41. Della
DELLA
After my day-long pity party, I get to work on detangling myself from Heart of Will Ranch.
After begging the landlord of my new apartment to let me in immediately, and pairing my plea with a bit of financial incentive, she agrees.
So, forty-eight hours after I hear the conversation, I’m paid in full for the long-term rental at the ranch and moving into my place right off of Millstone.
Molly and Hazel help me, even though I don’t ask them to.
Plus, they round up a handful of other barn workers, so everything goes remarkably fast with the muscle behind me.
The first thing I do is set up my paint room in my new place.
Seeing as I have just under six weeks left until my art show, I need to keep churning these out.
Now that my nights are open and free, it’ll be even easier.
The fallout feels like someone reached inside my body and tore out my heart.
Since Monday, I’ve been existing with a stiff upper lip during the day and crying to Quinn every night.
Hazel, Molly, and Lanie have been over twice for a couple of drinks and just to hang out, and I realize how blessed I am to have fallen into their friendship.
I have seven workdays left at Heart of Will before the contract ends. Driven by equal parts hurt and stubbornness, I decide to finish out my meaningless obligation, and each day becomes a pendulum of emotion.
Even though he stopped coming in the morning weeks ago, since the split, he’s been there every morning, and I’ve caught him staring at me more than once.
It makes me rage.
And it makes me fucking crazy.
Because at night, when I’m left with my thoughts, even if I’m painting, I’m mourning and missing what we had. Not him, per se, but the feeling that lived in my heart and under my skin.
Okay. I’m lying. It’s him. I miss him. And I hate it.
But it works out, because then in the morning, any part of me that softened with the loss of him hardens right back up when I see his face and think about his audacity.
Not that I have any interest at all in entertaining anyone else, but even if I wanted to, one of my other girlfriends mentioned that no one would dare to make a move on me because it’d be like biting the hand that feeds you, so now I am untouchable on the ranch.
But most of the time, my soul is mourning a loss I’m not sure was ever truly real.
It’d be easy to hide behind the sentiment that the reason I fell so hard is that he was my first taste of a great partner.
And I’d be foolish to believe that didn’t play a role, but in my heart of hearts, I thought it was more.
By the time the weekend hits, things are looking up because Quinn surprises me with a visit.
To see her face brings me the kind of comfort that only history can provide, and we have what could best be described as a college weekend.
We lounge around during the day, eat questionable food, go to the bars at night, the tourist ones, not local, because I can’t chance seeing too many people I know…
seeing him. It’s perfect for what I need.
Though part of me wishes she had seen Jaxon and me together, because I’m desperate to hear an outside perspective that helps confirm I didn’t imagine everything.
Sunday is particularly hard after she leaves, but I still show up Monday morning for my last week at Heart of Will, ready to work.
Of course, he’s here, and the two of us end up in the barn together.
I’m sure it isn’t by chance. He works in a stall on the opposite side of the walkway, and he ends up talking.
“Was that Quinn who was here this weekend?”
I debate ignoring him, but I am better than that.
“Yup.” I hear him freeze because I’m sure he isn’t expecting a response at all.
“Did you guys have fun?”
“Yup,” I say back.
“What’d you do?”
I turn, and he’s at the stall door, looking at me. I need to think quickly because, yes, I answered him, but this proverbial door is staying closed. So I do something that I know will stop him in his tracks.
“Mr. Wills, just because I’m a step above giving you the silent treatment doesn’t mean I’m willing to actively engage in conversation either.”
“Don’t do that, Del,” his eyes plead with me. The look of hurt on his face guts me, but I'm hurting just as deeply. “Please talk to me.”
“Mr. Wills,” I say in the most saccharine and professional voice I have, “I need to get back to my contracted job. Is there anything of note you’d like to discuss regarding my work?”
The defeat on his face cuts me when he shakes his head.
“I’m sure you understand that I’d like to finish my tenure here under the most stringent of professional standards so as to make sure that no gestures or conversations become misconstrued into something they’re not.”
I’m not even sure where my professional jargon comes from. Some people have out-of-body experiences where they have, like, superhuman strength or super speed. Apparently, I have an out-of-body experience as a grizzled HR employee.
“Understood,” he says, and he slinks out. I’m not sure his shoulders or head could drop any lower, but I have to stay strong.
I blow through my day and retreat to my Millstone apartment as quickly as I can. While I’m enjoying a drink on my little back deck, I have an unannounced visitor.
“Hey Della!” Lanie waves from the bottom of my back stairs.
“Hey, Lanie! What are you up to? Come on up,” I say, pushing my other bistro chair out with my foot to invite her to sit.
“Oh, I’m just going to lie straight to your face and say I was in town on the strip,” she says as she takes the seat.
The unexpected comment makes me laugh. “Two points for honesty. What’s going on?”
“I have some questions for you,” she admits. “And I thought it would be better to ask you in person.”
I love that Lane “Lanie” Locklin is the person Jaxon chose to fill the socials role.
