29. Chapter 29
29
I wake up feeling slightly less burdened than has been my usual, and shuffle through all the files tucked away in my brain to understand why before I even open my eyes.
What’s going on today? It’s Monday. I have a nine hour shift at work. I went grocery shopping a few days ago, so there are options for dinner if I’m up to cooking after a long day. Maybe I could throw something in my sadly underused slow cooker before I leave the house.
Note to self as soon as my eyes decide to open: Google recipes with the ingredients in my kitchen. Pretty sure I have chicken in the—
A soft snore sounds to my right and I scream, throwing my eyes open as I somehow manage to fling myself right off the side of my bed. I guess I chose to flight in the quick panicked second it took me to register my surroundings.
“Woah, woah, woah. What are you doing?” Kara asks.
Kara. Because she’s in my bed.
She was sleeping. And snoring.
Her eyes now are slits that tell me she was as suddenly disturbed from her slumber as I was from my thoughts.
“I-I–” I get up from the floor, pulling my shirt down to cover things that probably should’ve been covered while my ex was in my bed. “What do you mean, what am I doing? What are you doing? Why are you here?”
Just like that, she stops squinting her eyes and I see the alarm in them before she attempts to collect herself.
“You don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember my own name this early in the morning. I hadn’t made it past the ingredients in my—nevermind. Hold on.”
I stomp away to my connected bathroom, and shut the door firmly behind me.
Okay, new task at hand. Now I’m fumbling through my internal files wondering where Kara showing up after a brutal month without her comes in.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I discover that my hair is even more sleep mussed than usual. I flatten it as best I can by running my fingers through it, until I realize it’s not going to work, and grab the hairbrush sitting next to my sink.
I remember it feeling like a dream that she was on the other side of my door, crying for me like I’d cried for her every single day for the last month. Who does she think she is? I was in a weakened state last night, too tired to function. My judgment was skewed. She shouldn’t be here. I should tell her to fuck off, just like she’d basically told me without words, over and over again.
I have a plan. I’m going to wash my face, brush my teeth, and have a normal little morning. Then I’m going to aggressively throw this door open, and tell her that I refuse to say a word until I have a hot cup of tea in my hands.
I’ll appear unaffected, and totally badass, and like the last thing I’m going to let her do is walk back into my life this easily. It’s not happening.
When my morning routine is complete, and my stomach growls, I take a deep breath in preparation of the act I’m about to put on. I’ve always been a good actress, and that will still be true after today. There will be no more pining, or crying, or begging on my end.
No ma'am .
She’s not in my room when I emerge from the bathroom and I pause. Did I think she would actually wait around for me? That’s not her style. I should’ve known better than that.
I can’t deny that I sure did fucking hope.
With a sigh, I trudge towards the kitchen. I’ll make myself a couple pieces of toast with some jelly, and face the day that I will not be in the right mindset for.
Only when my eyes land on the back of her head, her long red hair looking breathtakingly messy, do I notice that I hear the sizzling of something cooking. Or that my kitchen smells like bacon, and garlic, and something else that’s sweet.
I’m hallucinating. I have been since last night, that or I’m stuck in a very vivid, realistic nightmare.
She turns towards me, finally realizing I’m standing here, and a small smile sits on her lips.
This can’t be a nightmare. Not when that look on her face makes me feel like I can conquer anything. It makes me feel unstoppable. Powerful.
When in reality, I keep coming back to the conclusion that I am so fucking weak for this woman.
“Hi,” she says softly. “I’m making breakfast.”
“I can see that,” I reply nervously. “I didn’t have bacon.”
I move close enough to peer over her shoulder, just to confirm with one more of my senses that it’s what she’s making. I never buy bacon. I love eating it, but the oil splatters when it’s cooking and I can’t handle that.
I’ve tried doing it in the oven. It’s not the same.
“I ran over and got it from mine,” she explains.
I look around, taking in everything else. My oven is on, and although I can’t see what’s inside, it smells like baked goods. My other weakness.
