Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maggie
“ A nother round?” Jules asks from behind the counter of the Daily Brew. Her coffee shop is packed tonight and has been since she started offering signature cocktails every Saturday. What started as an experiment to attract more patrons on weekend evenings has turned into a huge success.
“Not for me. I’m on duty tomorrow,” Kate says with a pout. “But these were most excellent tonight.”
“Sure,” I say. I have a coveted morning off, and since my new hiking partner, aka Kate, has to work, I can sleep in and sleep off a couple of drinks.
Plus, if I’m honest, I don’t want to go home on the best of days, so going home a little buzzed might make it slightly more tolerable.
Might make the night a tiny bit less endless.
Since Alice moved out and Jackson is gone, my place is too quiet.
Kate and I are at one of the new high-top tables Jules brought in, and Jules sits with us when no one is at the counter wanting a refill. Cal has a night with Charlie, and though we saw them earlier, they’ve long since disappeared upstairs. I’m not hating this impromptu girls’ night.
“So, I had a weird thing happen…” Kate says. “Jackson liked my latest post—the one from the hike we did last weekend.”
“Did he?” Jules’s eyebrows pop up, and her voice goes high like she’s all interested.
Me? I don’t care. Or try not to, anyway.
“Yeah, he did.”
The two of them are eyeing me expectantly. “What?”
“Have you heard from him?” Jules asks, and I can tell they’ve been waiting on this opportunity to bring him up.
I shake my head, hiding behind a sip of my cocktail. I’ve been actively avoiding thoughts of Jackson and have refocused so many times, I’ve lost count. Thinking about him hurts on a visceral level, and I am not here for it tonight.
“Oh. I guess I thought you two were serious. I mean, I remember that kiss he laid on you after the explosion call. Hot enough to melt the asphalt.” Kate fans herself with the napkin, making me roll my eyes.
“It was just a friends-with-bennies thing. I knew he was leaving and didn’t want to start anything serious.” The lie feels like chalk in my mouth. It’s hard to swallow, hard to breathe through this closed throat.
“No offense, Maggie, but you two were serious before you even started sleeping together.” Jules cocks a brow at me, and I take a long, defensive drag of my drink.
She wasn’t supposed to throw my confessions from weeks ago into the mix, but the look she’s giving me makes me think she’s not going to let this drop, so I shrug, trying to be nonchalant.
“We’ve been friends for years, and even that wasn’t enough to make him change his mind and stay, was it?” Damn. I eye my drink. She must’ve made mine extra strong, because I have no clue where that admission came from.
“Ouch. Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she says.
“Eh, fuck him.” Kate waves a dismissive hand. “He didn’t bother to talk to any of the crew before he left. Just turned in his notice with no heads-up at all. Felt like a bitch slap, if you ask me. I kinda want to message him and tell him to kiss my ass—and yours too, for that matter.”
I wish I had Kate’s attitude. Wish I could be all fuck around and find out . Instead, I’m trapped in the hamster wheel of caring too much.
“Did you at least tell him you love him before he left?” Jules asks, snapping my attention back to her.
My mouth goes dry, and my stomach roils with the truth. Dammit. “Am I that transparent?” I whisper.
“Girl, you can’t hide a thing,” Kate scoffs. “You wear your emotions all over your face. Why wouldn’t you want him to know how you feel? Isn’t it better knowing where you stand? Why not just put it all out there?”
“Because some of us keep the inside thoughts inside,” I pop back, the frustration I’ve been tamping down bleeding into my tone.
And once I let my control slide just a bit, I lose the ability to hold back anything else.
“What the hell was I supposed to do? Beg him to stay? And why would I hold him back from his dreams? If I truly care for him, wouldn’t I want him to chase the things that are important to him? ”
They stare at me with a mix of apprehension and shock.
“And I do care for him. Is it love? I don’t know.
Maybe? Or maybe I’m just confused because I’ve cared for him for a while now, and I didn’t know it was going to hurt this bad to see him go.
” I want to be all badass right now, but the quaver in my voice betrays me.
“I don’t want to admit how much his leaving hurt.
Toss in his withholding that he was there the night our friend died… I’m just empty. Broken.”
Jules’s hand lands on my forearm, giving me a little squeeze. “Aw, sweetie.”
“Wait.” Kate holds her palm out to me. “I think there’s a bigger problem at play than that asshole Jackson.
Listen to yourself, Maggie. Really pay attention to what you are and are not saying.
You say you care about him. But you never told him.
You don’t want to admit that it hurt your feelings.
Your words.” She lifts her drink and shakes the ice in her cup, one finger pointing at me.
“You can’t handle your own emotions, is what the problem is.
And until you acknowledge and own them? You’re either going to feel like shit or shut down and go numb. ”
“But what if I can’t handle them? What if they take over, and I can’t move forward? It’s just easier to be head down, get shit done. My family taught me that from a young age.”
Jules’s expression gentles. “By acknowledging them, you’ll take the big scary out of them. Then it’s just a thing you have to work through.”
