31. Jack
THIRTY-ONE
Jack
I woke up with a headache. I hadn’t touched a sip of liquor the night before. So why did it feel like I was hungover?
Oh my god, I love you.
She loved me?
I had to admit that these feelings I had weren’t exactly those of friendship, but love? Wasn’t that too far?
Yes. It had to be. The last person I thought I’d loved had taken my heart and stomped on it. And the way I felt about Nat was completely different. Did that mean something?
Two knocks sounded at my door, and I swear, it was like someone punched their fist through my brain. Maybe it was her. Why did I hope it was her?
“I’m coming!” I shouted, throwing on some sweatpants before yanking open the door.
There, at the bottom of my steps, wide-eyed and nervous-looking, stood my ex-girlfriend.
“Hey, there.”
“How you doing, buddy?” Gia visibly cringed. Like me, she was probably thinking how weird the word buddy felt. I used to be baby, but that had never felt right either. “Yikes, I mean… hi?” she corrected.
“Hi,” I returned, my brain not fully caught up to why my ex would be here. Sure, she’d been calling, but this was out of the blue, even for her.
“I know you hate me.”
I pondered this. I certainly wasn’t losing any sleep over the woman anymore, but I didn’t hate her. I didn’t hate anyone, except maybe myself right now. “No, I don’t.”
“It’s okay. I’ve been trying to get through to you. But you already know that.”
I opened my arm to the living room, and she took a spot on my shitty couch. She’d always hated that thing. Honestly, anyone who sat on it hated it. I couldn’t believe I’d slept on that piece of garbage.
There wasn’t much room on the loveseat, but I sat as far from her as possible. “Why would we need to talk, Gia? You got my package, right? That was months ago.” I hated the hesitation in my voice. A part of me wanted to sound firm and unwavering. This was the woman who’d ruined my life for months.
“Yeah, it was the best breakup box I’ve ever gotten. Everything thrown in with no thought.” She lifted her head to find my eyebrows raised. “Okay, maybe it’s what I deserved. But I’m here for a reason. Firstly, I wanted to apologize.”
“It’s been ten months.”
Gia’s face fell as she chose her words. “I know, and I should have done it sooner. But the thing is, Mike and Lisa are retiring and want me to take over their vet practice. Obviously, I’m doing it. I just wanted to do you the courtesy of telling you that we may run into each other occasionally.”
May was an understatement. The vet practice was right next to Wildwood’s general store. I went there probably twice a week.
“Congratulations.” I meant it. In our early days of being together, she’d planned on moving here if there was a place for her to work.
She had gotten along with Mike and Lisa well, and she loved working with animals.
Over time, I’d started to think it was a little too small-time for her, but maybe that wasn’t the case anymore. “I bet you’ll love it.”
Everyone had gotten along with Gia. At one point, I’d pictured her perfectly as a Wildwood resident. Now it was happening, even though she wasn’t with me, the way I’d originally thought.
The tightness in her body loosened, and her stiff posture took on more of a wary look. “Either way, an apology is long overdue.”
“You already said you were sorry.”
After Jamie had told me what he’d seen the night before, I’d gone back to my cabin.
Gia had been there, drinking tea, full of nervous energy.
It had hit me all at once that things had been ending between us.
She’d apologized profusely as she told me the truth, right before I’d kicked her out of my cabin.
In my defense, she had just cheated on me.
At one point, I’d been grateful. At least it’d happened during the last session of camp.
I hadn’t handled being cheated on again well.
A lot of hammering took place afterward.
The new pod came together much faster than it was supposed to because I’d wrapped myself up in work. That anger had festered for months.
But I didn’t feel that way with her sitting beside me. That was surprising.
“I did in the heat of the moment, but it wasn’t enough.
You deserve an explanation. I thought about sending you an email or something, and I just couldn’t.
I was embarrassed because of how bad I fucked up.
” She paused and took a breath, as if she were waiting for a response from me, but I didn’t know what to say.
“I got drunk, Jack. That week was sort of a test in my eyes. To see how we were doing. Whether you want to admit it or not, we were having problems. So, when I’d had too many, I made a big mistake.
It’s not an excuse. There is no excuse. But it’s the truth. I don’t even remember her name.”
“Nat. Her name is Nat.” It annoyed me that she didn’t even remember when I’d given Nat such a hard time. Man, just saying her name put a tightness in my chest I still didn’t know what to do with.
Gia’s eyes widened, almost as if she were embarrassed, but it further cemented what she was saying.
She gave me a pondering gaze, and I wondered if I’d given myself away.
“Right. Nat. I know someone told you what happened, but I promise I was going to tell you myself. I just didn’t get a chance to. ”
I wondered how that would have turned out, had Jamie not witnessed it. Probably the same. It would have hurt the same.
“I accept your apology.” The words left my mouth without a thought. I wasn’t holding on to that pain anymore. “And I guess you did me a favor, anyway. Because we were always going to go south. Relationships just don’t work. At least not for me, anyway.”
Gia’s face softened as if she felt pity for me. “That’s not right. Please tell me I didn’t ruin relationships for you.”
I shrugged. “I think I have more than enough proof that I’m right.”
Gia narrowed her eyes. “I’m going to be frank here. I think you get emotionally invested in relationships that are wrong from the start. We’re a perfect example. It was for the best that we broke up. We weren’t meant to be.”