Yeah, my original plan? The one where I pretend I’m too cool to care? Out the fucking window. I care so much that I might be about to spontaneously explode. I put a finger to the pulse point, willing it to calm down so that doesn’t happen. That would be messy.
Kara clears her throat.
“Is this… okay?”
I bite the inside of my lip to allow myself to filter my response. It’s more than okay, and I’m mad about that. I should be so mad at her, I should have my guard up, but she makes me lower it so easily.
I nod. “I suppose.”
“There are muffins in the oven. I’m frying eggs and making bacon. You didn’t have any other breakfast food.”
“I didn’t have muffins, either,” I point out. I have boxed cake mix, I think, but not muffins. Unless she somehow confused the two? Can’t say I want red velvet cake for breakfast, but I’d eat them anyway if it made her smile some more.
Her cheeks turn a deep maroon.
“I remembered you using that book when you made them for me.” She points to a baking cookbook that’s not sitting in the usual place I keep it. “I hope it’s okay I used up some of your ingredients. I can replace it all, I just didn’t know if you were going to crave something sweet or savory so I did both. I know they don’t go great together, and it’s not anything fancy. I never really make breakfast, so I had to look up how to fry an egg.”
Her face turns a deeper, darker shade and I balk.
What universe did I wake up inside of?
“It all sounds great,” I tell her honestly. “Don’t worry about anything. This is… nice of you.”
She fully spins around to face me, a spatula in her hand. She points it in my direction, very matter-of-factly.
“We don’t have to talk or do anything you don’t want to do. I can leave as soon as this is all done.” She lifts her wrist which contains her smart watch. “The muffins need four more minutes. I’m just about done with this.” The spatula is used to wave a circle around my stove, gesturing to her work there. “I’ll wash the dishes too, of course. Then I can be out of your hair.”
I’m speechless. Who knew that was possible? I blink a few times, hoping to reset my brain function.
“You can stay and eat the food you made.”
“Only if you’re sure that’s okay.”
A nagging voice in the back of head says it shouldn’t be. I should have learned enough from past experiences to say no, to stand to my ground, or to demand better.
But something about her demeanor, standing in my kitchen and making me breakfast makes me think I might not have to demand anything.
We sit in silence as we eat. I spend most of the time watching her as she avoids eye contact with me. She looks as nervous as I am, but I’m having a hard time knowing if I’m just seeing what I want to see. Because I want to see someone who’s thinking up an explanation for why she ran out of my life so fucking fast, and took my heart with her. I want to see someone who really is going to do anything she can to make it better, like she said she would last night.
Wishful thinking is the worst.
The muffins are amazing. It’s obvious she followed the recipe well. The bacon is a little undercooked for my liking, and the eggs don’t have a drop of seasoning on them. Not that I’m going to complain. The most I’ve seen her eat in the morning is a power bar, or a cup of yogurt. Unless I cooked for her obviously. I did that a lot in the couple weeks before the breakup. I liked watching her go from someone that was too cool to react to such a kindness, to someone that moaned every time she took her first bite. Sometimes it was an appreciative nod in my direction, her hand covering her mouth so I couldn’t see what a mess she was making as she devoured every last crumb.
“How is it?” she asks quietly.
A warm, hopeful feeling floods through me when our eyes meet.
“It was good,” I say. Not exactly a lie.
“Now give me the honest answer,” she pushes.
I can’t help the stupid smile that ends up on my face.
“I wouldn’t have eaten it if you’d done a terrible job.” Her raised brows force me to continue. “Your cooking skills could use some work, but it wasn’t terrible.”
“Maybe tomorrow you can help me.”
I don’t know what to say to that, because what reason do I have for committing to doing this again? I haven’t been given one yet. At least not a good one that comes from somewhere other than the feelings I fear I’ll always have for her.
I must somehow have forgotten how well she knows me, because she reads most of my doubt on my face.
