Chapter 22 Samantha
Samantha
In my seven years of training to become a health care provider, I spent quite a bit of time learning about the human body’s response to acute physical trauma.
Damage comes in three main varieties: penetrating, blunt, and deceleration.
Each of them has its own difficulties, but some things are the same with each.
The body shuts down certain systems and ramps up others with one main goal: survival.
I think, after my conversation with Richard, my body initiated its own trauma response, this one psychological.
I’m sure it’s every bit as real, but I’m definitely less of an expert in dealing with it.
It’s been two days since I confessed my lie, and I haven’t picked up a single call or answered any of my text messages.
I’ve been staring at his latest text for almost five minutes when Natalie and Vanessa walk through my front door.
“You missed our meeting. You’ve never missed an owner’s meeting before.” Natalie drops into a chair without asking. “Maybe even more concerning, Rían says you aren’t riding.” She snatches my phone. “I’m assuming you’re staring at some kind of communication from Richard.”
Vanessa looks apologetic, but she also does nothing to stop her. Not that she could stop Natalie. Our friend’s a bit like a freight train when she gets going.
“And are all of these also from him?” Natalie gestures around the room.
Every surface is covered with flowers. Roses. Daisies. Irises. Lilies. He’s gone dramatically overboard. I haven’t even opened two of the deliveries. They’re still sitting in boxes on my front porch, even though they’re marked ‘perishable.’
“Did you tell us everything?” Natalie taps the phone. “Because this text just says, “Please call me. We need to talk.” She frowns. “Did our boy do something really, really stupid? Or is this all about his dad proposing for him, and you coming clean about lying to him?”
“It’s—I don’t know what to say to him.”
“Shouldn’t you be the one apologizing?” Vanessa asks. “For lying?” She arches one eyebrow. “Or are you mad at him for something else?”
“Richard didn’t do anything wrong,” I say.
“Unless you count desperately needing the one thing you can’t give him,” Natalie says. “Because that’s pretty problematic. It’s kind of his fault you lied.”
“It’s not.” I shrug. “I lied because of my stuff. He hasn’t pressured me.”
“But the pressure’s there,” Natalie says. “I felt it, and I’ve had five kids. I could have more, and I still felt that pressure like a load of bricks. Babies, babies, babies.”
“Richard’s a good guy, and he deserves better,” I say. “That’s all there is to it.”
“Then he’s screwed,” Natalie says. “Because there isn’t anyone better than our Samantha.”
It’s nice to have them around, but they don’t get it. Both of them have kids, and I chose not to involve them while I was going through all the miserable attempts to have my own for a reason.
Natalie hands me the phone. “He also asked if you’re going tonight. Care to explain what that means?”
“Yeah,” Vanessa says. “What’s ‘tonight,’ other than a regular Wednesday?”
“Kids are about to be off school,” Natalie says. “So it’s not something for them.” She frowns. “Horses? Is there a horse thing?”
Vanessa snaps. “I bet it’s the meet-his-best-friends date.”
“Right.” Natalie nods. “They’re spending Christmas in Ireland just for you.” She whistles. “If you don’t go, you’re basically breaking up, right? But if you do go, you need to know where you stand.” She grimaces. “I’m understanding a little more why you’ve been crippled by indecision.”
“Thanks a lot,” I grumble. “Very helpful.”
“You have to talk to him before,” Vanessa says. “But what will you tell him? Have you thought about it?”
“He needs a son,” I say. “I need to not try to have kids anymore.”
“So you’re at an impasse.” Natalie grimaces. “Could you just dump him with a text?”
“Of course she can’t,” Vanessa says. “She’s forty, not fourteen.”
“I did it.” Natalie quirks an eyebrow. “And he’s the one with reproductive demands. I think she can dump him any way she likes.”
“You’re just saying that because you chickened out.” That actually makes me smile. “You’re such a fourteen-year-old. Does Cillian know?”
Natalie’s full-on scowling now. “Shut up, both of you. It was better for all parties to handle it without awkwardness, since we weren’t even officially dating.”
I laugh. “I am not going to be dumping him by text. He’ll think all Americans are the worst.”
“I mean, we kind of are,” Vanessa says, “but I think this is more the way the world is going. Breaking up is hard, and text messages are easy.”
“I have to go to dinner, don’t I?” I ask.
“You should meet him before and talk,” Natalie says. “Then you can either go along, if you two work something out, or bail and let him handle his own friends.”
“That would be a great plan except—”
Natalie straightens, and she swears, loudly.
“What?” Vanessa looks genuinely alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“Probably left the oven on,” I joke.
