“Eh, fuck him.” Kate waves a dismissive hand. “He didn’t bother to talk to any of the crew before he left. Just turned in his notice with no heads-up at all. Felt like a bitch slap, if you ask me. I kinda want to message him and tell him to kiss my ass—and yours too, for that matter.”
I wish I had Kate’s attitude. Wish I could be allfuck around and find out. Instead, I’m trapped in the hamster wheel of caring too much.
“Did you at least tell him you love him before he left?” Jules asks, snapping my attention back to her.
My mouth goes dry, and my stomach roils with the truth. Dammit. “Am I that transparent?” I whisper.
“Girl, you can’t hide a thing,” Kate scoffs. “You wear your emotions all over your face. Why wouldn’t you want him to know how you feel? Isn’t it better knowing where you stand? Why not just put it all out there?”
“Because some of us keep the inside thoughts inside,” I pop back, the frustration I’ve been tamping down bleeding into my tone. And once I let my control slide just a bit, I lose the ability to hold back anything else. “What the hell was I supposed to do? Beg him to stay? And why would I hold him back from his dreams? If I truly care for him, wouldn’t I want him to chase the things that are important to him?”
They stare at me with a mix of apprehension and shock.
“And I do care for him. Is it love? I don’t know. Maybe? Or maybe I’m just confused because I’ve cared for him for a while now, and I didn’t know it was going to hurt this bad to see him go.” I want to be all badass right now, but the quaver in my voice betrays me. “I don’t want to admit how much his leaving hurt. Toss in his withholdingthat he was there the night our friend died… I’m just empty. Broken.”
Jules’s hand lands on my forearm, giving me a little squeeze. “Aw, sweetie.”
“Wait.” Kate holds her palm out to me. “I think there’s a bigger problem at play than that asshole Jackson. Listen to yourself, Maggie. Really pay attention to what you are and are not saying. You say you care about him. But you never told him. You don’t want to admit that it hurt your feelings. Your words.” She lifts her drink and shakes the ice in her cup, one finger pointing at me. “You can’t handle your own emotions, is what the problem is. And until you acknowledge and own them? You’re either going to feel like shit or shut down and go numb.”
“But what if I can’t handle them? What if they take over, and I can’t move forward? It’s just easier to be head down, get shit done. My family taught me that from a young age.”
Jules’s expression gentles. “By acknowledging them, you’ll take the big scary out of them. Then it’s just a thing you have to work through.”
“Ugh. Emotions are so stupid,” I say, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
“They are what they are. And just because you don’t want to feel them, doesn’t mean you won’t. And it’s okay. Just feel what you feel and know that it’s valid and it matters. We all want you to be happy and whole.”
“Go on,” Kate chimes in. “Give it a try. We can do it right now, make a game of it. I’ll say a word, and you tell me the first thing it makes you feel. Ready?”
I nod, and she says, “Sticky Sweet.”
The thought of my shop makes my lips tilt up. “Pride.”
She grins and nods. “Hiking.”
“Accomplished.” Another easy answer. I relax a little with each word as she continues through a list of random things, and I fire back the first feeling I associate it with.
“Bedtime.”
Oof. This one gives me pause. “Melancholy.”
Jules’s hand, still on my arm, squeezes, and the corner of Kate’s mouth tips up. “Jackson.”
She did that shit on purpose. Gave me all the gooey, happy things to make me face the truth. “I’m lonely. I miss him.” The soft admission hurts, but I push through with their encouragement. “Everything about him. The morning texts, the way he’d pop into the bakery and kick his feet up and generally be in my way. The hikes we’d do that he would plan to challenge me, but also because he knew I needed the push.”
A bead of condensation trickles down the side of my glass. I watch it slowly work its way down, bobbing this way and then that. Maybe I’ve done that all along. Bobbed and weaved to get to where I wanted to end up. I lose focus, falling into the memory of Jackson challenging me, questioning me about what I really wanted. And the why.
I hate that I missed so much of those last few weeks he was here. Focused on that stupid reunion that ruined everything, made him run away. I should’ve just come clean with Alice at the beginning, then I could’ve spent more time with him aside from that last hike. Maybe we’d still be talking.
I polish off my cocktail, and Jules flits away but almost immediately returns with another glass. “Guess this is project Get Magnolia Wasted.”
She just grins.
“I don’t want to talk about Jackson anymore,” I declare. “He’s made his choice, and it wasn’t me. I need to let him go. It’s going to hurt for a while—a long while. Going to takesome time for me to get over him not being completely honest with me.” But I’m stepping away from that emotional rabbit hole for the moment.
“I think I’m mad at myself for pushing for that reunion gig, for trying to shift my focus to bigger, more influential clients.” The revelation hits out of nowhere, and with it comes a sense of relief. “I’m happiest when doing my thing. I like my shop just the way it is.”
“Wait, how’d we go from the asshat to your shop?” Kate interrupts.
