Page 87 of The Lumberjack and the City Slicker

Chopping vegetables.

Wiping counters.

Folding napkins.

Refilling coffee.

It’s simple. It’s useful. It’s the kind of work that doesn’t require me to pretend everything is fine when it isn’t.

I’ve spoken to my parents, too.

Let them know where I am and that I’m safe.

They’re still in Sydney—some charity gala circuit that sounds glamorous until you realize it’s just a different kind of work.

My mother, shockingly, didn’t panic. She didn’t even lecture.

She sounded pleased.

“Good,” she’d said, voice crisp, like she’d been waiting for me to do it for years. “He never deserved you.”

Then she informed me, as casually as if she’d been discussing grocery delivery, that Geoffrey had been escorted out of my apartment.

His belongings boxed and shipped to his last known address.

And the ring?

The one that moron asked me to give back, even though it is my mother’s ring?

Arnold, my doorman—sweet, loyal Arnold—handed it to my mother’s assistant, who locked it in my mother’s safe.

Done. Handled. Erased.

No guilt.

No lingering ties.

Thank God.

So why do I still feel like such shit?

Maybe because I came here with this idea in my head. This clean, cinematic version of what I needed.

I wanted to talk to the man who etched mountains and sunsets and willows into wood and leather and iron.

The artist whose work made me feel like the world could still be beautiful and honest, and real.

I wanted to tell him that.

To say thank you.

To have one meaningful conversation and then go back to my life feeling a little braver. A little less hollow.

Instead?

I ended up in his bed.

And then I got shoved out like a problem.