Chapter 41 Friends in Low Places
Dakota
“Hey Trista, it’s Dakota.” I say, pressing the phone into my shoulder at my shop on Monday morning.
“Hey girl! How’s it going?” she answers, and I hear the sound of a goat bleating in the background.
“Fine, fine. I was just calling to let you know that your Mount Millie T-shirts came in, and they are super cute.”
“Oh my God, awesome!” she squeals excitedly. “This is making it all feel so real. I still can’t believe Wyatt is going to
let me build my rescue center on his land. Let the rebrand from Fletcher Mountain to Mount Millie commence!”
“Congratulations.” I wince as I force the smile that I know I should have for my good friend right now. This is a big moment,
but my heart just can’t fake it. “You can stop at the store to pick them up anytime.”
“Can you just run them up the mountain next time you come up?”
My pulse quickens as I set the shirt down and hold the phone in my hand. “Um... I won’t be coming up the mountain anytime
soon.”
“What? Why?”
I clear my throat and blow out a long breath. “Calder and I aren’t speaking at the moment.”
“Oh please,” she laughs.
Silence stretches across the phone.
“Wait. Are you serious?” Her voice turns grave. “I will be right there.”
“Trista, you don’t—”
The line cuts off, and I drop my elbows onto my checkout counter and cover my face with my hands, hating that I have to do this. I have to tell my friends... again... that something didn’t work out with a guy.
When I told everyone about me and Randal splitting up, no one seemed surprised. I suppose the countless stories and cry-fests
I had throughout the last few years of our marriage prepared them for the news. In fact, when I told Cozy, the first words
out of her mouth were Thank God .
It’s amazing how many people hold their opinions back on your love life when you’re married.
Even go as far as not tell a soon-to-be bride that her fiancé was cheating on her. Fuck. Was he? Did he do that all throughout
our marriage?
I’m sorry for not telling you what I saw, but you have to take some accountability for choosing that ass fuck to begin with.
That’s on you. You wanted to call that wedding off and you didn’t. That is something you have to live with... not me.
He was right about that at least. Randal was a facade. If I really look at our early days, there were red flags that I ignored.
The fact that we would stay out late on the weeknights all the time, and he never cared that I had to get up early the next
day to open my store. The fact that he spoke endlessly about his job and never asked a thing about mine. The fact that he
didn’t attend a lot of the things involving my friends and family because he always had other stuff to do. He even blamed
his coworkers for why he’d smell like women’s perfume.
So many red flags I just turned a blind eye to.
All because I was excited to be married? Gosh, how humiliating. How desperate. Cozy was marrying Max, and I wanted to join
my best friend in the next steps of our lives together. I was ready for the happily-ever-after. What a joke.
Maybe there’s red flags I chose to ignore with Calder too. His surly moods that came out of nowhere, the way he argued with me about everything he disagreed with. How he managed to lie to me for the entirety of our relationship.
Red fucking flags.
There’s a knock at my store door, and my head pops up to see both Trista and Cozy standing there, concern etched all over
their faces.
“Oh God, tell me you didn’t tell her,” I groan, as I let them in and lock the door again since it’s still not time to open.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cozy snaps, propping her hands on her hips as she hits me with a pointed look.
I sigh and lead them back toward my point-of-sale counter. I’ve got about twenty minutes before I need to turn my Open sign,
so we better get this annoying girl-power pep talk over with.
I slouch over the counter and shrug. “There’s nothing to tell. I told you guys when we started this thing that it was casual.”
“That is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.” Cozy’s eyes narrow. “No one at that award ceremony thought that you
two were casual. Not even Luke, and he’s super jaded these days.”
My brows raise. “He was just my plus-one for the thing. It’s not that deep. You guys were all there too. It was a group thing.”
“Only because Calder rallied us all up to come. That was his idea, not yours.”
“I didn’t ask him to do that.”
“No, he did it because he cares about you.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that he’s been lying to me for the past seven years!” I exclaim, a wave of emotion swelling
in my body over that fact. How pathetic he must have thought I was all those years, being with someone who he thought cheated
on me. “Calder knew Randal was doing shady shit and never told me.”
“Oh, get over it. We all knew Randal was a pig, and we kept our mouths shut too,” Cozy snaps, her tone completely unapologetic.