“Ugh. Emotions are so stupid,” I say, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
“They are what they are. And just because you don’t want to feel them, doesn’t mean you won’t. And it’s okay. Just feel what you feel and know that it’s valid and it matters. We all want you to be happy and whole.”
“Go on,” Kate chimes in. “Give it a try. We can do it right now, make a game of it. I’ll say a word, and you tell me the first thing it makes you feel. Ready?”
I nod, and she says, “Sticky Sweet.”
The thought of my shop makes my lips tilt up. “Pride.”
She grins and nods. “Hiking. ”
“Accomplished.” Another easy answer. I relax a little with each word as she continues through a list of random things, and I fire back the first feeling I associate it with.
“Bedtime.”
Oof. This one gives me pause. “Melancholy.”
Jules’s hand, still on my arm, squeezes, and the corner of Kate’s mouth tips up. “Jackson.”
She did that shit on purpose. Gave me all the gooey, happy things to make me face the truth.
“I’m lonely. I miss him.” The soft admission hurts, but I push through with their encouragement.
“Everything about him. The morning texts, the way he’d pop into the bakery and kick his feet up and generally be in my way.
The hikes we’d do that he would plan to challenge me, but also because he knew I needed the push. ”
A bead of condensation trickles down the side of my glass.
I watch it slowly work its way down, bobbing this way and then that.
Maybe I’ve done that all along. Bobbed and weaved to get to where I wanted to end up.
I lose focus, falling into the memory of Jackson challenging me, questioning me about what I really wanted. And the why.
I hate that I missed so much of those last few weeks he was here. Focused on that stupid reunion that ruined everything, made him run away. I should’ve just come clean with Alice at the beginning, then I could’ve spent more time with him aside from that last hike. Maybe we’d still be talking.
I polish off my cocktail, and Jules flits away but almost immediately returns with another glass. “Guess this is project Get Magnolia Wasted.”
She just grins.
“I don’t want to talk about Jackson anymore,” I declare.
“He’s made his choice, and it wasn’t me.
I need to let him go. It’s going to hurt for a while—a long while.
Going to take some time for me to get over him not being completely honest with me.
” But I’m stepping away from that emotional rabbit hole for the moment.
“I think I’m mad at myself for pushing for that reunion gig, for trying to shift my focus to bigger, more influential clients.” The revelation hits out of nowhere, and with it comes a sense of relief. “I’m happiest when doing my thing. I like my shop just the way it is.”
“Wait, how’d we go from the asshat to your shop?” Kate interrupts.
I waggle my new drink at her, feeling fuzzy and a little tipsy, but breathing easier. I’d never be this open on a regular day. Alcohol obviously makes me a blabbermouth. “You wanted feelings. Here they are with all the yuck.”
“True. Proceed.”
I don’t even know where to start. They probably don’t know my parents, so I give them the cliffs notes version of their goals and expectations and how I completely shirked my responsibilities, in their eyes.
I sum it all up with, “I thought if I had some higher-profile corporate clients, my folks might actually get a little more invested, show a little more interest in it.”
“Are you going to keep doing the corporate catering type stuff?” Jules asks.
“Maybe? The money would be nice.”
“I’m sensing a but…”
“But not at the expense of my regular business. I love my bakery. My regular customers make me smile every day, even if I sometimes have to fake it. Now, if I can hire some additional help to grow into offering the catering more regularly, then yes, because it’s a good investment.”
“Then what do you care if your folks recognize it?”
I think about that for a minute. “It would be nice if I could hear those words. But at the end of the day, my business is thriving. And I’m proud of it. Their expectations are theirs, not mine.”
Jules and Kate beam at me with “Hell yeah” and “Now you’re getting somewhere.” I finally feel like I’m emerging from this heavy-ass conversation, and maybe, just maybe, I can move forward.
I drink in celebration of achieving my goal. I drink in sorrow at having lost Jackson. Such a swirling mix of emotions, and finally, I acknowledge that I can be both happy and sad at the same time.
Kate promises she’ll drive me home, so Jules keeps the drinks coming. I’m reveling in my newfound lightness—until I down the one that pushes me over the edge and the tears start. Tears for the way my parents treat me. Tears for Jackson.
“Okay, girlie, I’ve been waiting on the dam to break. Time to cut you off,” Jules says. “Go home, have a good cry, and pass out. We’ll sort it all out tomorrow.”
“I’m okay,” I insist as Kate ushers me to the car. I reiterate it as we stumble into my house, and she directs me into my bed.
I’m such a liar. I’m not okay.
I just want to hear his voice one more time. Maybe that’ll take away this hollow ache in my chest. Plus, they were the ones wanting me to unload and talk about my feelings. I juggle my phone off the bedside table.
“Nope.” Kate plucks it right out of my fingers.
“Ish clo-shure,” I whine as the blanket falls over me.
“If you still want to talk to him tomorrow, fine. But for now, go to sleep, Maggie. You’ll thank me in the morning.”