11. Della
DELLA
Between Jax and Hazel encouraging me to check out the lodge’s continental breakfast, I take their advice, and am happy I do. The food is incredible, but the real surprise is exploring the inside of the lodge and seeing all it’s beauty.
The people are tittering over watching the sunrise through the bottom of the heart, and I am just as excited as all of them to have witnessed something so remarkable.
With a full belly, I head back to my cabin, flop on the couch, and take a closer look at my phone.
My missed calls are in the triple digits, and I have even more text messages.
I silenced many of them yesterday, not giving it any more attention than it deserved, but now I’m curious.
Tripp has sent me over a hundred messages ranging from apologetic to angry to disbelief to threatening.
Towards the end of the tirade, he is spiraling and just sending one-word texts.
Feeling brave, I send him the last text I will ever send him.
Elizabeth
Tripp. Thank you for the barrage of messages.
You texted me more in the last twenty-four hours than you have combined since we got reintroduced.
I had no idea you cared so much. To just clear everything up, I left because you were taking part in a threesome on the morning of our wedding, and I heard you say that nothing was going to change, before laughing at my naivety about it.
That violates a moral standard I have, and given that, I’m not going through with this anymore.
It was stupid in the first place. I know you’re probably more embarrassed than concerned about me, but I’m safe.
Please stop contacting me; you look pathetic.
I hope Brad and his girlfriend enjoy your company… you fucking asshole.
After I hit send and block him, a massive weight slides off my shoulders, allowing something inside of me to loosen for the first time in ages.
I’ve never spoken to him like that before, and I rather like it.
He’s going to lose it when he realizes I’ve blocked him, too.
Right now, part of me thinks I should feel distraught, but mostly I feel the kind of relief you would feel from dodging a bullet.
I can’t quite bring myself to contact my father, despite his three million calls and texts, so I call Quinn instead.
“Captain’s log, day two. I like the Wild West,” I open with when Quinn answers the phone.
Hearing her laugh makes me smile. “Um, are you loving it at the ranch?” she asks.
“Well, this place is spectacular. Like, Quinn, where am I? I saw this sunrise thing too…”
“Oh my gosh,” she cuts me off. “The Amberheart Sunrise is happening right now? You lucky gal!”
“Yes! How have you never told me about this?”
She laughs again. “I haven’t paid attention to it since I lived at home; I guess I forgot. Sorry about that! What’d you think?”
“Well, it was stunning. But do you know what I don’t love? Cougar murder sounds.”
Quinn transitions from a chuckle to a full-blown laugh. “Holy shit, I should make you a list for all the things you’re going to encounter. Did you just die? You called the police, didn’t you? Ohmygod.”
“So… funny story, I did not call the police; I just jumped into the bed of one Jaxon Wills.”
“Shut the fuck up.” She stops laughing mid-sentence. “How? Did you…”
“We didn’t hook up or anything. He did kiss me when I was in hysterics about the cougar, and that shit stopped me in my tracks. But Quinny, he is the kindest man I think I’ve ever met.”
“But why was there even an opportunity to jump into bed with him?” she questions.
“He offered to stay in a cabin with me. It’s one of the nice ones.”
“You stayed in a Heart of Will luxury cabin? Do you…” Her voice is dripping with disbelief. “My God, Della, you are living a runaway bride fever dream.”
“Have you received any communication from my dad or Tripp?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Yeah, quite a bit. From them, Tripp’s sisters, who have my number from the bachelorette party, and his parents have jumped on the horn too.”
Quinn was the one who delivered the message that the wedding wasn’t happening, and even hired two people to sit outside the church to tell any guests who didn’t get the memo.
She was also the one who called Tripp to tell him I was gone and everything was off because of his cheating.
Apparently, his first question was, "Did you tell my parents about Brad?” No concern or sadness for me or the marriage that just blew up, nothing like that.
Just wondering if his secret had been shared.
And she has been standing strong in the face of all the rage and anger since.
Though after some harassment, she disclosed to his family it was because of infidelity…
she just didn’t share the surrounding details.
