Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
VIOLET
It’s been a week since Ezra left. I know we have made nothing official, but this felt worse than when I found out Rya and Zayn slept together.
I didn’t know how to react while he was saying those words to me.
My body didn’t know how to react. Instead, I sat there speechless, like an idiot.
Even though we aren’t together, it felt like a breakup.
After Ezra left the house that night, I curled up in my bed and cried myself to sleep, and have cried every night since.
I felt like I had lost the best thing that had ever happened to me.
But yet I sit here still wondering what I should do.
I hate how much I’ve been hurt and how it’s causing me to react.
I’ve been going through the motions of everything this past week, and keeping busy at the bakery has helped some.
But not talking or seeing Ezra for a week has felt like a lifetime.
Every day, I’ve tried to keep my emotions under wraps so Liv notices nothing off.
The new bakers, Cami and Brianna, have only been coming in the evening, and it’s been a big help training them and keeping my mind off everything.
But the moment I go home, a rush of everything hits me.
And once I go up to my room each night, I curl myself into a ball and cry.
“One vanilla latte,” I say loudly. I set the coffee down on the counter and shift back around to start on the next coffee order.
The lunch rush has been steady today, thank God. There’s been a handful of customers that have helped keep my mind busy today. Liv has been bouncing between the register and packing orders. Listening to the chatting of customers and seeing their smiles has helped me.
After washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen while Liv cleans the front, I go out front and find Liv taking a selfie of herself in front of the windows. There are so many windows that a lot of natural light shines through and I don’t have to turn on the lights during the day.
I watch as Liv looks down at her phone after taking a picture, and I see her tap on her phone a few times.
“Are you sending that to someone?” I say, walking towards her. “Maybe a boy?”
She turns around with a big wide smile on her face as her cheeks turn pink. “Yeah, I took your advice.”
“What advice?”
Her head tilts. “To ask Jacob out.”
“Oh, I forgot I told you that. When did you ask him out?”
“At that party I went to. We hung out and talked all night, and before I left, I just blurted it out.”
“Good for you. See, that wasn’t so hard,” I say the words without even thinking; the second they leave my mouth, something twists in my chest.
Why is it so simple to tell someone else what to do, but hard to follow it myself? The situation is different but somewhat the same.
I hyped her up and pushed her to make the first move with the guy she likes. Yet with Ezra, I freeze. It’s like my advice bounces right off of me.
“No, it wasn’t. But I found it more nerve-racking because I was scared he would say no, and I would feel embarrassed standing there in front of him if he did.
But then I thought, what’s the harm in a no?
Life is short. If he doesn’t want to, that’s fine.
At least I can cherish the moments we had together. ”
Her words hit me even harder than I expected from the bravery of an eighteen-year-old.
Life is short.
What’s the harm in a no?
She says it so simply.
Meanwhile, I’m older, more experienced, supposedly wiser, and I can’t even let myself be that way. It stings a little. I gave her advice, and now here I am getting schooled by someone so much younger.
She pulls out a chair, stares at her phone, and sits down while laughing. “Ever since we hung out just the two of us, we’ve been inseparable.”
I lean my hip against the counter, smiling at the happiness that’s written all over her face. All because she took a chance.
“I’m happy for you, Liv. You look really happy.”
She looks over at me. “I have you to thank.”
“No, this was all you.”
She looks back down at her phone and giggles. A soft thud sounds as she sets her phone down. “So how are you and that one guy…Ezra?”
I’m caught off guard by her question. Not at the question itself but the way it made my stomach drop while I sit here thinking about what to say. If someone had asked me how we were doing a couple of months ago, I would’ve happily answered.
“Umm. We’re kind of on a break…” I pause. “I think.”
Her brows draw together. “What do you mean?”
I don’t know how honest I should be with my employee. She’ll probably never understand unless I tell her everything from the start, but I can’t get that honest with her. If I tell her everything, that might even scare her away.
I shrug my shoulders. “We were trying to see if things would work between us, and I need more time to think about it.”
She continues to draw her brows together as she stares at me in confusion.
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“Really?”
I nod, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“It didn’t seem too complicated when I saw you two together. He seems to really love you. Or like you. I’m not sure if I know what love is yet.”
A small smile raises my cheeks. I feel like I haven’t smiled in days, ever since Ez left.
“Once you get older and things get more serious, decisions get harder.”
“Then why can’t you two just have fun?” Her phone pings, and she looks at it with a huge smile on her face. She taps on her phone and then sets it back down. “Like Jacob and I. We’re just having fun.”
I wish I could live like her. I once was. And she’s right; it was fun deciding day by day what you wanted to do. Not taking anything too seriously. Just going with the flow. It gets harder when you get older, but why can’t I just have fun?
“The way I saw you two interact, you should just go for it. Have fun.”