“Sure. Of course you do. That was dumb.” Amanda glanced down at her feet. “But I wanted to let you know that I left Cindy.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Finally.”
“Oh.” It was all she could manage. If she said more, she’d explode. Or implode. Or just plode? Was that a thing? All she knew was that if she opened her mouth again, she couldn’t be held responsible for what came out. So she stood there. Just stood there like some mute idiot while Amanda went on.
“I’m in such a better place now. I mean, it hasn’t been easy.There’ve been tears and arguments. Lots of shouting and sobbing. Moving out was hard.”
“You moved out?”
Amanda nodded, clearly proud of the fact. “My therapist helped me realize it was for the best.”
“You have a therapist?”
This time, Amanda laughed. “I do. Can you believe it?”
Sawyer shook her head slowly because no, she couldn’t.
“Anyway, I wanted you to know about all these changes, and I wanted to say thank you, because I hear your voice so often in my head telling me the right thing to do.” She laughed through her nose. “If you hadn’t blocked me, I’d have just texted or called. But I thought it was important for you to know, so I hunted you down. And like I said, I wanted to say thank you.” And before Sawyer had time to defend herself, Amanda had pulled her into a hug, wrapped her up in her arms, her usual sweet floral scent enveloping Sawyer like a poison gas. She closed her eyes and let herself inhale and sink into Amanda for only a split second before she stiffened and pushed her arms out from inside the blanket, made herself dislodge from Amanda’s embrace. Amanda looked disappointed for only a moment before schooling her features and forcing a smile—an expression Sawyer knew well. “Okay. Good. I feel better now that you know and now that I got to thank you.” She took a step back and made a show of looking around the porch again. “This really is nice, Sawyer. It suits you.” She smiled again, a genuine one this time, gave Sawyer a little wave, and descended the steps to head toward her Mercedes, parked on the street.
Sawyer stood there on the porch, wrapped in her grandmother’s blanket, and stared. Amanda gave a littletoot tooton her horn as she drove away, and Sawyer was pretty sure she felt her heart crack open in her chest—something she’d thought she was through with when it came to Amanda. She continued to stand there until Jenna’s door opened and she peeked around the edge of the storm door.
“You okay?” she asked, her voice soft.
Sawyer swallowed. “I’m not sure.”
Jenna held the door open. “Come inside. You can sit with me while I cook.”
Somehow, nothing in the world sounded better than that. Sawyer, still wrapped like a burrito in her blanket, followed Jenna inside.
Jenna had a small table with two chairs set in the tiny breakfast nook of her kitchen, and she guided Sawyer to it and sat her down. Arnold, sensing the atmosphere, trotted over to Sawyer and lay down near her feet on guard duty. Jenna smiled at her boy, then turned on the kettle.
“Do you like tea?” she asked.
“Do you have wine?” Sawyer countered, and Jenna grinned.
“Something stronger is needed, huh? You got it.” She turned the kettle back off and poured two glasses of wine from the bottle of Cabernet she’d uncorked the night before. She handed one to Sawyer and said, “I’m here to listen if you want to talk about who that was and what she said to make you look like somebody stole your puppy. And if you’d rather not talk about it, that’s okay, too. I’m making us some chili. The weather kind of calls for it, you know?”
The silence stretched on for several moments, the classical music emanating from Jenna’s Bluetooth speaker on top of the fridge the only sound. Vivaldi, she thought. She didn’t push. She understood the need sometimes for silence, the need to simply be. Sawyer was clearly hurt by whatever had just happened on the porch, and Jenna could admit to her own curiosity, but she also understood privacy, so she didn’t ask. She cooked and sipped and waited. Ground beef went into the pot once the onions had softened. She stirred it around until there was only a little pink left, then added a can of crushed tomatoes. She stirred some more, the kitchen beginning to smell delicious, and that’s when Sawyer finally spoke.
“That was Amanda. My ex.”
Jenna nodded to show she’d heard, but said nothing more, waiting for Sawyer to speak at her own pace.
“I saw her for five years.”
“Long time.” She pulled cumin, chili powder, and onion powder out of her spice cupboard. She glanced at Sawyer, backtracking to the odd choice of words. “Saw her?”
“She was with her wife, Cindy, the whole time.”
When Jenna turned her gaze to Sawyer, the blue eyes flashed, as if daring her to judge.
“In my defense, she said she was going to leave. She said they were unhappy, sleeping in separate rooms, and that she was just waiting for the right time to tell her she was leaving her.” Sawyer shifted her gaze to Arnold by her feet, and she bent down to stroke his brown-and-white head.
Again, Jenna didn’t speak, she just waited. She had the feeling Sawyer needed to get this all out but that it was also painful, and she needed to do it slowly, at her own pace.
A moment passed before she spoke again. “I believed her, like an idiot, and it went on like that for five years. Me believing. Me waiting. Her not leaving.”
“Ouch,” Jenna said.
Sawyer snorted a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah. Such a classic, dumb thing, right? Believing that.” She took a sip of her wine, then returned to petting Arnold.
