Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Rachel
There is no situation so bad that talking about it and asking for help can’t make it better.
That was Deanna’s Rule.
Rachel’s Rule: There is no situation so bad that she couldn’t create a spreadsheet to help make it better.
Too bad the front seat of her car made her elbows fold under her breasts as she tried to type. Blurry vision from crying didn’t help, either.
Confronting Kell like that and standing up for herself had been gutting, but also surprisingly liberating.
Five years ago, she had pleaded with Kell for a chance to explain, but he’d shut her out.
For the longest time, she’d felt an uneasy shame, wondering if she had in fact done something wrong.
Picking through every detail, she’d almost wanted to find a sliver of responsibility, a morsel of blame she could claim for herself to make sense of a nonsensical situation.
She never had.
Now, as she sniffled and the top of her shirt bloomed with dark spots from tears, she felt a burden lift.
The burden of unspoken words.
She typed:
Column 1: To Do
Column 2: Personal
Column 3: Work
Column 4: Notes
In the first column, she wrote a long list:
Check email
Change plane ticket to leave tomorrow
Freshen up resume
Reach out to alumni career offices
Ask to quit and not be fired
Check lease to see break clause
Ask Mom and Dad about living in the guest cottage as I relocate
Find out where to search for small-town jobs
Get a cat
“No.” She deleted that, and wrote:
Get two cats
“Hmm.” She edited that, changing it to:
Get two Maine Coon cats
Second column, Personal:
Open online account with Love You Coffee and create monthly shipment
Get a better ski jacket
Third column, Work:
Reply to Tom
Her fingers hovered over that last one. No. She couldn’t. As much as she reflected on life in L.A. and decided it was time for a change, staying here wasn’t going to work. Being business development director in Luview, of all places, would be a daily torment.
It wasn’t that she was worried Kell hated her. He didn’t. Or that he would obstruct her. No longer burdened with those concerns, she saw the whole situation differently. Kell had a Kell problem. Not a Rachel problem, not an Alissa problem, not a Love-You-Chocolate-being-sold problem.
Rachel couldn’t do anything about an issue he – and only he – could deal with.
Just like Kell couldn’t help her as she worked on owning her own crap.
If anything, she should thank him, she thought as she cried harder, the spreadsheet blurring.
All these years, she’d carried a torch for him, thinking that there must be a way, a bridge, an airing of truth that would set them right again.
Not that she had spent five years holding her breath. It was more a fantasy.
Then fantasy became reality for a few poignant, sweet days.
Except that “reality” was fantasy, too. Kell had tried. She knew he really had. But the blockage inside him was too great, too blinding. He couldn’t see beyond his own misguided hurt to trust and respect her, and she was actually grateful for that.
Because Kell Luview had just taught her a valuable lesson about her own worth.
No matter how much she still wanted him, how close they’d been, or how much she’d hoped to become closer, no matter how beautiful their relationship could have been, brimming with potential and love–if he kept her in almost territory, she would be doomed to live an almost life.
No.
No.
And at the very same time, Markstone's, and especially Doug, had taught her a lesson about her values.
Lucinda wasn’t going to sell. Rachel had a narrow window to make some big decisions.
If she quit, she could preserve her dignity and prevent her HR record from having a firing on it.
She wouldn’t get severance or unemployment, but frankly, she didn’t need them.
Her father would give her whatever money she needed until she got on her feet again.
A few days ago, she would never have asked, but now – now it was all different. Her dad had made it clear that the only reason he hadn’t offered to help her was that she hadn’t asked.
Now, she could ask.
The lump in her throat grew bigger, her chest spasming as she cried.
Logging in to her airline account, she did a search for flights out, calculating what she would need timewise to accomplish it. Without a mouse, her trackpad made it hard to navigate a site that required so much clicking, but soon she was looking at times and seats.
Working out of her car in the back parking lot at Bilbee’s, away from Kell’s apartment but on the other side of the building, was an act of desperation, but the high-speed internet was gold.
Plenty of open seats on flights to L.A. Maybe people didn’t travel much on Valentine's Day?
For whatever reason, the re-book was simple.
In the morning, she’d check out, drive back to Boston, spend the night near the airport, fly home, and start the search for a new job.
At least she knew the direction she was going in next.
