Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“I do.” Madeline reached for Peyton’s hand and gripped it tight.
“And I know you do, too. Just like I know you’ve recognized how different you are around Josie, how much better you feel.
You’re not faded around her, Peyton. Far from it.
It’s like she’s brought color back into your life.
Colored in your cheeks, made your eyes brighter. ”
Just hearing Josie’s name out loud, spoken by a voice that wasn’t her own, brought those intense, airy, kind of feelings back up.
It was as if Peyton was a scale, her arms the balance.
On one side was Josie, bringing a lightness to Peyton’s life, the color Madeline had mentioned.
On the other side was Sorel, weighing the balance down with doubts, uncertainties, and that weird, incomprehensible need to impress her every given minute of the day.
Josie was everything Sorel wasn’t and more.
She uplifted Peyton, rather than dragged her down.
She made her laugh instead of cry. To be loved by Josie, to be wanted, was a gift Peyton didn’t have to work for, a reward she didn’t have to beg for.
All Peyton had to do was be herself. It was enough. She was enough.
“You sound mad,” Peyton teased, albeit half-heartedly.
Madeline waved off the comment. “You like her, don’t you? Josie. You like her a lot, I can tell. Even now, even when I mentioned her name, your pupils dilated and your face brightened.”
Peyton didn’t have to think to know the answer. She barely even had to formulate it, since it was already sitting at the very tip of her tongue. “I think…” Her stomach fluttered, her heart rate sped up, and her palms were suddenly clammy. “I think I might actually be in love with her.”
Madeline’s lips stretched so wide, she looked terrifying, like a character in a horror movie. “Ha. I knew it.”
Peyton laughed loudly, her body shaking. Tears came out of nowhere, streaming down her cheeks as if they had been waiting for the right moment to escape.
How could she have missed it? How could she have ignored Josie’s calls and texts and let Sorel back into her life?
The truth was undeniable: she was in love with Josie.
Realizing it, after all that effort of pushing those feelings away, was both a relief and a revelation—and revelations were hard work.
Peyton cried for several minutes before she wiped aggressively at her face and then turned to Madeline. “How do I look?”
“Like a beautiful mess. Now why don’t you go tell Josie that you think you might be in love with her? Right this minute, before you change your mind.”
“I won’t change my mind,” said Peyton, leaping off the couch. She only turned back when she reached the big brass front door. “You know I love you, right?”
“I do.” Madeline waved a hand. “Now go.”
~~
By the time Peyton got to Morro Bay, the sky had transformed into the soft tones of twilight. The clouds had disappeared completely. No sign of the predicted rain. Not that Peyton was particularly bothered. She was far too happy to worry about the drought plaguing the area.
Parking her car, Peyton jumped out and then ran up the stairwell to the second floor of the apartment block. Her stomach was flapping, her hands trembling, and she couldn’t keep the grin off her face. Her body felt as light as air, as if she could fly if she wanted to.
After Peyton told Josie everything, she planned to call Sorel to tell her to get lost, to never visit again, to take Francesca and shove it up her—
Kelsey walked out of the front door and turned to lock it. She had a bag slung over her shoulder and the light fixture fixed in the overhang made her hair look two shades lighter.
“Josie!” Peyton yelled, waving her arms in the air, ready to blurt out everything, to apologize, to tell her how much she cared about her. To tell her how she had flipped her world upside down when she had slipped into that chair in the dingy, sweat-soaked bar in Manuel Antonio—
But then she caught herself, coming to a sudden stop.
The woman wasn’t Josie. Her face was too narrow, her eyes a touch darker and her body didn’t have all the soft muscly curves that Peyton had come to know and love.
The Josie look-alike snapped her head in Peyton’s direction, frowned for a second, and then her face smoothed, looking way more dangerous.
“You must be Peyton,” she said sharply, walking toward her, looking like she wanted nothing more than to slap her.
“You know you really fucked up. Do you know how badly you hurt Jo? What’s wrong with you? ”
“I know,” said Peyton, not defending her actions. They were undefendable. “I really messed up. That’s why I’m here. I need to tell Josie that I’m in love with her.”
Kelsey’s face brightened like the sun. Her eyes widened in that same way Josie’s did, like they might pop out of her head. She then exclaimed, “You’re…You’re in love with her?”
“I am,” said Peyton. The more she said it out loud, the more it felt like she was shedding layers of doubt.
Her sureness was like a balloon, inflating each time she declared, I’m in love with Josie.
And one day, when the balloon was big enough, it would float away, carrying all of Peyton’s pain with it.
Kelsey’s jaw dropped open and then she pressed her palm to her forehead. “How… how are you going to tell her?”
“Can you help me?”
She nodded like a bobblehead. “Of course I can.”