Edie approaches meduring a coffee break and gives me a side hug.
“Nice talk,” she says.“Notice how I could say that, given I actually came to yours,” she adds with a wink.
“I’m sorry,” I say.“I—”
“I’m just teasing,” she says.“I know how it goes.So how is it?You and Seth?”
“I don’t know...It’s complicated.”
Seth is still in the back, talking to a couple of people I know from Germina-TE and Schmertzz.
Edie frowns.“What’s complicated?”
I shrug because I can’t answer.All I know is that everything feels confusing.And heavy.Soheavy.
“It’s almost time for lunch,” Edie says, putting her hand on my shoulder.The knot within me loosens a bit under my friend’s supportive touch.“Let’s skip the last part of the session and you can tell me everything.”
****
Edie sucks on her straw, hot pink and bendy and somehow the exact shade of her hair.
“Everything you’ve told me sounds like you had a great time,” she says.
“I did...And now it’s time to go back to my life.”
“Are you going to see each other long distance?”
“I think I might be open to that,” I say, feeling my shoulders slump, “but that’s not enough for Seth.”
She raises an eyebrow.“So what does he want?”
“He wants to move to Raleigh and date, I guess.”
Edie pauses for a moment.“And you don’t want him to do that?”
“I can’t ask him to do that.”
“But you’re not asking.He’s offering.”Her expression is dead serious, which is very unlike her and it’s making me anxious.
“It’s the same thing.I can’t ask him to do something I wouldn’t do.Or at least what I wouldn’t doagain.And I definitely wouldn’t do it right now, with my divorce so fresh.I know how it feels to have to mold your life to someone else’s vision for yourself.”
Edie leans back in her chair and crosses her arms.“You don’t want to do to Seth what you feel Doug did to you.”
I nod.
“Only, the difference is that Seth is a grown man.He’sofferingthis.He’s not a high school girl who was so grateful to be chosen that she spent way too long with a guy who didn’t deserve her.”
I wince.
Edie reaches across the table and grabs my hand.“Billie, you know it’s true.You never had anything in common with Doug.But like many smart, nerdy women—myself included—you saw yourself as dorky and unattractive, so you were grateful for Doug’s attention and stayed with him way longer than you should have ...because you felt you couldn’t do better.Years after you outgrew him.”
My heart jolts at the truth in her words.It’s the truth I’d never wanted to hear, the truth I’d long hidden from myself, the truth I only allowed myself to ponder when I felt so alone in my marriage that I began to imagine a life beyond Doug.
The truth that was clearly obvious to everyone.The truth that slides so easily from Edie’s lips.
“But IlovedDoug,” I whisper, a weak attempt at pushback.I’ve used this same line on myself many times: to justify staying, to justify having stayed...To justify wasting so much time.
“I know you did,” Edie says softly.“It doesn’t change the fact he was not a good match for who you grew into after high school.For who you have become.”
