Chapter 8 Sierra #2
“You’ve gotta process what happened,” she says.
“How?”
“By feeling all the feelings, sitting with them, building some tolerance for dealing with them.” Sophie’s into things like therapy and feelings in a way that I can’t comprehend.
Paying someone to let me emote at them? No.
“That’s how you build resilience. Then you do your best to let them go.
If they come back up, you do it again. If you just stuff them away without examining them, you’ll get angry. ”
“I’m already angry.”
“See?” She tosses a pair of balled-up socks at me. “So, tell me. What exactly did Kyle say when you talked to him today?”
Yeah. So that happened.
As soon as I got my phone—and my coffee mug—back from Mason’s bartender, I had a very tense conversation with Kyle.
I wasn’t planning to talk to him yet, but he called almost as soon as I turned on the ringer, while I was still in the bar.
Mason had retreated into his office and shut the door, I was still reeling from our conversation, and I really wasn’t thinking straight when I answered.
“Honestly, he was petty as hell. I think he’s still mad but trying to pretend he’s not because he’s so above it. He said he was calling because he ‘wants his vinyl back.’”
“Just like the Gotye song,” she says sadly, like, Can’t he even be original? “Next he’ll be changing his number.”
“One can only hope. He said he’d have a ‘friend’ come get his records. Can you imagine if he sent her?”
“Even Kyle can’t be that out of touch.”
“Can’t he, though?” I give her a look. “I think he was taking my temperature. Like, making sure I wasn’t gonna do anything dramatic.
You know, show up at his house and make a scene in front of the neighbors.
Dump the dirty laundry he left at my place on his lawn.
I don’t think he even remembered I’m out of town.
Which is extra special since the whole reason I came here was to spend time with him.
I guess he’s already wiped clean any memory of our lives and future plans together. ”
“Babe, I’m sorry. He’s a dick. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty clear with every condescending word he breathes that he blames me for everything. Including losing the investment because I don’t actually deserve it. And ending up single because I just don’t have my shit together.”
“So, basically the worst things you fear about yourself,” my best friend points out.
Which is when all the emotional buildup from this whole terrible week threatens to bust down the floodgates and I almost burst into tears. I bury my face in a T-shirt and try to scrape myself together.
“Oh, Si. I didn’t mean to almost make you cry. I know you hate crying.”
“You didn’t. Life did.” I take a deep breath, blink away the unshed tears, and hang up the shirt. “He did.” In the back of my mind, I wonder if I’m really talking about Kyle, or . . . Mason.
A man I just met.
How gross, that I could let him make me feel this shitty about myself.
And also, where did my internal man picker go so fucking wrong over the years?
I need you to leave.
I can still hear his voice, see the look on his face, jaw set and blue eyes burning with determination as he said those words to me.
“You’re just . . . in a slump,” Sophie says kindly.
Yeah. It feels like that hell-crack I plummeted into has some wicked gravity.
After I got off the call with Kyle and left the bar, I lost the bar’s Wi-Fi signal and therefore the ability to make phone calls, but I could still see all the messages and missed calls that had piled up on my phone.
I borrowed Sophie’s phone (which works just perfectly) to call everyone who deserved a call back, so they don’t have to worry about me.
Each call just made me feel progressively worse.
Mom’s super worried about me (“I wish you would just find a nice man and settle down, like Kim”) and doesn’t understand why I would “make a video like that” anyway. I had to explain to her that I didn’t make it, but yes, the dildo was real. I’m not sure that made it better.
My stepsister suddenly decided to tell me she “never liked Kyle” but hadn’t wanted to tell me while we were together and “make it worse,” because she was sympathetic to the fact that “not every woman has a man as wonderful as my husband.”
I know Kim really meant that as sympathy, but I almost hurled Soph’s phone right into the sea after that one.
Kyle’s mom, who I probably shouldn’t have bothered calling back at all, told me how sorry she was that she could no longer invest in my business, and could I please return the wine glasses she loaned to me?
Of course I’d return her wine glasses. She made it sound like I was trying to steal them.
“Let’s call this whole thing what it is,” I say. “It’s an all-time low. I need something to improve here. But it just keeps getting worse.” As if on some cosmic cue system, the overhead light in the kitchen flickers out.
Sophie and I blink at each other.
“See?”
