This time, it was her turn to change the subject. “Are you baking something? I don’t know the sound personally, but I’m gonna guess I just heard a mixer.”
“I’m impressed by your Martha Stewart detection skills.”
“Which one of your patients drove you to the kitchen today?”
“I’m always in the kitchen,” I said automatically. But in truth, it had been Preacher Douglass. He was the nicest man in the world, if a little clumsy, but try and get him to do a few exercises, and a world war breaks out.
“When’s your next date with my brother?” Kelsey asked.
“It’s on Thursday this week. At the bonfire and fugitive game Jake’s planning with everybody coming home for the Fourth.”
“Oh yeah, Cade mentioned something like that. So, you guys will be on a date there? I thought you wanted to keep it quiet.”
“It will be quiet. We have to pair up for the fugitive game, and it will be dark.”
A long silence ensued. “So, you’ll be alone in the dark with my brother?”
“Sounds like it.” I did not appreciate the tone of her voice.
“And this will be one month since you guys started this dating thing?”
“Yuuup.”
“Which is at least two weeks longer than anybody I’ve heard of him dating in years?”
“I can’t confirm or deny that.”
I heard the smile in her voice over the phone. “I wasn’t a fan of all this at first, but I may be changing my tune. I think Jake really might be some sort of genius.”
“We’re just friends,” I protested, though I couldn’t stop my own tiny smile from lighting my face.
“I’m guessing Jake definitely put in some sort of friends-with-benefits clause.”
“Gotta go, tell Cade hi for me.” I laughed as I ended the call to the sound of her squealing and turned off the mixer. The fact that Kelsey didn’t seem as against the idea of Logan and me as a couple relieved me, and I wasn’t sure why.
I took the dough out five minutes before it was done kneading in the KitchenAid. With rolled-up sleeves, I used my hands to finish the job. It felt therapeutic to me, pounding and pushing the dough on the counter. Therapeutic with just enough busy work to allow my mind to wander.
Seeing Tyler the other night had thrown me in a way I hadn’t been expecting. I hadn’t seen him since the wedding. As much as I might have wanted to erase him from my life, it took work to fully disband the blending of two lives. After the fallout, we communicated by text about moving our things out of the apartment we had rented together, making sure to go at separate times. There had been light contact about random things that had filled our lives for the past eight months together. Things like:
Tyler: I have your sweatshirt. Where do you want me to put it?
Me: Mailbox. Thanks.
He had ripped me from his life. Cold and impersonal. We had been polite but terse toward each other. Other than the shocked words I’d spoken to him on our wedding day, every other thought and feeling had been stuffed so far down to a place only my therapist could pull out of me.
At the wedding, when I found everything out, I imagined him and Camille sneaking around his office, making out in coat closets and on top of desks (thank you, romantic comedies). But seeing them together, I guessed it wasn’t like that at all. They weren’t bad people. There had been true sorrow and guilt in Tyler’s eyes on our wedding day. They made mistakes—huge mistakes. I certainly wasn’t justifying them, but did we all have to suffer for the rest of our lives? I didn’t have to hold onto this darkness. This grudge. Even months later, when I had claimed to be over it, there was still a weight there, pulling me down even as I marched forward with my life, guns blazing.
I had been holding onto something that was no longer mine. No matter what happened to get us to this point, he wasn’t mine. Even more…I no longer wanted him. Not in the way that I had told myself for the past year, out of spite or hurt. Not in the way I talked it through with my therapist. Even after a whole year of trying to erase Tyler’s impact on my life, deep down there had been a part of me still waiting for him. Waiting for him to admit that he had made a mistake. Waiting for him to come running back to me. Holding onto him in a way that never allowed me to turn the page on a chapter that was finished.
Tyler was now a guy I used to know.
Watching Tyler and Camille stand there together, their incredulous glances back and forth, his hand on her shoulder and looking very much like a couple, had been therapeutic in a way. He wasn’t mine. They were happy together. He wasn’t going to be crawling back to me with his tail between his legs. And I was fine with that. More than fine, actually. That night had given me closure on something that had been holding me back in my life.
And that was the kind of knowledge that could set a person free.
* * *
The next morning,I opened the front door at 6 a.m. to head out for a run and was surprised to find Nate on the porch. He was dressed in running clothes with a blue sweatband around his head. He looked out of place. He also looked like he had been waiting for me.
