22. Sophie
CHAPTER 22
SOPHIE
I kept myself too busy to think about Miles, filling every free moment with endless make-work.
I went over to Mom’s and sanded her deck, then I restained it and brushed it with sealant.
I pulled up the stained board on my kitchen floor, and spent a day at the Home Store picking out one that matched. Then I cut it to fit and glued it in place, and walked up and down on it to push out the bubbles.
I took up jogging and baking and crosswords and knitting, and downloaded an app to teach me French.
At work, I took extra shifts wherever I could, and prayed they’d be busy, no sitting around. The more tired I got, the less I could think, and that was fine with me. Perfect, in fact.
“You’re working too hard,” said Mom, one night after work. “I can’t even get you on the phone anymore.”
I laughed without humor. “We’re on the phone right now.”
“After I called you five days in a row.”
I sat. Kicked my boots off. My feet throbbed and ached. I’d been on them twelve hours without a break.
“It’s not healthy,” Mom said. “When’s your next day off?”
I covered a yawn. “Friday, I guess. But Clive said the swing shift might need some cover.”
“Let someone else cover. We need mani-pedis.”
I groped for a reason I couldn’t make it. If I went, Mom would want to talk about Miles. All I wanted to do was pretend we’d never met. I’d have been better off by a mile if we hadn’t.
“Just a couple of hours,” said Mom. “Come on. I’ve got snaggletoes.”
I was too tired to argue, so I said fine, I’d go. I meant to get out of it at some later point, invent some emergency, but none came to mind. So Friday rolled in and I found myself in the salon, stretched out in my usual chair next to Mom’s.
For the first little while, I thought maybe she got it. She didn’t mention Miles once, or work, or my party. She talked about TV and home renovations, and how she was thinking of getting a dog.
“A wolfhound, maybe. Or a German shepherd. Something that needs to go out for long walks. I’ve been walking a lot, and it gets lonely. I thought getting out there, I might meet the neighbors, but no one has time these days to stop and chat.”
I let her words wash over me, pleasant and soothing. Every once in a while, I’d nod or go hummm , some little signal to show I was listening. But after a while, my throat went tight. My foot started tapping without my say-so. I thought I was bored at first, restless. Impatient. I hadn’t sat and done nothing since my party.
“Not a puppy,” said Mom. “I wouldn’t want a puppy. I’d want an older dog, already housebroken. A year or two old, past that nippy stage.”
I clenched and unclenched my fists to let off some tension. A knot had formed deep in my gut. It hit me I wasn’t bored, but boiling with anger. I could feel it inside me, bubbling up. Where the hell did Miles get off, you’ll get it one day? Get it? Get what? What was to get, that made this okay?
“He dumped me,” I said.
Mom stopped talking. “Who, Miles?”
“Who else?” I hitched a harsh, ragged breath and stared up at the ceiling. The plaster was water-stained in the shape of a cow. Now the truth was out, I half-wished I hadn’t spoken. The other half of me wanted Mom’s vindication. I wanted to trash Miles and have her trash him back, and tell me my life would be better without him. The whole story spilled out of me, how he’d stood me up. How he’d seen my texts but not answered, how embarrassed I’d been. Then the breakup itself, a bolt from the blue.
“He wouldn’t say why, except things got personal . And he transferred to another station. He’d rather drive forty-five minutes to work than risk running into me. Having to talk.”
Mom made a humming sound. I flicked a cotton ball at her.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“This is the part where you go ‘what a jerk.’ Where you tell me he’s stupid and you never liked him, and I’ll meet someone better in no time flat.”
“I’m just thinking,” said Mom. She pursed her lips.
I tossed another cotton ball. “Less thinking. More trashing.”
“All right. He’s stupid. I’ll give you that. But what if, aside from that, he’s running scared?”
I frowned. This wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. “Then he’s stupid and a coward. How is that better?”
“Maybe it isn’t.” Mom stretched out and shrugged. “But, hear me out. The two of you went through a terrible thing. No, don’t deny it. I watched the news. I don’t know what you two saw, and I won’t ask, but what if he’s picturing your face on that? On whatever hurt you saw, whatever loss? What if he can’t look at you without thinking he’ll lose you? That’s why?—”
“Why what?”
A pair of technicians came angling to join us. Mom waved them off.
“Still soaking,” she said. “Ten more minutes.”
The technicians veered off. Mom closed her eyes. “Why I never remarried, after your dad. You didn’t think I had offers, in all these years? But whenever I’d find one I thought I could love, I’d start having dreams of the day he’d go out. The day he’d kiss my cheek and tell me back soon , and half an hour later, it’d be the cops at my door.”
My stomach clenched up. I’d opened the door that day. I’d had time to look up at the cops on the porch, then Mom had screamed. I’d peed my pants. It had seemed, for a second, like the end of the world, that I’d peed like a toddler all down my legs. Then the true horror struck and my embarrassment paled — Mom sobbing. Holding me. Dad gone, just gone.
“Have you talked to him?”
“What?”
Mom sat up. “Since the split? Have you reached out at all, or…?”
“After the way he dumped me? Even if I wanted to, what would I say?”
“Maybe just ask him how he’s been doing. You can feel him out from there, if he’s ready to talk.”
I tried to picture how that would go, me calling Miles. Would he explain himself, or would he shut me down? He might give me some peace. Then again, he might not. He might hurt me all over again, or screen my call. I couldn’t decide which would be worse: a quick, stilted call where he said not much at all, or my call bouncing to voicemail after one ring. Or he might’ve blocked me, as I’d done him.
“If you’d rather be through with him, that’s all right too.” Mom reached over to pat my arm. “But if you still care for him, or you want closure, you can’t let your wounded pride get in the way.”
I didn’t feel like I had much ego left, but I guessed I had enough that Miles could still bruise it. And I did still care for him. That was the worst part. I still thought of him sometimes in bed, how he’d kept one hand on me even in sleep. I thought of him in the mornings when I cooked breakfast, flipping my eggs the way he’d showed me.
I pulled my feet from the foot bath and dried them off. “Maybe,” I said. “But he dumped me. If he wants to talk to me, the ball’s in his court.”
Later that night, I ordered Chinese. I ate it stretched out on the living room couch, where I’d once sat with Miles with my feet in his lap. Our show was on, our favorite hate-watch, this medical drama set in New York. We’d bet on clichés, like if someone got pregnant, someone else had to die while they gave birth.
It’ll be Phyllis. She sucks anyway.
Uh-uh. It’s Sam. Because he slept with Elle. It’ll be this whole guilt arc…
Miles had said once, we should make it a drinking game, one shot for each misuse of surgical equipment. Two for each bungled medical term.
We’d die, I said.
Ten minutes in.
Now, the camera zoomed in on one of the doctors, blank-faced as she gave a patient bad news. She stumbled over “hemochromatosis.” I laughed, and reflexively reached for my phone. Was Miles out there watching? Had he seen that?
I unblocked him and typed Dr. Perrault just said hematomachrosis, lol . Was this what Mom had meant by feeling him out? I could hit send, and maybe we’d chat. Maybe we’d laugh, and it’d be like before. Or maybe my text would pop up green and not blue, and I’d know he’d blocked me, and we were done.
I hovered my thumb over the send button.
It’s only a text.
My stomach went sour, and I backspaced it out. I reblocked Miles and tossed my phone down the couch, and kicked my quilt over it to remove the temptation.
One rejection was plenty. More than enough.
If Miles had something to say, he could man up and say it. It wasn’t my job to drag it out.