“I will talk to June about that tomorrow,” she says. “And about the lodging situation, if you’re not happy.”
“It’s fine.” I look around, trying to see things through the rose-colored glasses my bestie perpetually wears. “It’s clean,” I relent. “And safe. The lock seems solid.”
“And the orchard is pretty,” she says, jumping on the optimism train, her specialty. “That Lee guy is nice. He really liked your boobs.”
I groan.
“And there’s a gift basket in the kitchen.” She pulls me from the bedroom to the tiny kitchen/living room and plunks us down on the couch. She starts digging through the basket, unpacking. “I know you don’t want to be here. But let’s make the best of it?” She holds out a homemade-looking cookie.
I take it with a sigh. “The truth is, I don’t really want to go home, either.
Orchard Cove is the rock and home is the hard place.
And all I know is I feel unwelcome in both right now.
Also, if I’ve learned anything today, it’s that seagulls are assholes.
” One did actually shit on me while Soph and I were on the pier, having lunch we picked up at the little grocery store.
Would’ve loved to have eaten a real, cooked meal at the bar and grill, but fuck that.
“So, no, maybe I don’t want to be here.” I eat the cookie in one go.
It’s stupidly delicious. “But the things Kyle said today, Soph . . . I can’t help thinking he’s right.
I’ve made a mess of my business and my life. Objectively, I’m a failure.”
“Sierra. My god. There is no objectivity in that man’s judgment. Or love. Someone who loves you doesn’t use the things that hurt you the most to intentionally hurt you more.”
I know she’s right, because if anyone knows what true love is, it’s Sophie.
Her husband adores her and treats her like his queen, his best friend, his partner in every way.
And she’s not low-key boasty about it like my stepsister is.
Soph is incredibly qualified to coach me through the aftermath of this breakup.
I take another cookie and stuff my face.
“True facts. If it weren’t for you and Pete,” I tell her, “I’d have given up on the fantasy of ever having a successful relationship fucking years ago.
The two of you give me hope, even when I’d like to drop-kick whatever hope for a happy ending I’m still naively holding onto into the nearest toilet and flush.
I’d already be deep into my ‘she seems to be collecting an alarming number of cats’ phase without you. ”
“Pfft. You’re allergic to cats,” Sophie says easily, blowing that off. As if I’m not one hundred percent serious.
“There are days when I truly think suffocating on cat dander would be better than living with a man.”
“But you’ve never actually lived with a man,” she points out, which is sadly true.
“You can’t write off all future men based on a few bad apples from your past. I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again: Kyle put his family before you.
He put his career before you. He put his precious house before you by refusing to move in together.
He even put his female best friend before you, on many occasions.
A man who loves you won’t make you second-choice.
And he certainly won’t make you tenth. That man put his car before you, Si. He put his freaking hair before you—”
“I see we’ve reached the ‘I told you so’ portion of the evening.”
Sophie blinks at me innocently. “Only because you asked for it. And here’s that cider you requested. Consider yourself punished.” She pops open a giant can of cider from the gift basket and puts it in my hand. “Now, tell me where it really hurts.”
I sigh. Leave it to Sophie to see right through all my anger and frustration—and “let’s get this shit done” attitude today as we set up the smoothie bar—to the truth.
That I’m fucking hurt.
“It’s just . . .” I groan. “You know I don’t do well with rejection. Because Mommy picked the perfect, shiny stepsister over me, and Daddy picked an entirely new family over me. This whole thing just pokes a stick into my festering mommy and daddy issues.”
“What whole thing, exactly?” Soph prods gently. “The breakup?”
I take a look at the cider can in my hand. Twisted Tree Cider Co., it says—Bramble Berry Cider, with a twisted-tree logo. June’s cider. I take a tentative sip, treating my tongue to a refreshing blend of sweet blackberry and crisp, tart apple. Unfortunately, it’s as delicious as Mason’s cider.
I wonder how he feels about that.
“What Mason said to me tonight,” I admit in a small voice. “Offering to pay me to leave town. That hurt. But it shouldn’t.”
“Why not? You liked him.”
“But he’s not Kyle. I didn’t give him three years of my life. He doesn’t know me well enough to know how to hurt me purposefully. And he definitely doesn’t owe me anything.”
“And it still hurts. That’s fair. You were into him.”