Your mama called ME asking if I knew what was wrong. Now I gotta lie to your mother which is a SIN
Haven't responded to any of them. Can't figure out what to say. "I fell for a man in a week and he kicked me out" sounds pathetic. "I fell for a man in a week and he kicked me out because he's scared" sounds like an excuse. "I fell for a man in a week" sounds like me, doing what I always do, giving everything to someone who didn't ask for it.
That's the part that burns.
Because Beck's right. Not about me leaving. About me having no plan. My whole life I had a plan. Graduate. Get the job. Work the sixty hour weeks. Be the one everybody counts on. Jada will handle it. Jada will organize it. Jada will stay late, pick up the slack, cover the shift, plan the party, bring the food, check on Mama, call Tasha back, never miss a birthday, never say no,never once sit down and ask herself what the hell she actually wants.
The road trip was supposed to answer that question. Sell the apartment. Quit the job. Drive until the guilt of doing something for myself stopped feeling like swallowing glass.
Then I ended up on a mountain with a man who looked at me across a porch and said "you should go," and all I heard was every boss, every boyfriend, every friend who only called when they needed something, saying the same thing in different words. You're too much. You're too loud. You're too here.
Except.
Except he also read me Rilke at sunset. Built me a bookshelf because mine was warped. Held me after sex with his heartbeat under my cheek, slowing down, calming, like my presence was the first peace he'd had in a year.
And except for the look on his face when I walked out. The one he tried to hide. The one that said "I just made the worst decision of my life and I know it."
Sage comes by with a refill. Slides into the booth across from me with a warmth that says she does this regularly.
"You okay? You've been staring at that muffin for twenty minutes without eating it."
"Man trouble."
"Ah." She nods with the authority of a woman who has handled some man trouble of her own. "You wanna talk about it?"
"He lives on a mountain. He pushed me away because he's scared. And his dog misses me."
"The dog part is the worst part."
"It really is."
She squeezes my hand across the table. Gets up. Refills my coffee. Doesn't push.
I eat the muffin. It's blueberry lemon. Incredible.
By afternoon, I'm walking through town. Past Chapter & Curse, a bookshop that looks like it was built inside a fairy tale. Past Tangled Roots, a salon where a woman with honey blonde curls is laughing with a client on the porch. Past a garage called Grizzle & Grind where a man with blue streaked hair is bent under the hood of a truck, scowling at the engine.
This town is beautiful. Warm. Full of people who seem to actually belong to each other. Something I've been looking for my whole road trip without knowing what to call it.
Community. Belonging. A place where somebody saves you the good muffin.
My phone rings. Unknown number.
"Hello?"
Breathing. Heavy. Then a voice I've been hearing in my sleep. "It's Beck."
Every nerve in my body fires at once. Leaning against the bookshop wall, I close my eyes. "How'd you get this number?"
"You called your friend from my sat phone. The number stored."
Silence. The kind that hurts.
"Duke won't eat."
A laugh punches out of me. Watery. "That's why you're calling? The dog?"
"He hasn't moved from the door since you left. Won't eat. Won't go outside except to piss. He just sits there." A pause. "Staring at where your car was."