Back in her work email, she saw one from Orla, then her phone buzzed with a text from her. The preview line for both said, Did you say anything to the Louis fam…
Laughter bubbled up from under her ribs, like little soldiers marching across erratic terrain, not quite certain where they were going but determined to get to the front lines and meet their fate.
“It’s over. It’s all over. There goes my career. Flush! Down the toilet. My career is like the emergency cash in my nightstand. A great idea until I made a really bad decision and had to face the consequences of my own stupidity.”
Except she knew that wasn’t right. Tipping Deanna off wasn’t a stupid decision.
Not telling Kell at the camp why she was really there – that was the big mistake she’d made.
Frozen and terrified, her mind had gone to the lie so easily, so quickly. It felt awful as she did it, scared and scrambling to buy herself time to sort it all out later. The rush to fix the problem just created a bigger, worse problem downstream.
One that looked completely unsolvable.
Always, since she was a little girl, she’d needed more time to process how she felt than other people seemed to need.
When conflict happened, she froze. When a decision had to be made, she needed time and space to assemble all the possibilities, so that the great sorting hat inside her could decide what to do and how to react.
Back in D.C., she’d never hinted at her attraction to Kell because after her college boyfriend, Logan, had dumped her, she’d needed time. And when she was finally ready, Kell was attached to Alissa.
Out of sync with the world, she never seemed to line up with other people, but today–today she had. Being able to react in the moment, stand up for herself, stand up to Kell and make it clear that she was worthy of respect and trust meant, ironically, walking away.
And sobbing uncontrollably in her car in the back lot of a bar while her career and life crumbled.
“At least I finally made him listen,” she whispered through a salty mouthful of dignity.
Tap tap tap
The scream came out of her like it was wound up tight inside, a spring inside a kid’s pop-up toy, her laptop flying up and hitting the steering wheel then sliding down under the dash as she looked at her steamed-up side window, heart pounding.
“Rachel? It’s Luke.”
Oh, great. Just what she needed. Was she parked illegally? Or was the Luview family brigade coming to say their piece?
“And Colleen.” She heard a woman’s voice muffled behind the glass.
Pieces. They’d come to say their pieces, while Rachel’s pieces were all jangling around inside her.
Rachel slid her laptop into her lap and closed it, rolling the window down an inch.
“Um, hi.”
“Hi. Come inside with us.”
“I really don’t want to,” she said honestly. “The last thing I need is to add alcohol and yelling to my day. More yelling, I mean.”
“We won’t yell at you,” Luke said. Colleen just cleared her throat. Rachel saw Luke nudge his sister with his elbow.
“We won’t,” Colleen said with an eye roll. “Come inside. We just want to talk.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“Looks to me like you’re in the middle of crying and questioning your life choices,” Colleen replied. “You can do that over a beer.”
“I don’t drink beer.”
“Come inside,” Luke insisted.
“Isn’t it packed? It’s almost Valentine’s Day.”
“Moore is saving the table.”
“Moore?”
“My buddy,” Luke said.
“Hey, he’s mine, too,” Colleen muttered, kicking a snowbank.
“He was mine first,” Luke said emphatically. “If we’re going to argue over who gets to claim Moore, can we do it over our beers? I only have the sitter for so long.”
Rachel wavered. “Why do you want to talk to me? If it’s to tell me what a horrible person I am and how I’m hurting your brother, no thanks.”
“It’s not,” Luke said. “Really.” He shot Colleen a look.
“What? It’s not,” his sister said defensively. “It was my idea to make her come inside! I’m the one who saw her out here. Why would I bring her in to yell at her when I could do that out here?”
“We just want to understand what’s going on. Mom texted me and told me to help you if I saw you. And here you are. You look like you need a drink.”
Rachel debated with herself.
“I really appreciate it. I do. But I’m going to have to take a pass. I’ve had too much of Love You, Maine, today to spend any more time here,” she said, pressing the starter button as she raised the window over their protests.
Nothing.
The engine didn’t turn over.
Nothing again, and again, as she kept pressing it.
Tap tap tap
“Something’s wrong with your battery. Or your alternator,” Luke said.
Rachel slumped forward and began rhythmically banging her forehead on the steering wheel, not bothering with meditations or mantras, a river of foul language pouring out of her like she was a soda stream.
It looked like she was ending her time in Luview the same way she’d started it.
With a broken car.