I stay on the loveseat for a few more minutes, wanting to make sure I’m seen and available if anyone wants to chat. On my way out, I grab a refill on my hot chocolate with more butterscotch liquor, and extra whipped cream.
I check my phone and see missed calls from Jack. I’m sure he wants to know how the first day went but I don’t have it in me to call him back.
While walking back to my room, I reluctantly think about Jack. How he wants to get together. How he wants to “talk.” I’ve held strong thus far. Mostly because I don’t care what he has to say. There’s nothing he could tell me that would make me feel better, but there is the opportunity for him to make me feel worse.
When I caught him, it would’ve been easier if he’d told me he was in love with Misty. I wish he would’ve screamed that she was his soulmate. Instead, he pleaded for me to stay. To hear him out. He repeated how it wasa mistake. He grabbed my hand with both of his and put a kiss on my palm, the sweetest gesture he could think of.
He couldn’t even give me the luxury of a clean break.
Jack manages partner relationships at Sparks, so unless I change roles—which I’m not doing, because get fucking lost—our jobs are closely connected. We have to work together in a real capacity.
I open the door to my room; the smell of fresh flowers greets me. Just when I think I’ve escaped the Jack roller coaster for the evening—worst ride ever—I get a notification about an apartment for sale on our favorite block. This one feels like lemon juice on a cut lip. I fall into the bed.
The memory of the two of us looking at places, holding hands, smirking as we counted bedrooms and discussed kitchen tile. We almost put an offer on a place a few days before I caught him with someone else.
I’m motion sick even thinking of the pivot. One day, we’re trying to find more ways to entangle our lives and the next, I can’t stomach being in the same room as him.
The shift is what hurts. Not just in what our future looked like, but my new view on the past. I thought Jack was sharp with a unique sense of humor. It was like he had all this extra time to come up with the perfect one-liners for any situation, ready to go at a moment’s notice. I thought he was light and could bring laughter to any situation.
Now, when I look back at all those quick quips, I think about the strained smiles, sometimes a wide eye or two, and a dash of cringe. People were just being polite and tolerating him.
I feel like my brain tricked me because only after this shift was I able to see our relationship through a new lens. Clarity is easier with some space, but it has a knack for finding things that I once thought were charming and making me severely question them. I get stuck in this loop wondering how I could let myself fall for someone like this.
The split happened about three months ago and while I was shockedand still have some moments, I feel fine. I’m a bit vengeful in the sense that sometimes I visualize shaving off his eyebrows or watching his barber accidentally make him bald to show off that terrible lump on the side of his head, but I think we all do this when it comes to a breakup.
If you ask Vivian, “my level of fineness” directly correlates to how Jack was merely taking up space as a companion. It wasn’t true love. Spending two years with someone is sometimes more attractive than spending two years without. Viv thinks I was looking for a buddy much more than I was planning a substantial future. She might be right, but it still hurts.
The advantage Jack didn’t know he had was my lack of relationships to compare. I’ve dated regularly but interest fizzled quickly, and it was rare for connections to get meaningful or at all serious. A lot of “you’re great for someone, but that someone isn’t me,” kind of vibes. How many times can you receive a compliment followed by getting dumped before you question the compliment?
I wish I was home. I’d take this anxious energy and burn it on a brutal Peloton ride followed up with a bag of sour candy, because it’s all about balance. Nothing quite like fatiguing your muscles and then testing your tolerance for tart gummy sugar in bulk—lucky for me, I’ve built up quite the threshold over my lifetime.
As much as I try not to cry, a few tears drift down my face, like little fucking traitors. My resolve is chipped, and I feel inherently worse about giving someone who respected me so little, something as powerful as the tears on my face. It’s not that I don’t cry, because I cry about everything—from perfect cookies to fictional characters to being hungry to thinking about sports teams winning any and every type of championship. It’s more like being cornered into tears.
Needing to feel productive, I make a list. My mind jumps to the first positive thing it can and before I know what’s happening, I’m creating a packing list for my trip to Salem with Viv. Since we’ve been wanting to gofor so long, we have accumulated a few accessories and items we’d gift each other with the idea that we’d bring them with us, whenever we made it to Salem.
Once I’ve mentally packed, I feel better. Never underestimate the power of creating a list, crossing things off, and feeling like you can conquer almost anything.
The time change catches me as I’m riding the mini-high from creating the packing list. Sleeping when I’m not in my bed, and especially when I’m alone, is a challenge.
I wash my face, pull on my matching PJ set, and grab my sleep mask and glass bottle of expensive sleep spray. I think the spray is mostly lavender, but it seems to help. It’s quite the ritual, but to be honest, it’s the only way I can fall asleep some nights. Seeming a bit pretentious always wins over staring at the ceiling, with your body on the edge of sleepless anxiety.
The Emerald Canopy Lodge doesn’t skimp on the bed situation. I feel like I’m floating on a soft, cotton cloud. I’m surprised the bed isn’t too soft and it feels like a light hug. The sheets are crisp white and soft on my skin, unlike most hotel sheets that had the softness bleached from them a hundred washes prior. There are even two different types of pillows: down and memory foam.
I do my bedtime yoga poses and still laugh to myself remembering the first time my doctor gave me this as an idea. I was hoping to find more ways to cope with my anxiety and she swore by it. After I got over myself, it was clear the sometimes-silly-feeling-poses helped me drift to sleep faster.
I wrap up my night-time ritual with belly breathing. In for five and hold, out for five, and repeat. Each set of breaths slows my heart, in the best way, and my eyes become heavy. I find a stopping point for the breathing exercise and snuggle under the heavy blanket.
Sleep is within my reach when I’m suddenly aware of how quiet it is. Gone is the buzz of traffic, car horns, and conversations that aren’t mine.My heart squeezes for home. I’m probably one of the only people who craves the sound of traffic.
Anxiety picks at my skin and I know I won’t be able to sleep in the quiet. I grab my earbuds and my sleep playlist: sound baths, white noise, light traffic. My body sinks into the mattress and it almost feels like I’m back home.
Chapter Nine
I’M OUT FOR A morning run when I get the sense to stop. It’s one of those mornings where the temperature is perfect, the sun isn’t blinding, and the air is easy.
We got rain last night, thankfully after the Bliss4ul event. There’s nothing worse than people panicking over something like the weather. One of the only things that no one can control. Doesn’t matter how much money or pull you have.
My feet, hitting the dirt, create a natural rhythm. The ground is soft; the way it is after rain. Something I love about the rain is how it brings out the smell of pine, cedar, leaves, and grass. This smell always reminds me of home.