I love her as a human, I love her work, and I love the way that he approached how and why he hired her.
It is such an interesting choice because even though Lanie and I were cut from the same foreign to the ranch cloth, in the same breath, her hire makes total sense.
“First off, how’d your day go? This is your last week, right?” she asks.
Weird question to want to ask in person, I think. But in the same way that I connected with Molly and Hazel and Jaxon, Lane and I are connected by a cosmic string, too, so I answer her honestly.
“Anticlimactic? I don’t know. I’m still sitting with a lot of really uncomfortable feelings, and I just keep circling around them.” I feel like I can speak a little more freely to her because she’s not a member of the Wills family. “I feel broken and sad and angry… and so fucking lost.”
“I’m new here, so I have no skin in the game. Do you think he meant it?” she wonders out loud. “It’s a weird question, I know. But, like, do you believe his words?”
Quinn and I talked about that possibility this weekend. Because if he meant it, he had so much space to make a clean break. But he isn’t pulling away. He keeps trying to dig in.
“Regardless of that answer, I’m still trying to figure out if that matters if he meant it or not.”
“That’s fair,” she says
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a side or anything, but I’m obviously closer to you than I am to him.
And I don’t have a full grasp of what he was like before the split, but he seems…
from a true outsider perspective… pretty bad.
He’s mopey, angry, and probably drinking more than he should.
And if he believed those terrible things he was saying, he shouldn’t care, right? ”
“And you know this how?” I smile, trying to get information about what’s going on with her.
“Well, that’s kind of my second question,” she laughs.
She and I end up talking until the sun goes down, ordering food, and talking some more. It’s not the night I expected by a long shot, but it’s the night I need, and she ends up sleeping on my couch because we talk into the early morning hours.
“Hey, Della.” The mere timber of that voice sets me on edge the next morning at work. I look up, and I’m cornered in the stall. Again. Maybe I just won’t come back tomorrow because then no one can corner me like this if I’m not in the barn.
“Leave me alone, Cayson. I have nothing to say to you,” I reply with as little emotion as possible, even though I want to punch him in his stupid face.
“Please hear me out, Del.”
“Let me rephrase that to make it easy. No. I have no dealings with you. I won’t listen to you.
I won’t talk to you. I owe you nothing. Right now, I have four days left in my made-up job before I’m done.
Although I suppose it wouldn’t matter because this is all just some complicated game anyway, as you’ve so graciously pointed out behind a closed door. ”
“Della,” he takes a step towards me.
“Cayson, I swear to God, if you take another step towards me, I will not be held responsible for the injury I inflict with this pitchfork, and that extends to death,” I say, wondering if the tool in my hand could actually stab someone.
Thankfully, he steps back.
“I messed up,” he starts. But before he can continue, I cut him off.
“No, it’s me that messed up. I thought that I was lucky enough to find something for myself.
Something that wasn’t for optics… not out of guilt…
and certainly not to take advantage of someone.
I really liked your brother. But that’s gone.
Just like I will be from this ranch soon.
” I haven’t said that piece out loud too much, and the sentence stings more than I want it to.
“Can we talk about this?” he presses.
“Talk?” I laugh humorously. “There is quite literally nothing to say. I know where I stand in your world. It was the reminder that while I don’t belong in my bi ex-fiancé’s richy-rich world, I certainly don’t belong on your ranch either.
” I stare at him as I deliver the message that I don’t want to believe.
That thought makes my lip wobble the slightest bit, because although I came here a fish out of water, I was enjoying learning how to swim.
“No, you don’t understand,” he tries again.
“No,” I say, cutting him off again, more forcefully this time.
Why won’t he shut up? “You don’t understand.
I don’t know all that happened in your past, Cayson, but it must have been horrific for you to be jeopardizing your brother like this.
That’s malicious… and cruel. And Jax can say that he was agreeing to get you off his back until he’s blue in the face, but I heard his response to you, and I’ll never be able to forget it.
And that you would think so little of me, Cayson.
God,” I throw the pitchfork on the ground in frustration because I don’t know what else to do.
“You don’t owe me anything, but I liked you, and your kids, and I loved being taken into the fold of your family so much…
” I pause because my voice feels really tight.
“For you to say those things cut me so deep. The only thing that’s cut me deeper is Jaxon going along with it and calling me a bonus.
So no. You don’t understand how much you and your brother have hurt me. ”
I stop because if I keep going, I’m going to full-on ugly cry, and that is the last thing I want to do in front of Cayson.
“Della, please listen…”
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say,” my voice drops to a whisper. “Please just let me get back to work and finish these last couple of days in peace.”
After a silent standoff in which he opens and closes his mouth, trying to find words, he finally just nods. “I’m sorry, Della. So, so sorry.”
He hangs his head as he backs out of the stall and walks away in the same despondent way Jaxon did. I’m frozen in my spot, trying to shake the encounter. I don’t care what’s happened to him to make him this way, because it’s inexcusable.