My God, there is no way this only just happened yesterday.
“I’m sorry for putting you through this,” I say.
“Give me a break. I never liked Trippy-Boy. I’m ecstatic that you aren’t bound to him, and I can’t even explain the amount of joy I’m getting from telling him, his family, and your dad to fuck right off.”
“Can I tell you something?” I whisper to my best friend, as if anyone will hear me.
“Of course.”
My voice stays at a whisper because I can’t believe what I’m going to say.
“When Jaxon kissed me, I didn’t hate it, Quinn.
How messed up is that? We haven’t spoken about it again, so I’m sure it meant nothing to him, especially knowing he’s a player.
But I can’t shake how unbothered I am that I kissed someone else.
And that I wanted to kiss him again. AND,” I add, “I can’t believe how little I care that I ran from my wedding.
Like, shouldn’t I be a devastated pile of tears?
I’m paging Dr. Quinn to answer this one. ”
Quinn is a therapist, but has always been respectful of keeping her friend and therapist hats separate unless I explicitly ask her. I want to hear from the doctor right now. She takes a minute before she speaks.
“A lot is happening right now, Del. First off, when something this big and devastating happens, biologically, your brain prioritizes survival over emotion, so it probably hasn’t even truly hit you yet.
The emotional center of your brain is called the amygdala, and it has likely shut down, while your prefrontal cortex, your decision-making part, has taken over, which is totally normal.
And all that aside, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’d imagine that some part of you expected this to happen.
I mean, no one expected him to be doing what he was doing, but your subconscious, or I would even argue your regular one, knew it wasn’t right.
Since humans process unexpected truths more painfully than ones we already know, you don’t have to reconcile the reality, so that’s something in your favor.
And all that aside, there is some degree of emotional compartmentalization going on, and it will most likely be temporary.
Over the next couple of days, I imagine there will be a surge of grief and anger.
Right now, your brain is processing the emotional work in a manageable way. And that’s okay.”
“So you’re telling me I’m not just going to ride off into the sunset and be okay with it?” I chuckle.
“Probably not, cowgirl, but honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re more okay with it than you expect,” she responds.
“Because I want to reiterate that yesterday was the best thing that could have happened to you, Della. It was so hard to watch you continue to go through with this marriage out of a sense of misplaced guilt.”
I nod my head because Quinn knew that even though I never dared to say it out loud.
“But I’m taking my therapist hat off and putting my friend one back on,” she says.
“Okay,” I say, having no idea what could come out of her mouth, but it has to be better than holding up a mirror to my life.
“I’m serious about making moves on Jaxon. Why the hell not? It’s not like you’re going to get weirdly attached to him… you’re leaving. He’s hot as hell. I’m sure he’s fucking insane in bed. And seeing that every sexual encounter you’ve had sucks balls, let him show you the ways.”
She’s right again. I was a virgin before Tripp. Not that I was intentionally saving myself, but I wanted it to be with someone special. I’d done a few other things, but after my mom died, I shut down in so many ways. When I started to get my groove back, my father pushed Tripp onto me.
Sleeping with him left… a lot to be desired.
Again, I now know why he was apathetic about it, but the experiences sucked for me.
During our engagement, I started reading romance books, and what I read made me so jealous.
It wasn’t just the sex, even though that seemed out of this world; it was the passion, the love, the raw desire.
I wanted that feeling. About six months ago, I started a list of things I wanted to try.
But because he never even seemed interested in vanilla sex, I felt foolish bringing anything else up.
“But besides that,” Quinn continues, pulling me out of reliving my subpar sexual encounters, “are you sitting? I think you should get back into painting.”
“Painting?” I replied, blinking a few times, as if that word were foreign to me.
“You heard me. Painting.”
Even the mention of that brings a tidal wave of emotion.
I used to love painting; it was my everything.
But that’s something I did with my mother.
Quinn’s brought up revisiting painting before, but I’ve never given it any weight…
mostly because it just stung too much to entertain doing our thing without her.