Chapter 19
Victoria
Why was it sometimes we made mistakes knowing full well that they were mistakes, that we could turn away and course-correct at any point?
I spent miserable, lonely days drifting around the apartment only in the morning hours if I could help it and then locking myself away in my room the rest of the time.
It felt like a fever dream—it wasn’t like Bridget and I had actually had a fight, but I almost wished we had, because the quiet apathy that we’d killed it off with—that I’d killed it off with—wormed deeper into my soul.
Maybe if we’d argued, then I could have justified it, vilified her in my mind, and we could have shouting matches in the common rooms when we crossed paths.
Instead, it was painful silence where she gave me a thin ghost of a smile at most, and we’d slip past each other, and I’d be left standing there wondering why I didn’t chase after her and tell her I missed her.
Not that I had any reason she’d want to take me back, not after how I ruined things between us.
Of all people, it was her friend Erica who kept in touch with me after it all went down, and the conversations with her were equal parts grounding and risky.
She was always in love with another person whenever we talked, and I got to focus on coaching her on whether these latest feelings were reciprocated or not.
It was good to see somebody else who couldn’t figure out love to save her life.
But every now and then, it got dangerous, because I’d be sitting under the twinkling lights in the kitchen window looking out over the snow-draped patio behind the apartment, the solitary dinner plate on the table reduced to just a few smears of food left, and Erica, on the phone helping distract me from my own thoughts, would go quiet for a minute before she’d say,
“You know, you can still make things right with Bridget.”
I closed my eyes. “Thanks,” I said.
“No, you can’t keep doing this every time. She really cares about you. You really care about her. She told me all about how you said like you don’t know what you really want—”
“That’s really enough,” I said thinly.
“But I know what you want.”
“Uh-huh, true love. I think you may be mixing it up with what you want, Erica.” I kept my voice hushed. Bridget couldn’t hear me if I’d shouted, not with how soundproofed her room was, but it felt viscerally uncomfortable to be talking about this out loud in the same apartment as her.
“Not that,” Erica pleaded. “It’s a sense of home, isn’t it?
A place you’re always welcome where you’re always enough and people see you and know you and love you.
It’s family and friends and… okay, maybe a true love or two in there too.
And you’ve been connecting with your family, making friends, finding your safe place… ”
I swallowed hard, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I… I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do! You’re just afraid of what happens if you have it.
I like you a lot. I mean, not like that.
I mean, if you weren’t already soulmates with Bridget, I’d consider it, because you are really pretty and really intelligent and everything, but like, that’s not relevant, because you’re already soulmates with Bridget. ”
“Uh… uh-huh. You all have terrible taste.”
“Oh my god, stop. Can’t you just trust people to want what they want?”
I sighed, looking up at the Christmas lights strung up overhead. They probably had to come down soon… I’d never cared so much for Christmas, but this year, I was desperately sad at the thought of seeing them go. “Don’t you think it’s a little… too… late?”
“Never,” she said, without a hint of exaggeration. “Bridget’s so happy with you.”
I swallowed. “I already told the Seattle office I’ll be going back there. Told the office here I wouldn’t be…”
“It’s still never too late.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’d hate to be the… the rock that weighs her down…”
“Victoria…” Her little voice was so soft and heartbroken, it hurt me too to hear it. “Bridget doesn’t see you that way. Nobody sees you that way.”
I couldn’t manage a word—tried, but everything died in my throat, thin and weak. I squeezed my hand tighter on the phone.
“I mean, you can look at her feed too. Like, did you see how prolific she was when she was with you? She just about, like, doubled her following.”
“Well, I mean, I guess I did… see that…”
“The audio of her while you went down on her? That was so sexy and so beautiful. I’ve come to it like thirty times.”
“Oh, er, flattered… to, er… have helped.”
“Bridget’s more of who she wants to be with you. I just wish you could see that.”
I wished I could see it, too.
Instead, I staggered hazily through the days until, a dreary Tuesday five days until I was supposed to leave this place behind, sitting in the car huddling waiting for it to warm up after an indeterminate not-really-work session staring at my computer at the café, I got a call from my mother, and I froze up—somehow even in my car, I felt cornered, and I stared at the phone like it was attacking me, but I had to believe it was just…
logistics. She wasn’t the one for an emotional confrontation.
