This is our daily ritual since Reeve and I fell apart. She wakes up and checks on me, then lets out a big sigh of relief to find my self-hating ass has lived to see another miserable day.
“Morning. Is Cam still here?” There’s a distinct chill in the air between me and Cam since the breakup.
“He just left. Want me to make some breakfast? I was thinking blueberry waffles. I bought this gourmet syrup yesterday. Twenty bucks for a thimble-size bottle, so it has to be good, right? Or I could do bacon if you want?”
I smile. Phase two of our ritual has begun: Lenni enters indulgent mother mode and serves up 8,000 calories’ worth of comfort on a breakfast plate. “I can eat cereal. And Lenni, you can sleep at Cam’s, okay? You don’t have to babysit me.”
“I’m not, I just hate thinking of you alone at night. The nights are the worst.”
“Oh, that’s not true. The nights are the same hellfire the days are. So don’t worry, I’m not going to off myself when the sun goes down.”
She plops onto the bed. “You look a little better this morning.”
“Didn’t cry myself to sleep last night. Sadness seems to be giving way to guilt.”
“Because . . .” she prompts.
“Because I owed him better. I let him walk away without telling him what I really feel.” Shame comes over me to realize what a liar I am, when I’ve always prided myself on being brutally honest. Turns out I’m only honest about other people’s faults. When it comes to my own, I’ll do anything to hide them, even hurt the best man I’ve ever known. “I can’t let that be the end, that horrible breakup on the street. Once I finally pull myself together, I’ll find a way to tellhim I’m sorry.”
“Or you could do it now.”
“Now?” I scoff. “I’m a mess. I’m talking about when I can get through a conversation without breaking down and crying.”
“What would be so wrong with that? Let him see you raw and crying, Jade. That’s how he’ll know you feel something for him. Not some tidy, rehearsed apology.”
“That’s not how you get over a man. You don’t break down and sob and tell him too late that you love him.”
“Then what do you want to tell him?”
I consider her question. Maybe I do want to tell him I love him. I can’t pretend I don’t feel it, and I can’t wish it away. Reeve Dalton of all people, and I love him so much it makes me realize that what I had with Sam was nothing more than attachment and an addiction to being wanted. If I had known Reeve could change me so deeply, I would never have let him kiss me.
But that’s not really true. Didn’t I know on some level from the first time his lips touched mine that something was different? Didn’t I feel it?
I want to let those words out into the world, make them real, and see whether they light up his eyes the way they light up my heart. But I can’t drag us backward. “I just want him to know that I’m his,” I tell Lenni. “That some part of me always will be.”
That eveningI’m at work early. Reeve has changed his schedule, so I never have to worry about seeing him anymore. It’s another tiny stab in the heart.
Cecily is in the office squinting at her computer screen. She barely looks up when I walk in, but she waves me over. “Jade. Just the gal I wanted to see.”
Uh-oh. Am I about to get fired? Just when I was sure Cecily would never find out about the time Reeve and I had sex in the parking lot. “Oh?”
“You’ve got the hang of the server thing,” she says as she taps away on the keyboard. “I’m wondering if you want Tuesday and Sunday nights from now on?”
I hesitate. “Those are Reeve’s shifts.”
Cecily finally takes her eyes off the computer and looks at me over the rim of her glasses. “He quit,” she informs me. “Aren’t you and Reeve a couple? He ought to have told you he was quitting.”
“Well ...” I quickly think how to play this. I don’t think Cecily gives a damn what her employees are up to as long as the customers are happy, but technically workplace relationships are against the rules.
“C’mon, now,” she says impatiently. “It’s obvious to anyone with eyes you two are ga-ga over each other.”
This is news to me. I never thought about how we looked to the rest of the world. “We were together. Not anymore.”
“Ah.” She nods, not taking her eyes off me. It’s ... awkward. I edge my way toward the door, but she stops me just before I’m free. “Jade, c’mere a minute.” She takes off her glasses. “As someone who’s been divorced twice, let me tell you something. At your age, it’s easy to fall in love hard. The world is just opening up to you.”
“I never said I was in love.”
Cecily looks taken aback. “Oh. Well, if not, then you clearly missed your calling as an actress. Anyway, my point is I know what it’s like to be cheated on, but trust me, you get over it. When I was your age, I was quite a looker if I do say so myself.” She winks. “It didn’t take me any time at all to find someone new. My only advice is to be wary of the gorgeous ones. But I guess you learned your lesson with Reeve now, am I right?”