Natalie shakes her head slowly. “The ball.” She bites her lip, and then she turns toward me. “Any chance you could, I don’t know, just table the whole baby-having thing until after New Years?” Her whole face contorts.
I completely forgot about the ball.
“Because otherwise, the fourteen guests who booked at the Fortwilliam Estate over New Years so they could attend your boyfriend’s fancy ball at Lismore are going to be pretty irritated.” She grimaces. “That might be a mild version of how they’ll react.”
I sigh. “Even if we break up, I know Richard well enough to know you can still go to the ball.”
“That’s going to be awesome.” Natalie sinks back against her wooden kitchen chair. “Escorting guests over to the castle of my sort-of-ex who just broke my best friend’s heart.” She shakes her head. “This is so not what we came here for.”
“It kind of is, though,” Vanessa says.
“Huh?” Maybe I misheard her.
She flattens her hands on my small wooden table. “You guys, I know it’s been a weird six months, but think about what we’ve done.”
“What?” I ask. “Ridden a lot of horses? Bombed out at two small, local horse shows?”
“Hey,” Natalie says. “You got second with Scout at the second show. And third at the first. That’s hardly a bomb out.”
I roll my eyes.
“Forget you two idiots,” Vanessa says. “I’ll just talk about myself.
I’ve taken a chance on loving someone new, someone who wasn’t Jason, someone too young and too good-looking for me.
That was scary, and you’ve stood by me through all of it.
” She looks at Natalie. “You dated a guy, dumped him with a text, and started dating another guy who liked your best friend at first, until he got to know you.”
“Now, hang on,” Natalie says. “She had already started dating the guy I had dumped when I moved on to her guy.”
I hold up one hand. “You said it was fine.”
We all start laughing.
“When we came here at the beginning of this year, we were all falling apart,” Vanessa says. “Or at least, I was.” She looks around the room. “Now we own this awesome place, and we’re figuring it out, owning our own business in a new country.”
“That’s true,” I say. “And our horse-tours are actually profitable already, thanks to Cillian’s contacts and negotiating, and the influx of the insurance money.”
“It’s hard to be profitable with horse-anything,” Natalie says.
“We’re taking risks and gambling on our dreams,” Vanessa says. “It’s not easy to do that. Part of it is that we’re going to fail. That’s just what happens when you try.”
“Not to me, usually,” Natalie says. “I hate failing.”
“We can tell,” I say. “You’re such a sore loser.”
“Shut up,” Natalie says. “You’re worse than me.”
She’s right there. “But I can’t meet Richard before this dinner—I was already going to meet him at the restaurant right before dinner, because he’s in a big investment meeting for his dad in Cork all day.”
“It’s hard to have a boyfriend who’s important,” Natalie says. “Believe me. I know.”
“Trouble in paradise?” I ask. “Really?”
She sighs. “Well, your boyfriend is desperate for kids, whereas mine hates them.”
“Hates them?” That sounds pretty harsh.
“Doesn’t like them, anyway,” Natalie says. “Which is a real bummer, because I have five I’m sort of attached to.”
“That is hard,” Vanessa says. “I met with Jack’s mom, and she basically told me I’m old, pathetic, and a leech who will just drag her son down.”
“I really want to meet this woman,” Natalie says. “I don’t usually support violence, but there’s a time and a place for everything.”
Vanessa laughs. “Jack loves her, so I need to figure something out, there.”
“Since you love him so much,” I say.
“I think maybe I do,” Vanessa says. “And that makes it harder, because I really care what she thinks, for his sake.”
“All of us are really knocking things dead,” Natalie says, her tone flat. “Maybe we should all start over.”
Vanessa shakes her head. “Everything that’s worth having is hard, and we just have to find a way through the rough parts.”
“What if there isn’t a way through?” I ask. “What if it’s a big old brick wall with no way past?”
Vanessa stands, pulls me up beside her, and hugs me. “I think there is.” She sighs before releasing me. “I really believe you and Richard can figure this out.”
Vanessa’s always been a little sunbeam, our very own Pollyanna. It’s nice most of the time, but sometimes it’s a little annoying. Usually I get the most annoyed when I’m in the middle of a good wallow. This time, I think it’s because there isn’t any sunshine at the end of my tunnel.
Natalie reaches over and picks up my phone. “Your boyfriend is important, but you’re more important, and I bet he agrees.” She types something in, and then she taps the phone.
“What did you do?”
“Look for yourself.” She hands my phone back.
I know you have a meeting, but can we talk before dinner?
“Natalie,” I say. “You can’t just—”
But he replies immediately.
Name the time and place.