Chapter 31 Now
Mia and Jen are off on their Bethany adventure, with a promise to come back manicured, stuffed with ice cream, and with new books in tow for Mia from the local bookstore.
While they’ve been gone, I’ve been making some important calls. First to my mother, then to Fern, and now to Lauren.
I’m on the phone with her, walking along the sand, beaming as Lauren yells, “Thea, YES!”
I grin. “You were right about calling her.”
“As usual,” she says smugly.
“You and Alex were right.”
“Now, why’d you have to go and ruin it for me.”
My smile widens. “It gets even better. Fern didn’t accept my initial proposal to be co-owners.” I bite my lip, shaking with the joy of it, still barely wrapping my head around the truth. “She told me she wants to sell me the store. For an abysmally low price that I’m not going to hold her to.”
“THEA!” Lauren screams, so loud, I have to yank the phone away from my ear. “You! Boss! Ass! Bitch! I’m so proud of you. And I’m so happy for you!”
“Thanks, Lo.” I smile as I stare out at the ocean. “I’m pretty proud of me, too.”
We talk longer while I stroll down the beach, mostly Lauren peppering me with questions and me answering them.
I tell Lauren what Fern told me—that she’d been waiting for me, holding out for me to show her I could be ambitious, push for what I believed the store needed, to demonstrate the leadership skills she knew I’d need to take over the way she wanted me to.
I tell Lauren that since I called Sue, that night after book club, and she encouraged me to tell my mom how I felt, that I was hurt, that I’d emailed my mom, and surprisingly, my mom had emailed back.
She apologized for how she’d hurt me. Said she recognized something now that she hadn’t recognized then—how deeply she’d been hurting, too.
She told me she’d been recently diagnosed with depression and with ADHD, or what, when I was younger, was called ADD, mind racing, restlessness, struggle to focus, especially in overstimulating environments; how draining her job was for her because of that, and that she wished she’d known how long she’d been swimming upstream so she could have taken better care of herself and, in doing so, taken better care of me.
It doesn’t magically fix everything. It doesn’t change the past. But it gives me hope for the future. And it’s given me food for thought, a hunch that maybe, I’ve got a brain like my mom’s, that exploring that will help me in the future, too.
Finally, we get to Alex. I tell her everything that happened two nights ago, everything that happened last night. Everything I hope will happen today.
“Lady,” she says, “you have been busy. Also, good fucking riddance to Ethan!”
“Right? Life is a lot right now.”
“No shit. But so much juicy material for the memoir,” she says.
I laugh. “Yes, I can see it now. Everyone will want to read The Story of Thea Meyer: Behind the Scenes of the Titillating Life of a Weird, Goofy Bookworm.”
“I’d read the hell out of that,” Lauren says.
“That’s because you love me.”
“Yes, but also, because any book with titillating in the title has my money just for that.”
I laugh again as I turn around, heading back up the shore toward the house. “Speaking of great words, guess what Mia said yesterday? Dickstracted.”
Lauren cackles. “Oh. My. God. I love her. She’s the best.”
“She is,” I tell her, eyes ahead as I gaze out toward the water, then the house. I freeze. Because I see him.
Alex, on the deck, standing there, watching me.
Waiting for me.
“Thea?” Lauren says.
I blink. “Sorry, Lo. I missed that.”
A beat, before Lauren says. “Forget it, I was rambling. Get going—”
I’m speed walking up the sand, then jogging. “No, Lo, I can listen—”
“Thea,” she says. “You’re dickstracted, I can tell. And I’m so glad you are. Go. Get your man! Tell him you love him! Make wild, animalistic love to him! Then call me afterward and tell me all about it.”
“Yeah, I’m not doing that last part.”
She sighs. “Well, I had to try. Now go!”
She hangs up before I can, and it’s the push I need, as bracing as the wind that rushes up behind me. I grip my phone tight in my hands, my eyes on Alex.
And I run.