I walked out of that restaurant feeling a whole lot richer.
"But Daddy I Love Him," Taylor Swift
Victoria
“Whatifhegaveup on me?” I asked, smoothing a pair of slacks in my suitcase.
“Are you repacking? Again?” Alex asked, his voice muffled by the blouse over my phone speaker.
“Of course not, shut up,” I said, hanging the blouse back up and catching my uncertain reflection in the mirrored closet doors. Packing should’ve been easy—I’d only brought two suitcases of clothes to Dad’s—but how does one dress for a groveling apology? There wasn’t a style guide: ‘What To Wear To Beg For A Second Chance from the Love of Your Life.’ Trust me, I’d googled it.
“How many times have you refolded whatever you’re holding right now?” Alex asked.
I picked up a new blouse so I could fold it for the first time. “Why did I bother calling you? All you’re going to say is that you told me so.”
“To be fair, I did tell you so.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Hold on, wait,” he said, laughing at my expense. “You called me because you knew that after I finished giving you shit, I’d tell you exactly what you needed to hear.”
“Can we get to that now, please? Connor will be here any minute.” I looked out the window at the million dollar view, where the afternoon sky left a hazy fog over the city.
I was looking forward to seeing the stars again tonight.
“First of all, whatever you’ve packed is fine. He doesn’t care what you’re wearing,” he said as I debated between two Armani shirts then packed both. “And if things go like you want, you probably won’t be wearing—”
“Don’t say it,” I said, zipping up my suitcase and grunting as I yanked it upright.
“Second of all, he’s posted dozens of videos saying that he loves you. The only way he’ll stop is if you call him yourself. And obviously, you haven’t.”
“But he didn’t post one today,” I whispered, rolling the suitcase towards the elevator.
“Maybe something came up. Something in the building, or with his family,” Alex said. But my stomach twisted. What if something had happened to his mom? Or his sisters? I leaned against my dad’s massive built-in bookcase in the hallway, staring out at the skyline twinkling beyond the penthouse windows.
“Alex …” I closed my eyes and whispered my fear. “If he can’t forgive me, can I stay with you and Grace tonight?”
Silence. I'd never asked him for that kind of hospitality. Even when I moved to Saratoga, and he offered me their spare room, I'd bought my own place, needing my space.
But being alone tonight after rejection might send me spiraling, and I knew if I needed to lick my wounds, Grace would feed me gluten-free cookies and put on a sappy movie and not criticize me for falling apart.
"You know you're always welcome." Alex's voice was thick with emotion. “But you won’t need to, because he’d be an idiot not to take you back. Any guy would be lucky to have you.”
“Well, that’s fine, but I only want him.” I swallowed hard, knowing I had to tell Alex something else. "Connor convinced me to talk with his therapist." Alex couldn't suppress his surprised inhale.
"How do you do it? Keep going back?" I asked, my voice raspy from how raw I felt after peeling back the first layer of protection. "Talk about … all of it?"
"Well at first, I went because Mallory said that Grace deserved better than my default settings, and it wasn't her job to make me less of an asshole," he said in a self-deprecating tone. "That got me through the first few months, thinking about becoming the man that Grace and Ruby needed me to be." I nodded, feeling the same way. I wanted to be the boss Connor needed, the partner Cruz deserved. "But then after a while, I realized that I had to do it for myself. You'll get there, too, eventually," he said, and his confidence in me bolstered my insecurity. "How did your first session feel?"
I blew out a pained breath. How could I explain it? "Like scraping off my skin with an apple peeler."
"Yeah, it's like that sometimes," he said with a knowing laugh. "I should know, Grace makes so many damn pies that my fingers are a mess now."
I ran my thumb over my chipped nails, remembering the feeling of Cruz's calloused fingertips on my skin. My hand still ached from that hit two days ago, but the EMTs assured me no bones weren't broken. Good, I would need it for tonight.
"But hey, you're a cobra, right?" Alex said. "So maybe this is just your way of molting."
I smiled in spite of my nerves. Maybe he was right—I was shedding all the old skin and revealing the newer version underneath.
