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* * *
Two weeks later,as I did sit-ups in my somewhat furnished living room, Hope texted me.Brilliant timing.
Ah, so she did occasionally still watch that vlog. I wasn’t sure. Amanda was significantly richer and thoroughly happy to tell the world to invest with me. My appointments were booking out for weeks. If I kept it up, listened to what people wanted, and verified how much risk they wanted to take, and advised them accordingly, my own fees and the money I made from the companies would be reasonable and up front. No one would ever think they were being screwed.
Thanks. I wrote her back.Any day now.
She’d give birth to her third girl any day. My third niece, and the fifth total child among my sisters. And they were all gorgeous kids.
No. I wasn’t thinking about babies and how cute they could be.
I’m so huge. I think I’m bigger than I was with the twins.
She wasn’t. But I wasn’t going to tell her so.
Text me and let me know when you’re in labor. I’d been there for the twins, but I wouldn’t be able to be there for this one—not because I didn’t want to be, but I’d just launched the business. Once the new little one came, I’d travel over to meet them and love on my nieces.
In the meantime, I built the next steps of my life. I started doing things that frightened me regularly. I’d wasted too much time watching life through windows and then thinking about Michael. I couldn’t need anyone again, not like I needed him. I had to be able to trust myself to handle things that were hard and scary.
Opening my business wasn’t hard—it was something I should have done years ago. It was time consuming and sometimes aggravating but not difficult for me. I was even certain of its success. Other things, however? They scared the shit out of me.
One, I planned to run a marathon, which made it a two-fold achievement. I hated running.Almost time to change to push-ups. Secondly, though, it would prove my body wasn’t ultimately failing me. That I could find a way to get enough protein in me to manage a big run.
I also intended to learn to scuba dive and take a vacation by myself. Both ideas terrified me, so I would just do them. I signed up for lessons and was starting that night.
I had to have new parts to make up for the ones I gave to Michael. I was starting to form them now.
* * *
It wasfunny how busy life could get sometimes. Before, even at my busiest, I had time to obsess, but with enough work, I didn’t have that time anymore. I hired two assistants to handle the work coming in for the last three months, and they proved really helpful.
I almost lost it when I’d come back from Maine after seeing baby Lexa when I’d found how much work waited for me. With the assistants, at least the stuff that didn’t require me would be handled by someone else.I need to hire another broker, too. Just as soon as I worked out a marketing plan, I would. The women coming in wanted to deal with me. They liked the idea of working with the girl next door. A lot of them told me they related to my annoyed expressions in the blogs and magazines years ago. I was their favorite redhead.
Really, that probably surprised me the most out of everything. I always felt lost in those photos, like I was the tree stump Hope and Layla both posed around.
But maybe more people felt like tree stumps in life than I’d realized.
Another achievement was my scuba certification—a huge accomplishment, since I panicked my first time down. Really, I lucked out with the best instructor in the world. He didn’t rush me, and he gently eased me into the experience. In the end, I’d done it.
I should book a diving vacation. Maybe Mexico, at an all-inclusive resort where I could dive the whole time? It would ease me into vacationing alone, like my instructor eased me into going under the water with only a tank for air.
Things that scare me. One by one, I would check them off.Then what?I still wasn’t sure. I’d probably come up with something else that frightened me and then do that, too. Methodical until I canmake some sense of it, until I can find the pattern.
Until I know if I am better for having done all of it.
All of my business kept my brain very full. It was hard sometimes to think beyond exactly what I was doing, but I liked to stay busy.
My phone dinged—time for a run. I enjoyed my nine-minute mile club and ran with them as much as I could. It was sort of pathetic, compared to how fast the people I met could run, but I started at ten minutes, so it was improvement. I’d never liked running and I didn’t love it now, but I did it because it was hard. Most people couldn’t do a marathon. Of course, life was short, and it was possible I shouldn’t be wasting my time doing things I really disliked, but that just wasn’t how my mind worked.
I didn’t love doinganythingjust yet. If I was honest, I still wasn’t sure I could. It would be a lot easier overall if I wanted something besides a man who hated me and wanting my business to flourish, but it was what it was. Every time I thought about Michael, it curdled in my stomach like visceral pain. He hated me, so I should hate him, right?
What kind of person did that to someone in the hospital? Would it have killed him to have waited a day or two? Whythatvery second? I would never understand it, and that was okay. I was too much, even in my own head, and for the moment, that was more than I could tackle in therapy.
Therapy.I put that on the list in my head of hard things. One day. After I took a vacation by myself, I’d learn to fly a helicopter. Running a marathon was going concurrently, since it was so time consuming. Schedules felt good.
I put on my running shoes, tied back my hair, and headed out the door.
We started in Central Park, so I walked long strides in that direction. I considered the brief walk there my warm up. I stretched and I walked, and then when the group was ready, I ran hard.
