I was blaming Alexa when it was I who didn’t know how to run a business. Why did I think I could just work in a bank for years and then run a bar? That was arrogant of me, and the universe was teaching me a lesson. I’d also thought I could keep a man like Heath. Well, that blew up in my face, didn’t it?
I’d been called names and treated poorly my whole life, but never by a person I trusted. That Heath saw me in the same light as the others once he got to know me better told me all I wanted to know about myself. I was what they all said I was.
Maybe I could cut my losses. Give the bar back to Ben. Maybe get some money out of it and leave Aspen. Move to Boulder. Or maybe Texas. Or…somewhere else where they didn’t know me, and I could start fresh. I’d keep to myself in this new place, make no friends, and just…be. Safe.
I couldn’t believe after everything I’d shared with Heath, he thought it was right for him to treat me the way he had in public, loudly, so everyone could hear him dump me, tell me I was a failure, tell me that I deserved the condemnation of the people of Aspen.
He wouldn’t even give me a chance to explain, to tell him that I was protecting Juno, not hurting her.
I was looking forward to seeing Heath and Juno at the farmer’s market. I liked Juno. She was a good kid, and we got along well.
But Juno was with Alexa, and I decided to wait until her mother left before approaching her. Alas, Juno didn’t seem to care about that and ran up to me by the candle stall and gave me a quick hug. “Sable! We’re coming for trivia night, my girls and I, next week, and we’re gonna win.”
“Juno.” Alexa marched up to her daughter. “You can’t just wander off.” She gave me a once over, and I smiled at her and nodded. No way was I going to make a scene in front of Juno. She didn’t deserve that .
“Mama, I’m fifteen.” Juno looked amused.
“And be careful of associating with trash like this because you’ll turn out as one, too,” Alexa snapped.
Juno and I were shocked. A few people heard Alexa, and I could feel eyes on us.
“Well, I’ll leave you to your, ah….” My hands shook as I gripped my purse strap on my shoulder. “Have a nice day and?—"
“First, you stole my husband, and now you want my daughter?” Alexa wasn’t giving up. She was spoiled. She thought she could behave any way she wanted with no consequences. This was, unfortunately, true. No one would support me. I knew that.
“Mama,” Juno gasped in shock. “Stop it.”
“And you?” She sneered at her daughter. “Do you have no loyalty? No integrity? You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re my daughter.”
Juno’s eyes filled with tears.
Enough was fucking enough.
“Stop it, Alexa.”
“You don’t get to tell me how to talk to my daughter.” She thrust out her chest, and all her beauty disappeared under bitterness and meanness.
I felt sorry for her but not enough to let her take a bite out of Juno for being decent to me. “I guess it would’ve been too much to ask for you to be a decent person. You’re sabotaging my business, and now this.”
“How dare you say that?” Alexa screeched.
I was about to speak when Juno put a hand on my shoulder. “Sable, please. ”
No way. I wasn’t going to let this woman, mother or not, talk to her daughter like that.
“No, Juno, it isn’t right.”
She nodded, accepting that I was defending her, telling me tacitly that she wanted me to. If Alexa behaved like this with Juno in public, I wasn’t sure what the hell was happening behind closed doors. She dropped her hand away from me—and that was when Heath joined the party.
Like everyone else in my life, he didn’t ask what had happened; he assumed the worst about me.
His words were like ice: piercing, cold, debilitating.
I lay on my couch, first in shock and then in grief.
I’d always known things with Heath would end. We wouldn’t be able to put up with the pressures from his ex and her family—but I’d hoped it would be pleasant. I’d asked him for respect and kindness, and he’d, in the end, given me neither.
I didn’t know how long I was on the couch.
I’d texted Ben and told him to take care of the tavern for the weekend and that I’d be back on Tuesday. I shut my phone off after that. Who cared anyway? I was losing the Wildflower. Ben would have to take it back, and hopefully, he could clean up the mess I’d made out of his business. Or maybe someone else would buy it—not for what I did, but perhaps I wouldn’t lose all my investment.
I blearily walked to the door when the ringing doorbell didn’t stop after what felt like forever. It was dark, but I didn’t know what day it was. I hadn’t done much but lie on the couch and vegetate.
“Sable, open the door,” I heard Casey shout.
I did as she asked.
Casey, Hillary, and Natasha stood outside. Each held a grocery bag and a bottle of wine.
“What are you doing here?”
They walked past me into the cottage.
“We’re your friends,” Hillary said in explanation as they marched into the open-plan kitchen and spread their bounty from the grocery bags onto the kitchen counter.
“Why are you here?” I closed the door behind me, irritated that I had company. I didn’t want people around pitying me, telling me that I was going to be okay. What the fuck did they know? I wasn’t going to be okay. Well…maybe eventually, but not for a good goddamn long time.
“We heard what happened.” Natasha rummaged through my drawers and found a wine key.
“Okay. But…why are you here?”
