Chapter 11 #2
Sage closes her eyes and counts to three. “This is important, Mom.”
“Oh, honey, I know.” She sighs. “Look, I wouldn’t blame you if you needed it, though. With all that drama a few weeks ago.”
She bites the inside of her cheek, hard. It’s amazing how moms have this innate ability to find the two things you don’t want to talk about and put them at the top of the call agenda.
Her parents aren’t ones for social media or pop culture, but they follow Sage. They saw the statement she had to post. They saw the photos she was tagged in.
And while her parents don’t know the half of it, that’s never stopped them from fully forming an opinion regardless.
The comment eats at her more than it should, something akin to guilt stirring inside of her as she thinks of last night. No distractions, she’d promised herself. And yet she’d followed the biggest distraction in the world straight into his family’s vacation home.
Her mom goes three for three when she adds, “I saw your Instagram story today. The pictures were so pretty! I’m glad you’re taking some time to relax.”
The words themselves aren’t condemning, but they have Sage’s shoulders moving ever closer to her ears. “I just worry,” her mom continues. “You work so hard. I hate to see you so stressed that it drove you across the ocean.”
Sage resists the urge to point out that she doesn’t remember her complaining when Sage was bringing home award after award in school. Or working toward a promotion at the fintech start-up.
She closes her eyes and wills herself to stay calm. “That’s not …” She wets her lips. Tries again. “Don’t worry. I’ll take a true break when this draft is done.”
She can hear her mom gearing up for … something.
An argument, maybe.
Advice, probably.
Some more mixed messaging, definitely.
Sage changes the subject.
“How’s Dad?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Had a couple of late nights in the office lately …”
It works like a charm. Her mom spends the next thirty minutes catching her up on her dad, their work, and the neighbors, and Sage figures it’s been enough time that she can cut in and gracefully bow out by making an excuse about needing to get back to work.
“All right,” her mom acquiesces. “But really, Sagey, if you want to come home, you can always change your trip. We’re going to miss you at Thanksgiving.”
This time, she can’t hold back her retort. “Is Noah changing his plans, too?”
Her mother huffs. “Noah has to work Wednesday and Friday, Sage. He can’t fly out from Seattle just for the day.”
Of course. Noah has to work, and Sage should change her trip, because it’s not like she has a deadline or anything.
“I know it sucks, Mom,” she says instead, feeling a mixture of relief at heading off an argument and regret at not standing her ground. “Christmas will be great.”
“It will be,” her mom confirms. It almost sounds like a threat. “You’ll have to show us all of the pictures from your vacation.”
Sage grits her teeth and presses her fist to her mouth, biting back a scream. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay?” she manages to say.
They hang up after that. Sage folds her arms on the bar and lets her head drop on top of them, letting the silence of the cottage build around her.
“Why isn’t it ever enough?” she groans to the empty space.
It doesn’t have the answers, either.
The first time Sage threw up at school, it was because a friend had spread a rumor that she was obsessed with a boy in their class.
She was so embarrassed by that first evidence of too much too much too much it had, quite literally, made her sick.
She supposes that should have been the first indication that her brain and stomach weren’t quite typical, but it would take years for her to figure that out.
Anyway.
The second time Sage threw up at school, it was because she’d failed a chemistry test. She was so distraught that when she went to her next class—French—the stern-faced, stoic teacher, Monsieur Moreau, had immediately hugged her.
That’s the thing about being an achiever in a family of achievers.
Achievement is expected. The norm. And Sage, in her eagerness to please, has always made it look easy. You couldn’t see the anxiety unless you were looking at her bleeding cuticles. You couldn’t sense the overwhelm unless you picked apart why she was crying over getting a B+.
You couldn’t see the stress unless you were awake at 3 AM with her, when she’s shaking and trembling from her latest night terror about not being enough for the people that life tells her are supposed to love her just as she is.
Sage has spent enough of her last decade in and out of therapy to know that there’s nuance in all of this—something about expectations versus reality and parents being human and having to come to terms with who their kid ends up being versus who they wanted them to be.
But … it used to be easier. Back when she was working toward something her parents understood. Back when she was ignorant to how hard she strived to be what they wanted her to be because she wasn’t sure how else to matter.
The awareness haunts her, and sometimes she wonders if it’s worse knowing what she knows.
