Chapter 3 #2
It turned out that he could be close to more than one woman. How great for him.
She pushed that recollection aside. He was trying to be nice. He was trying to be understanding. And she was making it about something that just didn’t matter anymore. Something that was long since over. She had even sort of been friends with Alyssa, for the brief time she’d known her.
When she thought of Alyssa, she didn’t feel pain because of her relationship with Carson. It was just hearing Carson talk about having to leave home to find love. Because obviously for him it wasn’t here.
“If you feel like you need to get out of here to do the things that you need to do, I want to support you. So what has to happen?”
“I have to save money so I can put a down payment on this building when it becomes available. The current lease ends in two months. I can sell my house and take what money I have to use on a down payment, but I’m not going to have all the flowers I’ll need to get started.
What I really need is about six months to get my own shop growing, and … ”
He was looking at her, his eyes intense.
“You need to be able to sell your house soon, but it’s not ideal if you also have to open the business right away.”
“Yes. I’ll have to move as soon as I sell the house, because I’ll need a place to stay, and I have to work so I have some income.
If I go to Medford, I’m going to have to close the store here right away, because commuting between the two would be nearly impossible.
But without flowers growing, I can’t really start up the new business … ”
“What if you could sell your house and stay here running the store, put in the offer on the new building when it comes up for sale, make your down payment, and maybe even have time to get your flowers growing before you open the new business?”
“Yes,” she said. “That would be ideal. But also not possible. If it was, then that’s just what I would do.”
“I get that. But, Perry, it’s really very simple. You move over to the ranch.”
“What?”
“Yeah. You can bring your greenhouse, and I can designate some additional land for you to grow flowers on. Hell, we could probably fit a couple greenhouses out there. You could start cultivating exactly the way you want, and you can stay there for free.”
“Carson,” she said, about to turn down the best offer she was going to get. “This is sort of … not really helping with the codependency stuff.”
“No,” he said, his voice certain. “This isn’t codependent. This is friendship. Perry, you have given me absolutely everything. You drove me home from the hospital when I had to leave without my wife. That wasn’t codependence, that was the best example of friendship I’ve ever experienced.”
Guilt stabbed her like a blade. Was she being a bad friend, moving away? A bad person? She didn’t want to abandon him. She loved this stupid, infuriating, wonderful man.
But where did staying at the ranch leave her?
Chained to a house that was never going to be her home.
“That’s not true, Carson. We spend a lot of time together, and it’s mutually enjoyable. It’s just … we have a dynamic. And that dynamic doesn’t leave room for a lot of other things, or other people.”
He nodded. And she wished he would say something. About how maybe there didn’t need to be other people.
But he didn’t. He just breezed right by the opportunity.
That was why she had to leave. It really was. It really, really was, because as much she told herself that although she loved Carson Wilder, she wasn’t foolish enough to be in love with him, a huge part of herself knew that wasn’t true.
Because she could never get over how beautiful he was.
Because there was never another man who had measured up.
Because when a wonderful man asked her on a date, all she could do was—it wasn’t even comparing him to Carson, it was just the knowledge that she would rather eat pizza with Carson knowing he didn’t desire her than be with a man who wanted to have sex with her.
Kiss her. Be romantic with her, maybe even marry her someday.
The fact that she would choose pizza every night with Carson Wilder over dinner out with a date meant that she had a problem. She had to change it.
In order to change her behavior, she had to change the pattern. It was just the truth.
But he was offering her a pathway forward. And the truth was, the biggest part of her didn’t actually want to leave him.
Quitting Carson cold turkey would be like giving up heroin without tapering off. It might very well kill her. Maybe what she needed was this time with him. Maybe she could sort some things out, knowing there was an exit strategy.
She had never planned to give Carson up entirely. But she wanted him not so wrapped around her day-to-day. As long as that was still the plan, what he was offering made some sense.
“Let me help you,” he said.
“You just suddenly want to help me.” Her tone was skeptical.
“I suddenly saw myself. I … I realized that I haven’t been a very good friend, and that a lot of the support between us flows from one direction. I don’t know how to respond to some of the things that you said to me, but I can understand your needing a life outside of this place. This town.”
The truth was, she loved Rustler Mountain. She loved her little shop. But she had a feeling of incompletion, and she was never going to be able to fill the void with the love she had wanted from the time she was a child.
She didn’t want to be a sad woman who hadn’t gotten any of the things she wanted in life because she had been sitting around waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen.
She had told herself she wasn’t doing that.
She’d told herself she was living life and being realistic.
She’d had romantic relationships. Relationships that she’d had relatively serious intentions about.
She wasn’t sitting around waiting for Carson Wilder.
Or at least, that’s what she’d convinced herself. For a whole lot of years. He’d gotten married, and what was she supposed to do with that? It had been a great opportunity to truly let go.