“I love you, Reya. I’m not going to dance around it, or pretend I’m too cold to have emotions. I won’t pressure you to do anything you don’t want, I just thought… I thought maybe we could start small. I want to–” She stops to huff out a breath. “Me from a few months ago wouldn’t recognize me today, because all I want to do is make you smile. It’s all consuming. When you picked me up yesterday, it hurt so bad to know I wasn’t going to get one. That you could be so close, and look so crushed, and that there was nothing I could do—“
“But there was,” I interrupt. “Something you could’ve done. There was.”
“Was there? You barely let me in last night. Would a few hours earlier have made a difference?” She looks down at her plate, mostly empty now. “You smiled when you sat down, and that was the best I’ve felt since…”
Since she abruptly left me, without thinking about how that would affect me.
I stand from my seat.
“It would have. I’ve had a horrible few weeks, but something about watching you walk up those stairs after getting out of my car… it felt like the final nail in the coffin. I was literally crying my eyes out, trying to figure out the best path forward to move on. I was going to give Tim my thirty days’ notice. I was going to call my mom and see if we could clear out my old bedroom.”
Her eyes are glistening with unshed tears, but I’m not the reason they’re really there. This is on her, all of it. The words coming out of my mouth are the result of what she did to me.
“I want so badly to make it all up to you, if that’s even possible. I never wanted to hurt you like that.”
I can see the sincerity behind her words. She thinks she means it. She thinks she wants to move forward.
“You did want to, or you wouldn’t have. Sure, maybe you’ve changed your mind, but don’t tell me you didn’t want to hurt me. You knew what you were doing.”
“It felt like I had no choice!” she shouts. “I was already scared out of my mind because of how fast you got under my skin. I thought I had walls up that would keep everyone away, and then you made them fall in a matter of weeks. And I was glad they fell, and that fucking terrified me. Then I find out that your best friend is someone I’ve done wrong in the past, someone who’s definitely heard about my other wrongdoings from my ex-husband. Someone who’d probably want to rip you away from me if she knew what was going on. I panicked, and—“
“And now,” I interrupt. “I know that you’re capable of doing it again. If one little thing scares you, and you can’t talk to me about it? You run away before thinking things through? This will always go up in flames. I’m always going to get burned.”
I’m crying now, and I’m filled with a bit of self-loathing for allowing her to see me so weak.
She stands from her seat, and I see the urge in her to comfort me. I raise a hand to stop her, and her face scrunches in a way that tells me she’s hurting just as much as I am.
But she doesn’t cry, she doesn’t lose her cool. She takes a few deep breaths, keeping the space between us.
“I’m so sick of hurting people wherever I go. I thought it was easier that way, if I never gave anyone a chance. I thought if I let everyone see the worst of me, I wouldn’t risk any of the good that was left.” She grabs the plates from the table, and walks them over to the sink. She doesn’t wash them, just leans over it with her palms on the counter. “And then you were just so… you . So human . You just let yourself exist, and you feel your emotions, and I’ve never met anyone who did it so perfectly before. You tore down years of protective barriers just by being yourself, it was like your superpower.”
“But I didn’t,” I stop her. “Obviously. You found a way to build them back up in a matter of hours.”
“People do stupid stuff when they’re scared. I’m no different, as much as I’ve tried to be,” she confesses.
“We could have figured it out together. We could have come up with a plan.”
But you wouldn’t even try.
I begged her. I let myself be the weakest, most desperate version of myself as I begged, and it got me nowhere.
“Thank you for breakfast,” I add. “Don’t worry about the cleanup, I just need you to go.”
“I don’t want to go,” she says softly, turning to face me.
“I know. I never wanted you to either.”
The sentence stabs another hole through my heart.
She nods, accepting that I’m not going to budge.
“We’ll talk again?” she asks.
I tell her we will only to get her to leave so I can sit down on the cold floor and cry. We were barely even together. Coming from her, we strictly weren’t together, but it felt like the worst breakup of my life anyway.
I had to grieve, and process without even really knowing her.
I don’t know how to undo all of that, because I barely know her.