Chapter 21 #2
Petra, you can’t hold this all in. Whatever is happening, you need to talk about it. If not to me, then call Jackson. I’m pretty sure you haven’t talked to her either. We’re here for you if you need us.
I fold a few more dresses and add them to my suitcase as I consider how to respond to her texts.
In the past, I’ve been a confidant for both Jackson and Sierra.
I’ve given them both advice they needed to hear, when they needed to hear it.
At various points over the past couple years, they’ve each told me things they hadn’t told each other, despite the fact that they’ve known each other since they were eight years old.
It’s always been easy for me to dish out impartial, practical advice because my heart’s never been involved.
And now that it is, I don’t know what to do.
Petra
Call me when you have a minute.
My phone rings in my hand.
“Hey,” I say.
“God, I’ve missed you and your sexy voice,” she tells me. “How have you been?”
“There’s, uh, been a lot going on lately.” My voice is more raspy than usual because of all the crying.
“Spill.”
As if it’s that easy. “I don’t know what to say.”
“How is this hard?” she asks. But Sierra is an open book and the most empathetic person I’ve ever met.
Loving is easy for her. Caring for other people is easy for her.
The only thing she has trouble dealing with is the weight of her own expectations.
But it’s not like that for me. I don’t know how to be that person, the one who gives up her dreams for someone else.
My dreams and my success are too tied to who I am.
“You’re not saying anything,” Sierra says from the other end of the phone.
“I know. I’m thinking.” I take a stack of neatly folded basic loungewear and add it to my suitcase.
I never step foot outside without a banging outfit, carefully styled hair, and a natural-looking full face of makeup.
But the minute I come home, I change into something comfortable for lounging around the house in.
I try not to think about what it means that Sasha and Stella were the first people I’ve let into my small circle of trust in years.
I hung out with them at home, in PJ’s, with no makeup, just doing normal family-like things.
And I loved it. I loved the coziness, the comfort of having people around who I didn’t feel like I was performing for.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
“If I wanted you to know, I’d be talking.”
“That’s not how this whole confiding in a friend thing works. You share what’s going on, and then I’m either supportive if you’re making good decisions, or I tell you you’re an idiot and you need to stop fucking up your life.”
I laugh like she’d intended for me to. “I don’t know how to do this,” I tell her.
“Do what?”
“Be the one asking for advice.”
“It’s simple, really. You let go of the need to control everything, and instead tell me what’s happening so we can talk through it and you can get impartial advice from a friend.
” She sounds so confident, which is wholly unlike the Sierra who wasn’t sure what to do about her relationship with Beau only a few short months ago.
I like this new, empowered version of her.
“You’re going to be sorry you asked,” I say as I take two piles of underwear from a drawer and add them to my suitcase.
“I doubt that.”
I tell her everything.
“So you’re telling me that the queen of noncommitment, the one who won’t let anyone get close to her, who never wants to settle down—is actually married and now trying to help her husband adopt a kid?
” Her cackle is totally uncalled for, except I’m sure I’d be reacting the same way if I were in her shoes.
I think about all the times I’ve given my girlfriends shit about “settling down” and talked about how I never would. And now here I am, trying to decide how I can settle down without “settling”—without giving up everything I’ve worked so hard for.
“I really appreciate your understanding,” I grumble.
“Oh, honey,” she says when she finally stops laughing, “you are so screwed.”
“Thanks.” I roll my eyes even though she can’t see them.
“Okay,” she says, the word rolling out on a sigh. “Seriously though, do you want my real thoughts on the situation?”
“Would I have told you if I didn’t?”
I think about how my relationship with Sierra has changed over the past year and a half, how we went from two people with a friend in common to two people who were actually friends.
I miss Jackson every day, but I’m also glad that she and Nate getting back together allowed Sierra and me to become closer.
If only Sierra hadn’t then moved away, too, leaving me in Park City with just one close friend, Lauren, and a bunch of work friends who are more like acquaintances I see all the time.
“Here’s the only thing that matters,” Sierra says. “Do you love him?”
“I mean . . .” I hedge.
“Petra,” she says, her voice serious. “Do. You. Love. Him?”
“Yeah.” My voice sounds small and quiet and distant, even to my own ears. “I always have.”
“But do you feel differently about him now? Not the infatuation of the unobtainable best friend that you felt during your teenage years . . .”
“That’s not what that was.”
“Wasn’t it?” she asks. “Regardless of how he felt about you then, wasn’t he your unobtainable best friend? The older guy you had a crush on?”
“He wasn’t unobtainable, I mean.”
“Based on how things turned out back then, I beg to differ.”
“Ouch.”
“But,” she says, “it doesn’t matter because your story doesn’t end there.”