It was just silent judgment. And it would be worse if I didn’t pick up the phone.
I took a long breath, and I steeled myself before I picked up the phone. “Hello?” I said, and Mother’s voice was light.
“Could you come by the house?”
My blood ran cold. “Er… is something wrong?”
She spoke like it was obvious. “You’re leaving soon, aren’t you?” she said. “There’s a few things for you to pick up and take with you. Until the next time you decide to come around the neighborhood.”
“I…” I needed to refuse. I’d break if I had to see my family in person right now. But I couldn’t make the word no come out of my mouth. “All right. I’ll… I can be there in fifteen?”
“Good. Help yourself inside once you arrive.” And with that, she hung up, leaving me feeling sick to my stomach as I put the car in reverse, pulled out of the parking space, and in a split-second decision, turned on the music—one of my old albums I used to play on the interminable drives to work, trying to cover up the voices in the back of my head telling me the most horrible, heinous things.
Bad idea. Just brought those voices back, telling me I was going nowhere, doing nothing, that I’d disappear one day and it wouldn’t matter. Didn’t get me to turn it off, though.
I drove to Mother’s house and found myself a child again as I got out of the car, small and meek and putting on a brave face pretending to be okay as I headed for the front door. I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat as I unlatched the door, kicking snow off my boots and stepping inside.
“Hi, I’m here,” I called inside, and I think I’d gone clinically insane, because Mother came out of the dining room towards me, and she gave me a hug.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she said, her voice strained. “I love you.”
I tensed up. “Oh my god, Mom, is Nan dead?”
“What—no, dear, she’s—your Nan is just fine.”
“Is Grandma dead?” I admit I sounded a little less concerned about that one.
“Nobody’s dead, Victoria, sweetheart. I just wanted to see you before you left.
I’m… well, you know. I’m going to miss you.
” She looked a little like saying this was going to kill her.
I understood. I felt like I was going to die too.
“Do you want coffee? I went to the café on Cedar Avenue and got those light-roast beans from Brazil that you liked.”
I… I liked the light-roast beans from Ethiopia, but I wasn’t about to correct her.
I didn’t expect her to have even noticed that I had a specific bean I preferred.
“I… okay,” I said, walking stiffly along behind her, like I was being walked to the firing range.
The kitchen smelled warm and sweet, cinnamon and orange in the air, and I stopped at the sight of cinnamon rolls, fresh-baked, on the table.
Those were reserved for Christmas morning, exactly one day out of the year we would have cinnamon rolls.
Not for the first time since I’d gotten back, Mother had me wondering if I’d had a stroke.
“Do you want your coffee with cream, darling?” Mother said, taking a pot from the coffee machine and pouring a cup.
“No… no, just black is fine.”
“We have oat milk, if you prefer.”
Right. Because Mother had oat milk at home now. And any second now, a leprechaun would show up riding a tiny unicorn, and I’d eventually find out what kind of intense acid trip I was accidentally taking. “That… well, if you wouldn’t mind, that would be perfect.”
She sighed, opening the refrigerator and taking a carton of oat milk out. “You always said you could take it black, and I had to learn from Sam that you prefer it with oat milk. You could well have said.”
“Sorry.” I’d never have lived down asking for oat milk in my coffee. Or at least, I’d have thought I wouldn’t have. Also, was she listening to Sam?
She brought two mugs to the table, and she took out a pair of plates, serving up cinnamon rolls.
I think I was having a low-level panic attack, standing at the table, my hand clutching the back of the chair.
Breathing was getting harder. I was supposed to turn down cinnamon rolls.
But she’d seemingly made them for this, so that would be rude, but I couldn’t accept them, but I couldn’t…
She made a face at me. “Victoria, sweetheart, are you all right? You can sit down.”
“What happened?” I blurted, my voice shaking embarrassingly. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
She stared at me for a second before I saw the moment her heart broke, and she looked down. “I guess Bridget was right.”
“What—about what?” I gripped the chair tighter. The one thing I couldn’t handle right now was adding Bridget into this.
“I call you around to make you a damn cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll, and you look like I’m about to hit you. I didn’t think I was doing that badly.”
“I… beg your pardon?”