Chapter 41
Maren
After rescheduling his flight and almost missing it a second time, Ozzie left for Mango Bay.
Good thing Sadie is here for the weekend, or I’m not sure I’d make it.
“I just don’t think it’s sustainable,” I tell her as I empty my second glass of wine.
“Long distance isn’t easy, Mare. You also have to try it for more than a month before you throw in the towel.” I can tell she wants to avert her gaze, but is forcing herself to look me straight in the eyes. She hates conflict.
“What would you know about long distance?” I ask. “And, who said I was throwing in the towel?”
Her eyes sparkle before she shifts them to the floor, avoiding me entirely.
I gasp. “Who is he?”
She pours each of us another glass of wine, and moves to the couch. “I met him three months ago when I went to Toronto for work.”
“Ok. I need you to look me in the eyes, stop being so cagey, and at least tell me his name.” I slap her knee. “Stop holding out on me.”
“His name is Beau. He’s a part of the team at our headquarters. We met at the bar across the street from my hotel. Got drunk. Hooked up… and then sat across from each other at a board meeting the next morning where I realized I technically screwed my boss.”
My mouth hangs open for a second. “How Meredith Grey of you.”
We both laugh for a moment, before I beg her for more details. “I need to know everything about him, all the dirty details of your night together, and what’s happened since then. Have you seen him? Do you sext?”
She blushes and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her so flustered.
“We hooked up that night, about shit ourselves the next morning. I avoided him for the rest of the day until he sent me a calendar invite for a meeting the next morning. We never exchanged numbers, so it was the only way he could get a hold of me I guess. When I first got the invite, there was someone else on it, so I genuinely thought it was a meeting. But when I got there, he pinned me against the wall and made me come all over his hand. I realized the other name was his assistant, so she’d know he was busy. ”
I shriek with laughter, “This just keeps getting better and better.”
I wave my hand at her, signaling her to continue.
“We spent the next week and a half inseparable. We snuck around, and screwed everywhere, every chance we got, and then I came home. He calls me almost every night, and now he’s trying to find a reason they need me back at the office.”
“Do you miss him?” I ask, curious if she’s struggling as much as I am.
“I mean, I guess. My situation is different, Mare.” She knows I’m looking for reassurance.
I can tell by her voice. “I didn’t know a life with him in it before I left.
My life at home is exactly the same as it was the day I left for Toronto.
The only difference is I have a nighttime companion over the phone.
I’m not finding a new normal, I’m building one. ”
I smile at her even though my heart feels like it shattered into a million shards of glass.
She’s right. Her situation isn’t the same.
I think back to all the time between the day I started with the Moonshots and now.
All the living, longing, happiness and pain centered around my relationship with Ozzie.
It felt like I was living outside myself for almost two years while we were apart, but now it feels like half of my soul has been displaced and planted across the country.
“Do you feel content when you hang up the phone with him?” I ask her, hoping she will hand me a life preserver, but that’s not the kind of friend Sadie is.
She’s not going to tell me what I want to hear to make me feel better.
She’s going to make me confront what I need to understand, so that I can move forward.
“Do you?” My stomach jumps at the return of my question. Because we both know that while I care about her and how she feels in her new relationship, it wasn’t really what I was asking.
She hides behind her wine glass when I look at her and a single tear rolls down my cheek.
“No.”