Chapter 31
thirty-one
AUTUMN
Autumn: You around? I need you.
Autumn: Meet me at the shore. Our usual spot.
Lydia: On my way!
I’m already at the shore, perched on a rock with my toes in the sand, when I see Lydia coming down the path.
She’s got a cooler and a package of Oreos tucked under one arm, and although I can’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, I can tell by the hold of her mouth that she’s worried.
And I can’t say I blame her—I’m usually the one to pull her out of a spiral, not the other way around.
From the very fact that I asked her to meet, Lydia can tell it’s bad.
“Hey,” Lydia says, setting the cooler and cookies down on the rock next to me. She wraps her delicate arms around me and gives me a squeeze. “I brought wine. Probably not as good as the stuff in your wine cellar, but you sounded like you could use it.”
I make a face at the wine cellar comment. The stuff down there is all thanks to Patrick, but I don’t give two shits. I’m no wine snob, and Lydia knows it. “Whatever you’ve got will be perfect, babe.”
Lydia pulls a half empty sleeve of Solo cups out of the cooler, along with a screw-top bottle of rosé. She pours us each a cup and shoves the cooler behind us, tearing into the Oreos.
“Okay. Talk to me,” Lydia says. She takes a sip of wine and pulls her legs up onto the rock so she’s cross-legged. “And I promise—I will withhold judgment. I’m just here to listen.”
The corner of my mouth quirks up in a grateful half-smile.
This is exactly why I called Lydia. Although she’s got some snark to her and can bust out an attitude when she needs it, she’s nowhere near as full of I told you so energy as Trey.
Plus, she knows Zeke. He may be her fiancé’s little brother, but because of that she’s seen the good sides of him and can be a bit more impartial. I think.
I chew my lip, swirling my wine before taking a large gulp. I’m surprised at how shaky my voice is, now that I’m about to come clean. “Alright, so. You know how I needed the model for my menswear pieces? And how Zeke wanted to film his pilot episode for that contest thing at my house?”
Lydia nods, tilting her head. “Mmhm. You made a deal of sorts. I’ve got all that.”
“Right. Well…” God. I’m stalling. I don’t want to tell her, but I do. I’m not even sure what I want from Lydia, except for her to listen, so I need to get to it. I take a deep breath, and then launch in. “I slept with Zeke.”
Lydia looks like she’s trying not to smile, but she only sips her wine. “Naturally. Go on.”
Well, that’s not the reaction I was expecting. I know as my best friend I should give Lydia more credit, but I really thought she’d groan—or at least give me a little side eye. But this...? She just looks amused.
“Wait. Naturally?”
Lydia shrugs, a twinkle in her dark eyes. “I mean, no offense, but something tells me you’re not the first girl to admit to that.”
“Yeah, well, I might be the first thirty-something.”
“Also doubtful,” Lydia says. “But whatever—that’s beside the point. You slept with him. Then what?”
A weird wave of jealousy rises inside me at the thought of Zeke sleeping with anyone else my age. I have no idea why, or how it’s any different from the girls his age he’s slept with, but it brings out something primal in me. Possessive. But I push it down and continue.
“I didn’t really mean for it to happen. I mean—I guess kind of I did, but I wasn’t proud of it, and I told him to keep it a secret. Which is probably messed up, I don’t know. But we slept together, and it was so good—”
Lydia waves a hand at me. “You can skip the specifics.”
“Oh, shit. Yeah, sorry,” I say, blushing.
I need to remember this is her almost brother-in-law.
“I only bring that part up because it was crazy how, like, taken care of I felt… compared to how it was with Patrick. And anyway, I thought it would just be that—just sex. Like, good for me, right? Getting laid after such a long time of not feeling desired? But then it was… more than that.”
Lydia’s quiet a moment as she studies me, her expression soft. “Yeah? What was it?”
“I think…” Almost as soon as I start to speak, my voice trails off, the rest of the words caught in my throat. Because I know exactly what it was. I’m just not sure I can say it aloud—so I dance around it. “We had fun together. Like, he made me feel alive again. You know?”
Lydia nods, swooping in to refill my cup. “That makes sense. He’s a lively dude.”
We sit there for a moment, drinking our wine.
The waves crash below us, sending the occasional spray of mist our way, and the late afternoon sun warms our skin as it starts to sink toward the town at our backs.
I’m feeling looser, lighter than I was before, but I know there’s more I need to say.
I’m still so lost, and I don’t know how I got here.
“Zeke wanted me,” I blurt out. “For so long I felt like I was undesirable, and then here comes this super fun, super hot dude—who everyone and their fucking grandma wants—and he wants me. He pursues me. And even after I slept with him, he didn’t go away.
He wanted to hang out with me, spend time with me…
“We had so much fun together, Lyds. It was like somebody finally saw me, and even more than that, helped me see myself again. I kind of forgot who I was before Patrick, you know? With Zeke, I can just… be my real self. And my real self was good enough.”
Lydia’s gazing out across the water, her legs still tucked up under her. When she speaks, she doesn’t turn to look at me, but she’s smiling softly. “You fell in love with him.”
“Yeah. I think I did.” It’s the first time I’ve acknowledged it, even to myself. “Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with him—and I have no clue where that leaves me now.”
“Well…” Lydia says, bringing her legs out from under her and shifting so we’re sitting side by side on the rock. “You said you could be yourself with him—that he likes your real self. Did that change?”
“No,” I admit. “I mean, I don’t think so. But I also don’t think I was seeing things clearly. You saw what happened today—he obviously doesn’t care enough about me to even bother to show up sober at my show. He knew how much that mattered to me, and now…”
I gesture helplessly. I still can’t believe he did that. That show I spent so many months putting together, put so much effort into planning—into making sure every single detail was just right… fell flat.
“Mm…”
“So whether or not he still ‘sees’ me feels kind of irrelevant. He’s just as irresponsible and immature as I thought he was—as everyone makes him out to be—and I deserve better than that. I was a goddamn idiot. I should’ve known better.”
“You do deserve better than that. He’s an asshole for what he did,” Lydia agrees.
She stares out at the water, swinging her feet.
Finally, she turns to me. “But Autumn—you know you’re one hundred percent enough, right?
With or without Zeke to make you feel like it, your real self is already good enough, and you’re absolutely going to come through this one way or another. ”
“I guess.”
“Nope. No guessing. Those are facts. I won’t try to tell you what to do about Zeke. That’s between the two of you. But keep your chin up, and don’t worry about what you should want—or not want—okay? That’s all bullshit.”
I cast her a sideways glance because… is she saying what I think she’s saying? She looks at me and shrugs, but there’s still that same softness in her eyes that was there before. Part of me wants to grab her by the arms and shake her, beg her to tell me what to do.
But I know she won’t. She can’t.
It’s for me to figure out.
But right now, I need to forget about today. To shake myself loose from the pure, undiluted disappointment that washes through me every time I think about Zeke vomiting on the sidewalk this morning. He didn’t just ruin my show. He ruined us.
Or maybe there never was an us. Maybe it was all in my stupid little desperate-to-be-loved head, a dumb story that some pitiful part of me made up to make myself feel better. I don’t know. And I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.
What I do know? I need more wine.
I reach over and grab the rosé from Lydia, tipping the bottle directly into my mouth. She shakes her head and laughs, then grabs it back from me and does the same.
And we sit like that for I don’t know how long, passing that wine back and forth between us, teasing and scoffing and giggling and swinging our legs until the sun melts into the horizon. Thank god for Lydia. We share that summer evening like only two girlfriends can.