Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
PAIGE
I cover my face with my hands.
The light coming in the bedroom is on the wrong side. I reach over for Nate and get a fistful of sheets.
I scramble to sit up and then remember.
Breathing is difficult as the anxiety constricts its ugly head around my body. My head pounds from a mixture of overthinking, crying, and the tequila that Hollis finally let me have to help me sleep.
I grab my phone to check the time. My heart sinks.
Nate: I miss you.
I miss you too.
There are three missed calls from Kinsley, two of which I sent directly to voicemail last night. I just couldn’t talk to her. She knows me well enough to see what I would have done with Marcie’s words. Self-sabotage.
My feet hit the floor, and I stand, wishing I was being guided to the kitchen by a little boy not asking me for pancakes.
The thought makes me smile.
I walk down the hallway with tons of black and white pictures of Hollis and Larissa and other people I don’t know. They all look so happy.
I take the stairs slowly and then across the dining room to the kitchen. Larissa is standing by the refrigerator.
“Good morning,” she says softly. “How are you?”
“Do you have any coffee?” I ask, ignoring her question.
She grins. “I’ll make some. Have a seat.”
“You don’t have to make it for me. I don’t want to put you out.”
“Sit.” She shakes her head and busies herself at the Keurig. “You are so much like your brother it’s crazy.”
“Really?”
She looks at me over her shoulder. “Yeah. You both deflect questions you don’t want to answer. You always think you’re bothering people. And you’re hardheaded as all get-out.”
I can’t deny that.
She presses a button, and the machine makes a noise.
“So did a night of rest help you make sense of things?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get a night of rest.” I take a banana out of the fruit basket on the counter. “I just wish …” That I hadn’t heard Marcie. “I don’t know. I wish a lot of things, I guess.”
“You have to do what feels right to you, Paige. If that means giving yourself space until you’re sure, then do that.”
But I am sure. I want to be with him. I just … can’t.
“I just want to cause them the least pain, you know? Because if I’m being honest, I was going to walk out eventually. I do this self-sabotage thing where I … implode my life? Keep me from having nice things?”
“Thinking you don’t deserve them?”
Oof.
She hands me the coffee, her bracelet with a little succulent catching the light.
“Hollis does this thing—he used to do it terribly, where he wouldn’t buy himself anything.
Like, nothing. The boy had a hole in his shoe and refused to get a new pair.
” She laughs. “He felt like he had to trade something to get the shoes or whatever it was. He had to write a song or finish a paper or do whatever it was to deserve the thing he needed or wanted.”
I hold the banana and suddenly don’t feel like eating it anymore.
“It’s taken a lot of deprogramming to get him out of that headspace,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong—he still doesn’t spend money. But he’ll get what he needs, and he’ll treat himself sometimes. And, of course, I spoil him.”
I smile at her. “I’m glad he has you, Riss.”
“I’m glad I have him.”
“Even with his need for deprogramming?” I ask.
She leans against the counter and looks at me. “See? You see it as a negative. I see it as a positive.”
“How?”
“All of that stuff in his head that makes him feel … certain ways, whatever they are, from time to time? It’s because of some really shitty people doing some really shitty things to him.
Yet he made it.” She smiles brightly. “He made his way to me. He’s the strongest person I know.
And every day when I wake up, and I look over, and he’s lying there snoring—because that man snores, let me tell you—I feel like the happiest person in the world. ”
That’s because she has one of the very best men I know as her person. And Hollis is also one lucky man to have Riss and her family as his.
I think about what she said. It makes sense. And I’m happy for Hollis.
But Hollis isn’t me.
“Thanks for the coffee. I’m going to grab a shower. Do you care if I take it to my room?” I ask.
“No. Heavens, no. Your brother eats and drinks as he walks around the house. He’s a heathen sometimes.”
I try to smile. I mean to. It’s just hard to cut through my sadness.
I take my coffee and head upstairs. Once I get there, I check my phone.
Nate: I love you.
I love you too.
Me: Distract me.
Banks: Needy much?
Me: Banks. Please.
Banks: So there was this cat last night in the alley behind the house.
I lie on the bed and let Banks take my mind off the mess in my head.