“We’re your friends; we don’t need an invitation to show up,” Casey quipped. “Mackenna would be here, but Ben needs someone to run the tavern, ya know?”
I looked at my counter and saw that they had brought food from the Wildflower.
“Elijah insisted we bring you some comfort food,” Casey clarified, following my gaze.
I leaned against a wall, blinking at them as my brain tried to process what was happening .
Friends . That’s what they’d called themselves. I wasn’t sure I knew what that word actually meant. Were friends people who showed up uninvited with food, wine, and, apparently, zero regard for my desire to wallow in self-pity?
“Come on, Sable.” Casey waved a hand at me. “Get with the program.”
I sighed heavily. “You really didn’t have to do this.”
“We know.” Hillary pulled out a pan wrapped in foil. She set it on the counter like it was a sacred offering. “But we did it anyway. That’s kind of what friends do.”
Natasha, already halfway through opening a bottle of wine, smirked. “Oh, and Elijah didn’t just send bison chili. There’s also mac and cheese and a whole loaf of his famous cornbread. He said if this doesn’t cheer you up, nothing will.”
Why were they trying to cheer me up?
Casey went through my cabinets, pulling out plates and wine glasses.
“I don’t use those plates. They’re…old. You should?—"
“Why does it matter?” Casey cocked an eyebrow. “Are we grading this on presentation now?”
“No,” I said lamely, “but if we were, I’d already be failing.”
“Oh, please, wait until you’re a little drunk to start the pity party.” Natasha poured me the first glass of wine. “Here. Drink this. It’s medicinal.”
I took the glass and slumped onto one of the kitchen counter stools, watching as they moved around my kitchen like they owned the place. Within minutes, the chili was in the oven to reheat, and the mac and cheese was on the stovetop.
Hillary caught my eye as she uncorked the second bottle of wine. “You okay, Sable?”
“No,” I said flatly, though the glass of wine in my hand was already making me feel marginally less like throwing myself off of a cliff.
“Good.” She nodded as if she approved of my honesty. “Because pretending you’re fine would be bullshit.”
An hour later, we sprawled across my living room. Plates balanced on our laps, and the remains of Elijah’s comfort food scattered on the coffee table. The first bottle of wine was empty, and the second was halfway there. Casey had put on Terms of Endearment , which was a ridiculous choice considering I was already feeling miserable, but she insisted it was cathartic.
“I’m not going to cry anymore,” I whined.
“I swear, if Sally Field screaming for painkillers for her daughter at the hospital doesn’t make you cry, you might actually be a robot.” Natasha’s voice had a slight slur as she refilled her glass.
“Pretty sure I’m all cried out,” I replied, though my voice wavered as the hospital scene unfolded.
Hillary sniffled, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “Why do we do this to ourselves?”
“Because it’s tradition when you get your heart broken,” Casey replied, stuffing a piece of cornbread into her mouth. “And because crying during Steel Magnolias is basically a rite of passage.”
I didn’t argue. It felt good to do this. Casey was right.
By the time the credits rolled, we’d moved on to music. Natasha had commandeered my Bluetooth speaker and queued up a playlist that started with Adele and quickly escalated to Beyoncé.
When Single Ladies came on, Casey grabbed my hand, pulling me off the couch. “Come on, Sable. Dance it out.”
“I don’t dance,” I protested, but she was already spinning me in a circle.
“Now you do,” she declared, shimmying as Hillary joined in, a glass of wine in hand.
Natasha cranked up the volume, and her moves were somewhere between enthusiastic and completely ridiculous as we tried to copy Beyonce doing the Single Ladies dance.
It was infectious to twirl around my living room and hear them laugh like loons. I felt a smile tug at my lips—real this time—and before I knew it, I was laughing, too.
We danced until we were breathless, collapsing back onto the couch in a tangle of limbs and giggles.
“This—” Natasha raised her glass— “is how you get through shit in life. Food, wine, and bad dancing with your friends.”
I clinked my glass against hers. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Never had your heart broken?” Casey frowned.
I shook my head. “Oh, no, my heart has scar tissue from continual breaking…no, I’ve never had…friends to commiserate with.”
Natasha put an arm around me and squeezed. “Now, you do.”
“You’re all nuts,” I murmured, feeling strangely full in the heart despite losing Heath in the worst way possible.
“Completely,” Hillary agreed, leaning her head on my shoulder.
“Okay, how about we now watch Silence of the Lambs ?” Casey suggested.
We all looked at her with inquiring raised eyebrows.
“I’ve never seen that movie suggested in the after-breakup handbook,” Hillary said thoughtfully.
“I know. I know. But hear me out.” Casey raised both hands, asking us to be quiet and listen to her explanation. “It’s to watch Jody Foster fall in love with a serial killer, which makes us all feel like we could do much worse. It works.”
“Okay,” I grinned. “Let’s try it out.”
Spoiler alert: it worked!