34. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR #2
“They’re mine to make,” Effie scolded, though something in her gut prodded her not to think of Theo as a mistake.
Louisa crossed the kitchen past Grams who quietly hummed to herself as she continued her prep, doing her best to butt out. Louisa took Effie by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. “You’re right. Truly. I’m sorry.”
Effie believed her, would forgive her, but hated how easy it was when it didn’t change the fact that the seeds of insecurity that always lived in her head were now germinated with their meddling.
“I’ll talk to Mom for you. ”
“It was her idea to ask around, wasn’t it?” Louisa clamped her teeth around a confirmation. “We can stand up to her you know? It won’t kill us.”
Louisa huffed a laugh. “I’ve never done it. It might.” Effie thought she had a point. “Regardless, I promise to apologize to him at the ball.”
“He’s not coming to the ball,” Effie muttered. “I never invited him. I guess I was worried he’d be gone . . .”
Louisa looked a bit guilty as she took her seat, the rest of the clan meandering to the table. “Well, no one ever said we weren’t excellent at self-sabotage. But he’s definitely coming. He bought a ticket.”
Effie nearly sloshed the tea she poured all over the table. “What? No.”
“Is that a problem? Did something happen?”
“Is what a problem?” Hope asked, easing into her chair, her sleep-mussed bun flopped to one side of her head.
“Theo coming to the ball,” Louisa said.
Effie clocked her mother’s smug look as she settled in reaching for the coffee pot Louisa had deposited on a trivet in the center of the table.
All of a sudden Effie was five with storybooks about princes interrupted with bitter truths, thirteen learning that men only want one thing, twenty-one and told love was a losing game.
Effie’s inner thermometer had risen past boiling before her mother even spoke. “Effie, love, what happened?”
Effie, the quiet one, the one used to waiting her turn, the least squeaky wheel of all finally snapped. “You happened!”
Pamela blanched, as shocked by Effie’s tone as everyone else in the kitchen. The subtle clatter of Hazel’s toy on her tray was the only indication that Effie still stood in her family home and not in the eye of a storm buzzing with pent-up electricity.
“You are petty and jealous and never look in a fucking mirror except to keep tabs on the wrinkles you insist on Botoxing away. Did it ever occur to you that you were the problem? For years I have wanted to avoid ending up like you, bitter about men and alone. But apparently, I’m an overachiever because I swung too far the other way.
I can’t begin to fathom why anyone would want to be with me when the world is full of more intelligent, more beautiful, more desirable women.
In this room alone I am not the most anything .
So what happened after your supposedly benevolent little stunt? I blew up the fucking ship!”
Effie’s fingers fumbled around her apron strings, shaking with rage and shame. She couldn’t get it untied. “Effie,” her mother sighed, her own shame mingling with affection. The rest of the room went silent as if Effie unearthing her most private inner thoughts had finally left them speechless.
Effie released the knot on her apron and threw it on the ground before storming out.
She slid on her Birkenstocks and made for the door.
She wasn’t due at work for a couple of hours but she wasn’t about to stay here.
These feelings couldn’t be corked, and she didn’t want to say anything else she couldn’t take back.
She opened the door, strode down the front steps, and collided with a wall of muscle behind a blue-collared shirt. Theo took her by the shoulders gaze dipping to meet hers. “Hey, are you alright?”
“No.” She struggled free of his grip and stomped down the sidewalk. He hustled to catch up. Effie noticed the to-go cup in his hand for the first time and was grateful he had managed to keep from scalding her with its contents.
He tried to hand it to her. “Darjeeling?”
Effie stopped on a dime, spinning to face him. Her head was swimming. Her anger, grief, and poor self-image threatened to drown her where she stood. Warning lights flashed, motorcycles crashed, good things broke and splintered making her see red. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to see you,” he said so innocently that Effie’s heart broke a little more.
Every feeling compelled her to sink into him, take the tea, walk together, and forget she ever freaked out.
But her thoughts were screaming at her to stay safe, to walk away, to see logic and know that she was not enough of a woman for the man before her. “Why? We broke up,” she snipped.
It was definitely news to him.
“That was a breakup?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think it counts if only half of us knew it was a breakup,” Theo teased, in a desperate attempt to hold on to her beneath a cool and collected exterior. It was also an offering, to forget the whole thing, take it back.
Effie’s heart begged her to take it. But her head had always been louder. “Then I’ll say it plainly now. I’m breaking up with you.”
She turned before he could stop her, before she could see how her words had landed. For her, it was an icy crack of peppermint coated in acrid smoke. She knew where the smoke came from.
It was how it tasted to burn everything you’d ever wanted to the ground.
Theo hadn’t had a day this horrible in a long time, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
He left Effie’s house with a storm cloud over his head, his feet acting of their own will to vacate the Thatcher home before anyone else came rushing out to stomp on his heart that surely landed amidst the violets lining the walkway when Effie ripped it out.
He had thought Effie’s outburst odd after dinner with her family, but he assumed she was merely riled, not ready to give up on them. Maybe he shouldn’t have given her so much space to calm down?
As he drove between appointments he replayed their night, the next morning, and the brief encounter that ended in an official breakup.
He tumbled each word, each look around inspecting them for any sign that she truly didn’t want to be with him.
He kept coming up empty-handed, but it didn’t change the outcome. I’m breaking up with you .
Theo admired the clarity, the succinctness of it.
He’d broken up with many women and always tried to convey the underlying feeling or lack thereof responsible for the ending.
Questions and curiosities made it hard to move on, and right now he had so many questions. Chief among them, how could he fix it?