Chapter 20
Vic slept soundly Thursday night but woke early Friday morning to go to the washroom and couldn’t fall back asleep because her brain was buzzing.
She put on slippers to muffle her tread on the stairs and hopefully avoid waking Audra, then slipped down to the kitchen to make coffee.
While it was brewing, she gathered felt pens and a sheet of blank paper.
She was going to continue what she’d started.
Sipping coffee in the living room, she contemplated the empty sheet. Then she realized she was in danger of overthinking and not writing anything at all. She would write the biggest things weighing on her right now, and that would be enough. She could always modify them later.
TOP PRIORITIES
It felt a bit juvenile to even have to make this kind of list and have it be so .
. . simple, but she needed it, so there it was.
She created a frame of flowering vines for the list and drew tiny birds here and there among the leaves.
And then she bit her lip and half smiled, feeling shy even though she was alone. Why not?
She added:
5. Start painting or doing art again, regularly
What hadn’t made her list didn’t even occur to her until she re-read it a third time. There was no “develop a romantic relationship” or “start dating again.” It hadn’t entered her head.
Interesting.
“Message received,” Vic whispered and pulled her phone out of her bathrobe pocket. She knew she’d already said it wouldn’t be a date, but she didn’t trust herself.
“Hey Cal,” she texted. “Change of plans for tonight, sorry. It’s best if I don’t come over.”
She thought a bit more and felt bad. She’d really been extra hot and cold with the poor guy. He probably thought he’d done something and that wasn’t fair.
“The old it’s not you, it’s me line is definitely true,” she added. “I have to fix some stuff in my life. I wish I’d figured that out before I made things weird. Wishing you all good things.”
She stared at her phone for a long moment after hitting the final send. She didn’t regret it, but it was unusual for her not to respond with interest to someone who expressed interest.
Devil rolled her eyes. Classic Vic. You finally meet someone who might be decent, and for the first time in your life, you don’t just run into his arms, begging him to put them around you.
Angel’s whisper, on the other hand, and the feelings her words invoked, were so foreign that Vic had a hard time believing they came from her own head. I’m proud of you.