Chapter 17 #2
“With backpay, too.”
“Oh, so they think you’d have a case to sue them and they’re really covering their asses.”
I laughed thickly. It broke something in me, and I stumbled a little, and Bridget moved in an instant, catching me, her hands on my arms, and I let her do whatever it was she was doing…
we moved, somehow, one way or another, and before long, I was sitting on the couch, a mug of hot chocolate in my hand, a plate with a couple of cookies.
Bridget sat next to me, stroking my arm, and it took a minute of me sipping the drink before I managed to speak.
“I don’t know why I’m upset about this.”
“Well…” Bridget knew exactly why, and so did I. Neither of us wanted to admit it.
“After all this… stress… I didn’t think I’d wind up in a position of two job openings fighting over me.”
“Which one do you want?” she said softly. “Ignoring everything else, just for now. Which one do you want?”
“I don’t know. You think I know? If I knew, this would be a lot easier,” I said, voice thick now, and I decided that eating a cookie would make it easier not to cry, so I took a bite of the cookie and frowned sharply.
Tasted like… licking a handful of coins.
“Bridget, where… did you get these cookies?”
“Um.” She cleared her throat. “They’re, uh, homemade. Do you… like it?” she said, wincing.
“It’s just a bit… bitter… how much baking powder did you use?”
She folded her hands together. “Four teaspoons is a quarter cup, right?”
“A quarter cup is four tablespoons, Bridget.”
She rounded her lips. “Ohh… I am so sorry.”
I sniffed, and I took another bite. It tasted… not… so good. She took the cookie away from me.
“Okay, you don’t have to eat it.”
“You made cookies for us. That’s a really nice gesture.”
“There’s some cranberry orange white chocolate biscotti in the pantry, that’d be great with the hot chocolate.”
“I don’t mind the cookies.” I tried to eat the other one, and she snatched it from my hand, taking both cookies and the plate. I was a little delirious. She was a smart woman. And I was going to leave her, because I couldn’t go back to the office here.
It would be okay. I’d get over her. It had just been a casual fling.
One that turned into something more than that, but we knew all along this would happen, deep down, on some level.
Bridget kept hoping she’d fix me, I kept hoping she’d fix me, but in the end, you couldn’t fix someone.
Could only fix yourself. And God only knew I wasn’t going to fix myself.
The biscotti were good with the hot chocolate. Bridget really knew how to pick them. With sweets, that is, not with women.
“You must be so sick of me,” I said, once I’d eaten about six biscotti too many and had half a cup of hot chocolate. She rested her forehead on my shoulder, her hand falling lightly on my upper back.
“I just want you to talk to me,” she said softly. “This doesn’t have to be bad.”
“You know I can’t stay around my family,” I said thinly.
“So, you want to go to Seattle. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. Of course not. I’m still going to see my old boss’s face everywhere in those halls. And I was working too much. It was exhausting. But if I stay here, it’s…”
“It’s what, sweetheart?” she said, stroking her hand gently over my back, and it felt like I was breaking. She was too good for me.
“I just don’t want to admit that I failed,” I choked.
“How on earth would you be failing?”
“I can’t go backwards. If I go back there, what’s the point of the last two years? What’s the point of any of it? If I didn’t get away from my family after all, what does it matter?”
She tightened her grip on my arm. “Victoria, who are you trying to prove something to?”
“I don’t know. Myself? My family? You?”
“Me?”
“I’m sick of being an indecisive failure who can’t stop retreading the same old ground,” I said through thick tears, and I thumped the mug down on the table, and I cried into my hands, breaking down like a toddler.
Bridget pulled me into an embrace, holding me, squeezing together all the broken pieces of me as she stroked my hair.
“Victoria, sweetheart, angel, you aren’t a failure.
My god, you’re anything but. You’re the most dedicated, hardworking person I’ve ever known.
If you want to stay here, you’ll do amazingly, and you’ll be able to go somewhere else in the future if that’s what you want.
And if you want to go back to Seattle, you’ll do so well.
I don’t doubt for a second you can make anything you want happen. ”
“And you don’t care?” I blurted. “Whether I’m here with you or if I’m in Seattle, you don’t care?”
She squeezed me, quiet for a second, before she pulled back, looking me in the eye. “I know what you told me. But I… I mean, I have feelings for you. I really, really care for you. Like, serious, real feelings, not just about your body. You know that, right?”
“But…”
“If you stayed here, I mean… if you wanted, maybe we could just renew the lease on this place. I really like this setup. And if you left, I’d still want to be with you.
I mean, all my friends are online. We can call all the time, visit each other.
It wouldn’t have to be a permanent arrangement, either.
None of this has to be permanent. We’re just making decisions about what’s good for right now, and tomorrow will come and bring around new things, new choices to make, new things we could find together. ”
“I’m not… supposed to… do any of…” I wasn’t even sure where the sentence was going. She squeezed me.
“Victoria, baby. You can do anything you want. Whatever makes you happy. If I want you, and you want me, who is anyone else to tell us we can’t?”
“You know you could do a lot better,” I said, voice wavering pitifully.
“You don’t even think that,” she said. “You know you’re capable of anything. You just think you’re supposed to think that.”
I snorted. She’d always thought so much higher of me than I knew what to do with. No wonder I felt this way about her.
“If you just say the word, I’ll give you everything you want,” she said. “I just want a decision. Whether you want to be with me or not. Nothing else really has to matter.”
I should have. Should have been able to just give her the word. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I saw the moment she broke, her grip tightening on me, a distant look in her eyes before she shut them.
Was I waiting for her to argue? To push back? To change it… to make me do something different?