I tilted my head. She seemed so sure. We’d been having problems for months.
We’d hardly communicated about our issues, though.
It’d been easier to ignore them. Our original plan had been for her to move here, but she’d changed her mind at some point and had asked me to leave Starlight.
I’d hated the idea, but I’d considered it.
Deep down, we’d both known that was never going to happen.
I loved it here too much. I’d helped build this place. Literally.
But our problems hadn’t stopped there. Gia was kind of immature, even if she was two years older. We’d get in these passive-aggressive fights where we didn’t talk for days, and she wouldn’t answer the phone. She knew I worried about her during these moments, but she kept doing it.
And I was pretty sure she hated the outdoors, which was basically my life.
But Gia’s words had me starting to analyze my past breakups.
The woman before Gia had been a commitment-phobe, and I may have convinced her to be in a relationship, one that had epically failed after six months.
Then there was the woman who had acted like it was an inconvenience every time I wanted to hang out with her.
Preceded by my first love, the one who had liked hanging out with my best friend more than me.
There was a smattering of months-long relationships, but none of them had been right.
My brain was starting to hurt.
Gia let out her hands, which she’d been wringing in the silence.
“Look, we had a lot of barriers, but I think the biggest thing was that there was no passion. No spark.” The apology in her eyes prevented me from getting defensive.
Instead, despite my protesting brain, she made me actually think about whether or not that was true.
“We were more like friends than anything. You know? And I didn’t challenge you. You need that.”
I sighed. Maybe she was right. I wondered if my feelings over the breakup were less about it ending and more about how it was ending.
This feeling I had over my treatment of Nat hurt so much more than my and Gia’s breakup, which, in hindsight, was unsettling.
Were my feelings for Nat deeper than those I’d had for Gia?
Shit.
No one could argue that there wasn’t a spark between us. If I were looking at our relationship through Gia’s lens, we checked all the boxes. We had passion, she challenged me, and the spark could have lit this entire forest on fire.
I remembered waking up with Nat in my arms and the feeling of the world falling away.
With her, I was happy. With her, I felt complete.
I’d seen glimpses of possibility when I was with Nat.
Like maybe I could be in a relationship.
Maybe it just took the right person to prove not all relationships were doomed. I may have been an idiot.
No, scratch that. I was definitely an idiot.
Nat had put herself out there. For me. For the hundredth time, I wished I’d talked to her that night. The way she wore her heart on her sleeve around me proved she trusted me. Maybe that meant she wanted to do this, and the prospect filled me with such an immense joy that I could hardly breathe.
Maybe I still had a chance with her. Maybe it wasn’t too late.
The first barrier to finding Nat came from one of my campers, who didn’t realize they were allergic to bees, and a sting caused their hand to swell up. I’d had to run to the office to get an EpiPen and calm them down before Sawyer took them to the hospital.
By the time I got away from my pod, I was sweating.
Then I got a radio call from Azalea asking for help when our commercial ice machine wouldn’t stop spitting out ice cubes.
Followed by another call asking where the hell I was because Hazel needed help with checkout.
Normally, there was coverage, but for some reason, they needed me.
I figured I’d find Nat in the chaos of today and pull her aside at the very least, but I hadn’t seen her.
Which meant I was heading in the direction of her cabin now, in a rush, high on adrenaline.
I could do this. I could fix this.
I was almost to her place when I heard the two words I was tired of hearing today. “Hey, Jack?”
Leo stopped me when I was thirty feet from Nat’s pod. I wanted to get rid of him.
“What’s up, Leo?” The annoyance in my tone must have caught him off guard, because one of his eyebrows quirked.
“Did you happen to submit your monthly expense report? I’m too inundated to strong-arm it from you the day of, like Hazel does.”
No. The priority was begging Nat for forgiveness. And then kissing her. And living happily ever after?
I must have lost my mind.
“No, I didn’t.”
He zeroed in on my tapping foot. “Are you in a hurry or something?”
I stopped instantly. “I’m trying to find Nat.”
“She’s not here. Why do you think Sawyer is handling her end-of-session list? She left. Don’t know why, but I didn’t have time to get it out of Hazel.”
My world toppled over as the breath whooshed out of my lungs.
And was that a high-pitched ringing in my ears?
I hadn’t seen her after she confessed her love, but I’d sort of been avoiding her.
I thought again about what I’d heard when I climbed out of her window.
Hazel had come to talk to her about a possible replacement counselor. Had Nat taken the option? I felt sick.
“I did this.” The words felt bitter on my tongue, but it was nothing compared to the churning in my stomach.
Leo’s eyebrows lifted in surprise before narrowing. “Please tell me you didn’t fuck up with her. Again.” Leo was back to his chastising face. I’d never seen it before this summer, but I was finding it more and more frequently.
I put my head in my hands and watched his feet come closer through my fingers.
He placed his hand on my shoulder, and I lifted my head to find a look of understanding.
“I’d been telling myself I didn’t want a relationship, and like an idiot, I pushed her away.
She told me she loved me, and I pushed her away. ”
“Then you know what you have to do, Jack.” His determination had me feeling like maybe I could fix this, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have doubts.
“What if I’m too late?”
Leo shook his head. “You won’t know until you try. Putting yourself out there is hard. And maybe you offer her your heart, and she crushes it, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth the risk. Love is always worth the risk.”