Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
She woke up alone. Her body ached, and she was tender in places that surprised her.
She had been in a relationship for years, and there had been times during that relationship where they’d had a pretty busy sex life.
Still, she had never felt like this. She let out a long, slow breath, and tried to remember if...
she didn’t think that Walker had gone to sleep with her.
But she wasn’t really sure. She had dropped out of consciousness, like...
Well, like a woman who had just had multiple orgasms.
She smiled slightly, and then rolled out of bed.
She was still naked. She walked into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, trying to see if she looked any different.
The strange thing was, she looked exactly like herself.
She had thought that maybe she would look in the mirror and see somebody totally new.
Somebody totally different. But no. She was just Addison.
Standing naked in Walker’s bathroom. She wasn’t a new creation, she was just the same one. But she felt like...
She put her face in her hands for just a second. She took a breath, and then another, then she lifted her head. She couldn’t obsess about this. She didn’t have time. Whatever was going to happen between them after this happened. But she needed to go deal with her life.
Her car was here, and she needed to take herself into town and go visit the boutique. She hadn’t been in a couple of weeks. She had just been checking in with the staff on their message system. Of course, the boutique always ran without her, but she was usually in and out casually.
She hadn’t been doing anything casually for quite some time, much less visiting the boutique.
Certainly not going into town. Maybe that was part of why she felt so different.
Part of why she felt so out of body. Maybe it wasn’t just that she had finally—finally—had sex with Walker.
It was more about the fact that she wasn’t doing any of the things she normally did.
With that decided, she got dressed. She didn’t pause to make coffee at Walker’s house.
Instead, she drove straight to Juniper & Sage bakery to get something from Cara.
Because that was something that she would do on a normal day.
A normal day when she hadn’t been jilted, hadn’t gone viral, and hadn’t had a night of wild sex with her high school nemesis.
When she walked into Juniper and Sage, it was bustling.
And she felt guilty, because when she looked up and saw her younger brother, Jackson, the first thing she wanted to do was leave.
They hadn’t actually talked about the whole wedding thing.
It was just... That was weird. It was weird that she felt so resistant to talking to him.
To sharing with him. She was sure that he had heard things from their dad.
And he had sent a text checking in on her, and she had sent him back a cursory reply.
“Wow,” Jackson said.
“What?”
“Nothing. You look... You look very good for somebody who just had a giant, life-altering trauma.”
“Oh, I didn’t. I’m fine.”
“Where have you been?”
“You’re just now asking this?”
Jackson looked a little embarrassed.
“Sorry. I should have checked in on you sooner. That was genuinely my bad.”
“Your bad? What is this, high school?”
“Addison, I’m sorry. I didn’t know if you wanted to be checked in on.”
It was partly her fault. She didn’t share things with Jackson, because she didn’t share things with very many people.
She didn’t share things with Jackson because she always wanted him to think that everything was fine.
She was the oldest, and she was supposed to be no drama.
She was the oldest, and she was supposed to have everything together.
She wondered how much of that was what put distance between herself and her brother. She wondered how much of that was her fault, actually. How much of it was her being so obsessed with her image, and with the idea that she had everything under control, which was very Bob Carey coded, actually.
She had tried so hard not to be her mother, and she couldn’t lie and say she wasn’t exhibiting characteristics of her right now.
But mainly, mainly, she was like her dad.
Oh, she was so much like her dad. And she loved her dad so much, but he wasn’t exactly an approachable person.
He could be pious even though he wasn’t especially religious.
But just about the way that things were supposed to go, the ways that they were supposed to be.
And she wondered how much of that she had passed on to her brother, and how much they didn’t talk about anything and everything because he didn’t feel like he could tell her things.
She certainly didn’t feel like she could tell him things, but only because she had gone out of her way to fashion a facade that was perfect.
“I didn’t know that you still came over here,” she said.
He had mentioned it in passing a month or so ago, that he was going every day. And he had really talked up Cara, the baker. But he had just stopped all of a sudden.