“I resent that on behalf of Sir Reginald,” Trista chimes in to defend her potbelly pig.
“I like your pig more than I liked Randal.”
My jaw drops. “Cozy, you were my maid of honor!”
“I know! It sucked. Randal only cared about himself always. It was awful.”
“How could you not tell me how you felt about him?”
“Because you were my best friend, and I loved you too much to risk losing you.” Her anger morphs to one of tenderness as she
leans against the counter. “It would kill me to lose you as a friend, just like it would have killed Calder to hurt you.”
My eyes sting as I shake my head, refusing to believe this about Calder. “You’re wrong. He’s not into me like that. Like I
believe he cares about me, but not in the ways that matter. He cares about me like he cares about his cat. He likes me for
company, but beyond that... I’m still just an expendable pet.”
“Spoken like someone who doesn’t have a pet.” Trista sputters out a laugh and slaps her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, but that
is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Why?”
“ Just a pet isn’t a phrase you can use with someone like me. Saying just a pet is like saying Stevie is just a baby . There are people who would kill for their pets, Dakota. And I’m telling you... Calder would kill for Milkshake. My God,
he takes her for cat walks.”
“I know! That’s crazy!” I exclaim like somehow that makes my point.
“That’s love!” Cozy bellows, splaying her hands out on my counter. “And I’m not sure you can recognize it when you see it,
because you never truly had it.”
I wince and shake my head, rejecting everything she’s implying. Randal loved me in the beginning. Otherwise, why would he
have proposed and moved in with me and married me?
Although, when I think about it long and hard, his love was conditional.
When my appearance changed, he changed. In the beginning, when I was thinner, I was this prize he liked to escort around town on his arm.
And as I gained a little weight... he pulled away, and we started doing things separately more often.
Was it because he didn’t like how I looked, and that’s why he didn’t want to have me with him?
It certainly would track with all the comments he made about my body.
He really was a pig.
“None of this changes anything about me and Calder,” I argue, feeling bone-tired with my own thoughts. “If he loved me, I’d
know it. All the nice things he did for me were probably because he felt guilty for not speaking up about something that could
have changed the course of my entire life.”
“Is your life really that bad that you aren’t happy with exactly where you are?” Trista asks, her voice firm as her eyes pierce
me with challenge. “You have a beautiful home, a successful business, great friends. I would have killed to have a fraction
of this success just a year ago. Plus, you just won an award. All signs point to you being exactly where you are meant to
be, Dakota. Life has a funny way of shoving us in directions we never would have expected to go. Hell, I never planned to
have children. I was so certain of that, I thought I could be a surrogate and save some money. And if I was a surrogate for
any other man, I would have been fine giving the baby up. But Wyatt changed all of that for me. He made me feel safe enough
to begin a new journey with him and Stevie.”
“But I don’t feel safe,” I cry, tears running down my face as I say the most gut-wrenching words that I haven’t had the guts
to say out loud. “I don’t feel safe with him. I feel terrified.”
“Of what, exactly?” Cozy asks, her eyes red-rimmed as she looks at me with so much sympathy, I feel myself crack down the
middle.
“Of truly being in love for the first time in my life.” I cover my face as I admit the ugly truth. The truth that I’ve never
even admitted to myself until now. “With Randal, it was simple. My heart wasn’t as deeply involved.
I was in my fuck the patriarchy era when I met him, and I always kept him at a safe distance.
So much so, the divorce didn’t really shake me.
I was sort of excited to pick up the pieces of my life and take steps to find myself again.
But with Calder...” My voice cracks as an ache blooms through my chest that feels like it could take my breath away.
“If he breaks my heart, I don’t know if I’ll recover. ”
Cozy reaches out and grabs my hand, her face bending in a way that’s so mothering and so nurturing, the tears just flow harder.
“You will recover because you have us.”
I drop my forehead onto our clasped hands, desperately trying to soak up all the strength she’s sending me when she adds,
“Just keep being the stunning woman I saw on stage Friday night, and continue fucking the patriarchy one mountain man at a
time, okay?”
“What does that even mean?” An unexpected laugh escapes me and I sniff my running nose.
She giggles back. “You’ll figure it out.”