37. Facts, Feelings, and Tough Love
FACTS, FEELINGS, AND TOUGH LOVE
CHLOE
Lavender is supposed to be calming. Ergo, I drive to Ripley’s farm when I finish working for the day.
I’ve already alerted her that I’m coming. I gave her and Bridget the preview, too, via text.
Along the way, my car cruises beautifully—no chugging and gasping for breath—and I’m both thrilled, sad, and mad about that. The second I arrive, I cut the engine and open the driver’s door.
It’s nice. Really it is.
It’s also frustrating that Sawyer seemed to show me how he cared, but then tossed me aside.
With my shoulders drooping, I walk toward the farmhouse as Ripley cuts across the purple blooms toward me.
When she reaches me, she gives me a warm smile, tinged with sadness too.
“Hey, friend,” she says, then wraps her arms around me.
I fall into her embrace and moan. “Everything hurts, and I’m mad.”
“Of course you are. Bridget’s on the way. Let’s go to the porch.”
“The location for all sad talks,” I say.
“That’s what porches are for—feelings.”
I head to the porch swing, slump into it, then pout. “I’m mad and I’m sad,” I say, and it comes out like a whine.
Feels like one.
Ripley rubs my shoulder as we swing a little bit. “I get it,” she says as Bridget pulls up to the edge of the farm and pops out of her shiny blue car.
“I mean, he just…discarded me,” I say as she walks down the path toward us. I give a faint wave. “Hi.”
“Hey. Did your day suck more than an unsalted pretzel?” she asks with a kind smile.
“Yeah,” I say, managing a small laugh. “I had to work with him and act like everything was fine, and I just feel stupid and foolish, and why do I have the worst instincts when it comes to romance?”
When she sits down on the other side of me, she hugs me too. “Who even has good instincts with romance? Is that a thing?”
“I don’t know anyone who does,” Ripley says, then turns to me. “But…what exactly went down yesterday?”
I couldn’t even talk to them last night. I was too…hurt. I needed to be alone with salted caramel tiramisu ice cream. Plus, Bridget was working late, and Ripley had a date with Banks. So solitude was my only option.
“He kicked me out like I was hot garbage in the middle of summer. Like last week’s leftovers. Like the freeloading cousin who’s stayed on the couch too long.”
Bridget laughs, but then quickly clears her throat. “Be more specific.”
“The one who makes your couch smell like weed and stinky feet,” I say.
“I mean be more specific about what happened with Sawyer,” Bridget says. “You didn’t give us any details beyond the fact that you broke up in secret. I’m guessing it somehow relates to Ball Is Life.”
“Cute video of Jubilee, by the way,” Ripley says.
“I know,” I mutter in acknowledgment, then I tell them everything.
“August showed up, and he tried to horn in on my territory, and then there was this whole stay away from my woman melee, and Sawyer knocked him into the water, and then Jubilee jumped in, and then the handler freaked, and Sawyer dove in after her, but obviously she can swim. And when it was all over and his employees were cheering him on for being human and not a robot, he just seemed like he wanted to kick himself into a garbage can. And then he told me he needed to take stock of his life, and he wasn’t acting professional, so I basically said, ‘You’re breaking up with me. ’ I laid it out like the fact it was.”
“And he said yes?” Bridget asks, like she’s confirming the information—and perhaps also making sense of my executive summary.
I rewind to yesterday at his car, and my chest aches painfully. “It sounded like yes to me.”
“Yes, but was it a yes?” she presses.
I scrunch my forehead, replaying that moment again even though it stings. “It wasn’t a no. He said, ‘No, I’m not. I just—’ And when people use that word—just—it means they’re about to disappoint you. It means they’re about to let you down. They’re going to hurt you.”
“Okay, so what did you just do?” Bridget asks, clearly trying to get to the heart of the matter in her calm, problem-solving manner.
Still, I can’t help but feel like I’m being cross-examined.
“I said, ‘I can tell you are.’ It was clear that’s what he wanted to do—break up with me,” I say defensively, because I’m right on this matter.
I am. I’m sure I am. “He said he needed to figure things out and get some balance. I said fine and walked away.”
Ripley furrows her brow and raises her finger, but she doesn’t speak. It’s like words are caught in her throat. She finds them. “So he wanted to pull back and then you said you should break up?”
That feels accusatory too.
I set a hand on my chest, defending yesterday me. “I did not break up with him.”
Ripley squeezes my arm. “I know, hon. I’m not saying you broke up with him. I’m just trying to understand if maybe there was a misunderstanding?”
I slice my hand through the warm evening air, scented with lavender that’s not calming me. “There is no misunderstanding. This is not a misunderstanding situation. This is not a miscommunication. It was clear. And I was not going to let him just—”
I stop myself now. I used that word—that little wedge word. That little justification. That little double-back word.
My brain hurts. My heart hurts. “It’s just,” I say, trying again, and my throat tightens and tears well, “I was falling in love with him, and then when things didn’t go perfectly, he got all cold.”
Bridget rubs my back. “Did you tell him you were falling in love with him?”
I recoil. “Why would I do something like that?”
She laughs. Ripley does too.
“Because he can’t read your mind,” Bridget says matter-of-factly.
“Thank god he can’t read my mind,” I say. “My mind is a terrifying place.”
“It’s full of DNA rearrangement and tonsil invitations and hot garbage analogies,” Ripley says dryly.
“Good thing he can’t read it,” Bridget adds. “But maybe he felt embarrassed yesterday. Maybe things spiraled out of control for him. Maybe he didn’t handle it well. But maybe he also didn’t have all the facts about your feelings.”
“Feelings aren’t facts,” I say, since I’m helpful like that.
“They’re not, which is why sometimes we have to spell them out like they are facts. Because otherwise, other people won’t know,” Bridget says, making too much sense.
I look at her straight on, then at Ripley—my two closest friends since forever. They’ve been through everything with me—high school, college, my impetuous marriage and divorce, my struggles to earn a living, my getting fired, and now this.
“Are you saying I should just go up to the guy who broke my heart and say, ‘Hey, I was falling for you, and you hurt me’?”
Bridget shrugs like yes.
Ripley offers a hopeful smile. “Depends on what you want in life. Depends on what regrets you want to have. Do you want to wonder if you should’ve told him that your feelings were facts?
Or do you want to hold on to that little stubborn side of you—that is beautiful and purely you—but that also might make you wonder what would’ve happened if you had told him? ”
I let out the biggest irritated sigh of my entire life and drop my head. “I came over here for sympathy.”
“And you got tough love,” Bridget says.
I raise my face and turn to look at her.
She’s so together—from her hair to her clothes to the way she runs her inn.
She’s got this whole gets stuff done approach to life.
“Someday, some hot-as-fuck man in a suit is going to walk into your life and mess everything up for you, and I’m going to give you tough love. ”
Bridget smiles. “Bring it on.”
Ripley stands and brushes one palm against the other. “What do you say we have some wine, make a little picnic, go into my lavender maze, eat some cheese, and figure this out?”
“I say yes, but I’m not going to have the talk with Sawyer till after the fundraiser. It’s tomorrow night. I have to get through a song and dance with him, and if he breaks my heart beforehand, I’ll be a hotter mess than I already am.”
“You’re not a hot mess,” Bridget says.
I think about this summer—the way my business has grown, the way I’ve grown. How I’ve learned how to manage my life better rather than letting it manage me.
“You’re right. I’m just hot,” I say, then lift my chin high.
“So hot,” they say together.
And we drink wine, eat cheese, and get lost in the lavender maze.