Either way … she knows the triggers, and the conversation with her mom was one that’s laid on top of others that have been steadily building over the last year.
It sticks with her, a lingering shadow over her shoulder as she opens her laptop and puts on her noise-canceling headphones to drown out the roaring silence of the Airbnb.
She ends up deleting more words than she writes.
Emerson calls that night and asks if Sage wants her to dial in Margot. Sage says no.
She loves Margot. But right now, she needs Emerson. Just Emerson.
She puts her laptop away and pours wine and subjects herself to Em’s millions of questions about The Run In that she didn’t answer in the group chat because it means, for a little bit, that she doesn’t have to feel the frustration that presses against her sternum.
“So let me get this straight,” Emerson says in a way that makes it clear she’s about to recount everything Sage has just told her.
“Theo doesn’t live in LA, he lives in London, but he just so happens to be in Skye right now because he’s clearing out his family’s vacation home, and you ran into him in a pub last night only to go back to said home with him and listen to him confess that he’s in love with you but knows it could never work for some reason I can’t actually fathom because y’all’s logic is nonexistent? ”
Sage takes a sip of her wine and sinks further into the couch and the comfort that comes from feeling like Emerson is right beside her, gossiping as they would be if they were sprawled on top of her bed at home.
“You took some creative liberties, especially with the end there, but that’s the gist of it.”
Emerson lets out a long breath. “What are the odds?”
“Don’t ask.”
“You calculated it, didn’t you?”
“No.” Sage draws out the vowel.
“You did. I know it.”
“I like data.”
“You are such a nerd!” Emerson’s cackle is tinny through the speaker of Sage’s phone, set next to a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, but it’s warm and familiar and it makes Sage grin.
She takes another sip of her wine and lets some of the tension that sits between her shoulder blades bleed into the couch.
There’s a thick, knitted blanket tossed over her sweatpant-clad legs, and a soft, worn Cambridge sweatshirt thrown over her long-sleeved shirt.
The sleeves are rolled to her wrists, the smell of it still something decidedly male.
She’s cold. It’s soft. It means nothing.
“He’s already texted you, hasn’t he?” Emerson asks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sage retorts airily.
“Oh, this is too good!” Emerson croons. “What are you going to do?”
“About what?”
“About Theo, obvi.”
Sage tosses a handful of popcorn into her mouth. “There’s nothing to do about Theo. We’re … friendly.”
“You’re friendly.” Emerson says the word with so much implication Sage can’t stop the snort of laughter that bubbles up in her.
“Yes?”
“Friendly …”
“For a lawyer, you take an awful long time to get to the point.”
“It’s because I charge by the minute,” Em quips. “I’m serious, though, S. How are you going to be friends with Theo? It’s so obvious you two want to jump each other’s bones.”
Sage chokes on her wine. “I do not! And I never said we were going to be friends. I said we’re friendly.”
“Semantics.”
“Semantics are quite literally my job,” she deadpans. Emerson makes a noncommittal sound, and Sage plows on before her friend can gain steam. “Look, he’s only here for a few weeks. I doubt I’ll even see him much, but it’ll be nice to not have the urge to flee if I happen to run into him in town.”
“Seeing as you fled the entire country because of him, I’d say that’s progress,” Emerson snorts.
Sage stills, her grip tightening reflexively on her wineglass. She can feel the energy shift on the line immediately—can feel the way she shifts it as she says, “That’s not … I didn’t leave LA because of him.”
There’s a long pause before Emerson replies. “I know. I was teasing.”
But Sage’s stomach is tightening, and she puts the wineglass on the table so she can run both hands over her heated cheeks. “It was about the book.”
“I know,” Emerson urges. “Babes, it was a joke.” There’s a click as Emerson takes her off of speaker, her voice suddenly close and serious. “Hey. What’s going on?”
Sage swallows, but there’s a lump in her throat and the echo of her mother and her implications and Sage’s own damn inner monologue about wasting time and being lazy and failing and …
“I’m still stuck,” she admits quietly. “I’m still stuck, and being here feels stupid. Like I’ve talked myself into some sort of vacation that I don’t deserve, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Emerson cuts in. “Where is this coming from?”
Sage inhales deeply.
Writer’s block. A day off. The panic she doesn’t have time for trying its best to make itself heard.