So she’d believed.
Not of their friendship, of course. But of any sneaky, weaselly romantic feelings that existed inside of her.
Alas.
The trouble was, Carson was her standard.
When he’d been a boy, she’d thought he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Then he’d become a teenager, rangy and tall, his jawline dangerous, his blue eyes a registered health hazard.
Gradually, that boy had become a man. He’d filled out, his shoulders and chest becoming broader, the mischievous glint in his eyes taking on a harder look.
She had thought he was the standard of male beauty at every single age.
He was a formative experience for her, one of those early childhood development milestones you couldn’t just unlearn.
She had reasoned with herself a lot over the years regarding her attraction to Carson. She liked to think of it like ice cream.
Yes, everybody had a favorite flavor of ice cream, but they could eat other flavors. She thought other men were attractive.
Carson might be her favorite flavor, but he wasn’t sold in her local grocery store, so to speak. Still, there was no reason to swear off treats altogether.
Of course, when you were really craving one thing and settled for another, it was usually disappointing. You maybe even ate a little bit too much of it because it didn’t really satisfy.
That had nothing to do with whether or not she should move to Outlaw Lake.
Even the name of Carson’s ranch made her stomach go tight.
He had bought his own section of the family ranch, including the lake, right after he married Alyssa.
He’d built their house mostly with his own two gorgeous hands.
Carson making that place for Alyssa recalled a very dark part of Perry’s life.
“And where am I going to stay?”
“The cabin.”
She knew the cabin. It had once been their pirate hideout. It had been more or less abandoned when they were kids, and in the years since, it had been fixed up a little bit, with different members of the family cycling through when other construction projects displaced them.
It was small, but nice, nestled right at the base of Rustler Mountain itself—the mountain not the town—and on the shores of Outlaw Lake.
“Well. That wouldn’t be so bad.”
She would have a lot of space. It wasn’t as if she’d be moving in with him.
“And,” he said, “if you want, we can set up a greenhouse out there, we can start growing flowers. We can do flowers outdoors too, but you know it’s going to be a mission to get a deer fence up.”
“Yes. Well. Deer are a nemesis of mine.”
Arguably her biggest nemesis. Moles, voles, gophers, and digger squirrels, they caused their own problems, but deer were relentless. She had watched them jump over the fence around her yard more times than she could count, and outright behead beautiful flowers with no compunction.
“I guess … I guess it makes sense.”
“Good. But now I have to ask you, where’s the codependency thing coming from?”
“I’m sorry I said that,” she replied, mostly because she wanted to avoid that conversation. She couldn’t blame Carson for her own problems. He wasn’t responsible for her feelings. He had been a good friend all this time.
He hadn’t done anything to make her think that they were destined to be more than friends. He had always treated her like … she would say a little sister, but he did not treat his little sister as nicely as he treated her. Like a cherished little sister, she supposed.
“Sometimes I feel that … we keep each other alive.” She winced. “I don’t mean it like that.”
“No. I can understand why you might feel that way. But I’m not in such a dark place anymore. I promise you I’m not.”
“I know that. But I think maybe what I’m trying to say is we fill such a substantial role for each other that it keeps us from having other relationships. It keeps us from doing other things.”
He regarded her closely. He nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did that to you, Perry. I really am.”
“You didn’t do anything to me.”
“No. I think I did. And I’m damn sorry.”
She felt awful. But if he thought he understood, she wasn’t going to correct his thinking. She wasn’t going to say … The problem is, Carson, in spite of my best efforts, I think I might be in love with you .
No. She wasn’t going to say that.
“I love you, Perry. I’m going to do whatever you need me to.” He said those words to her frequently enough. They hurt. They always did. Because they meant a great deal. They meant so much. But they never meant everything.
She couldn’t say them back, because if she did, they would mean something very different. And that would be a hell of a mess.
“Well. I guess I’ll call Marissa Rivera and get my house listed. She’s the agent who’ll be handling the sale.”
Historic Victorian, for sale, as is.
“Great,” he said. “You can move in to the cabin as soon as possible.”
“All right.”
She had gone and radicalized him. She could see the light in his eye.
That was the thing about Carson. He had spark to him.
A desire to change things—himself, the world, things around him.
But he’d lost it in the last few years, and the loss had been one of the most terrifying things she’d ever seen.
When he said he wasn’t in that dark space anymore, she believed him.
But at moments like these, she missed that Carson.
She supposed she ought to be grateful she could see that old spark now. Maybe it was a sign she was doing the right thing. Maybe it was evidence that they were both going to be better off. He had a mission now, even if it was just the mission of getting her moved in.
His enthusiasm was still linked to her, but she wasn’t going to examine that too deeply.
“Thank you,” she said.
He smiled, and it was as if the sun came out from behind the clouds. “You’re welcome, Perry.”