“You don’t know everything about me. And yeah, Cara actually kind of shut me down a few months ago. I had to lick my wounds for a bit. But my pride is no match for her baking.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I probably deserved it.”
“You probably didn’t.”
“Are you okay? Really?”
“I am. In fact, I’m here to get a pastry and a coffee, and then I’m going to go to town and check in on the boutique. I’m much more embarrassed than I am wounded. But I’m dealing with all that. I promise.”
“I believe you.”
“Well, I’m glad. I’m sorry that I didn’t... I’m sorry that I didn’t call you. I just thought that if you were devastated, you probably wouldn’t want to talk to me.”
What struck her was how accurate that was. He was right. If she had been in a state of total devastation, she really wouldn’t have wanted to talk to him. Beginning and end of story. At least, that’s what she would have wanted then.
“I’m sorry. Because you’re right. I wouldn’t have wanted you to see me messed up. But I’m coming to terms with the fact that other people already know that I’m human, and I need to get over it.”
“Good for you. Dad’s never come to that conclusion.”
That comment felt out of left field to her. But then... She didn’t know if Jackson and her dad were actually all that close.
“Have you talked to Mom?”
That casual question with a sip of his coffee surprised her too.
“Really briefly. A couple weeks ago.”
“She’s worried about you.”
That was when she realized she actually had no idea of the family dynamics present right now. She had been so lost in her own thing that she hadn’t realized that Jackson was talking to their mom?
That he had issues with their dad?
“I will. I...”
“Are you still angry at her?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “You’re not?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Not really. But that’s probably not a conversation for a casual coffee shop run-in. Maybe let’s actually have dinner or something.”
“Okay. I just... the mayoral campaign and—”
“I know. You’ve been busy. You’re going to be busy for a while.”
“I don’t mean it like that. I really don’t.”
“Yeah, I know. Neither did Dad.”
Jackson waved as he walked back out of the coffee shop, leaving her there with information that she couldn’t quite process.
She walked up to the register and ordered coffee and a strawberry roll to go, then got back into her car, sipping on her drink and trying not to make a giant mess with her roll.
Was she like Dad in a bad way? Was there a bad way to be like their dad?
She felt like she needed to sit down and flow chart all of this, but she didn’t know if she had the mental fortitude to do it. Everything was just on its head, and she had already challenged her perception of herself back then. She wasn’t sure if she could shake things up too much now.
She was beginning to think that option wasn’t on the table, though.
It felt like every stone was being overturned in the deepest parts of her. Like everything hidden was being dragged right out in the open.
She’d been naked in Walker’s bathroom this morning.
In his bed.
In his shower.
Everything was different, but Mustang River looked the same.
Everything was different, but she looked the same.
When she pulled up to the little boutique on main that had clothing and household goodies, she sat there feeling like she was outside her body.
Gin and Tonic was a popular store in town, partly because of how she marketed it online, she knew, but also because it was quirkier than some of the other clothing stores in town, which to be fair, very smartly catered to wealthy clients that were looking for staple pieces.
There was a shop only two doors down from her that sold the most beautiful wool shawls, but those were not impulse buys.
And while the clothing in her store was of good quality, she kept things a little bit less pricey.
Though some days she felt more like she was the occasional social media manager and silent partner. Her manager and assistant manager were younger than she was, in their early twenties, and very good at buying just the right things for the store to curate an enthusiastic customer.
She got out of her car and walked up the sidewalk toward the boutique, taking a deep breath as she opened the door.
She plastered a smile firmly on her face and was met with wide-eyed shock from the employee and manager that were behind the counter.
“Hi,” she said.
“Addison,” her manager, Beth, said. “You’re... you’re here?”
“I’ve been looking at messages in the chat.”
“It could have been the serial killer that had your phone looking at those messages.”
Addison noted Beth had not called for a welfare check or indeed checked in at all.
“I just wanted to come check in, see how everything was. I’m getting back into my normal routine. Or at least, I will be. And I’m going to be moving into town.”
“Really?”