“Aunt Hattie! Look!” Rora points to the screen, nearly toppling her popcorn, and Hattie reacts accordingly, asking her fun questions before Rora is distracted once again.
My sister blows out a breath and looks around. Furrowing her brow, she starts to ask, “Where’s D—”
I run a finger over my lips, hiding the action above my daughter’s head, and point at her.
She moves into the living room, taking the armchair on my left, and eyeing me with concern. “Did something happen to him?”
I clear my throat, glancing at my daughter and back to my sister. She’s my best friend, my confidant, the only person I can talk to without her trying to fix the problem, so I start at the beginning. “I went to showhim.” I emphasize the word, making it clear that I’m desperately trying not to say his name. “The business plan I made for the store. He didn’t take it well.”
Hattie frowns. “Why not? I mean, I’m not a business major, but it seemed like a solid plan to me.”
“It is a solid plan,” I assure her, shaking my head at the memory of how it all went down. “It’s not the plan, it’s that apparently his credit isn’t so great, and he’s been drowning in bills since before I met him,” I say, then quickly correct. “Again. Met him again.”
“I still can’t believe he was the boy who left you a flower on your bunk.” Hattie smiles, shaking her head in awe. “I was so jealous of you then. I wanted a boy to like me that much.”
Something passes over her face then, but before I can call her out on it, she turns the conversation back. “So what happened then? He turned you down?”
“He.” I lick my lips, feeling an embarrassing sweep of tears threaten to fall and swallow them down. “Blew up.”
Hattie’s eyes widen in anger. “Blew up? On you?”
I shrug, feeling utterly helpless at the current situation. “He just lost his cool, and he didn’t hurt me or anything. He didn’t say anything bad toward me, really, just—” I pause, thinking over the moment that hurt the most. It’s weird what the brain chooses to focus on.
“What did he say?” Right now, Hattie looks about two seconds away from calling the entire Cobras baseball team and hauling them to go beat up my boyfriend.
“He said he doesn’t need my help,” I admit, trying to keep my voice hushed so the cracking can’t be heard by my sometimes too observant daughter. “Actually, he said he doesn’t want my help. That he wants to be the one to take care of me.”
Hattie eyes me, her brows still pulled together like she can hardly believe anything I’m saying. I get it, because I have never been so caught off guard as I was today.
“Well, for one, I hope he knows you better than that by now. Not only are you a competent and brilliantbusinesswoman, but you’re a caretaker. That’s never going to work, shoving you out like that,” Hattie states, looking at me like she’s willing me to believe her words.
“I agree,” I relent.
“Second of all, that doesn’t sound like D—him—at all,” she states, quickly correcting her slip-up. “He’s not the guy that loses it. At least, I didn’t think so.” Her bottom lip gets sucked into her mouth as she chews on it. “I wonder how bad his debt is. Men are sensitive about the money stuff, maybe it’s been going on too long.”
“I suspect it has. Hattie, he’s still paying off his father’s medical debt.”
“Damn.”
We sit in silence for a few moments. I don’t know what Hattie is thinking, but I know that my mind won’t stop spinning that image around in my head of him yelling, “I don’t want your help!” That amount of pain I felt in that moment, which I’m still carrying through tonight, is blinding.
“Well, how did you two end things then?”
“End things?”
Hattie rolls her eyes at herself. “Notendthings, end things. Like, how did you leave it?”
I sigh and run a hand through my hair, forgetting that I had it in a bun and pulling that out when my hand gets tangled. “Honestly? I feel really embarrassed about it all. Like I shouldn’t have said anything, like I should have just enjoyed our relationship, and—”
“No, stop,” Hattie interrupts, surprising me. Her eyes are bright with anger, but I’m not sure who it’s directed at. “You do not do that. You love this man, which means you’re always going to be wanting to help him and better your lives together. Don’t go down that road where this is your fault, because from where I’m sitting, it’s not.”
I nod, knowing she’s right. “You’re right,” I say, because I know she’ll want to hear it.
“I know I am,” she replies, making me roll my eyes. “But you still never told me how you left it.”
My eyes water, and I shake my head, my fingers fiddling with my hair tie. “I told him I need some space. I said I can’t be a part of a relationship where we don’t feel like”—I use my hands to push opposing forces together, fake opposing forces, but it gets the point across—“like a team. I’m not someone who can just sit back and let someone take care of me.”
“No, you’re not,” Hattie agrees, nodding her head. “What did he say?”
