She’d looked over her shoulder at Grady and his family waving from their front yard. Three sets of eyes on Juliet, one onme. His stare melts my insides. Not in the way that Pierre did when I first began dating him. That was addicting in a different way. Like a craving. Like a drug. Like a quick fix.
Grady melts me in an ooey-gooey way. He’s like the first sip of the perfect cup of coffee early in the morning and you know it’s just what you need to make it through the day. Sleeping in his arms all night was bliss. Waking up, my face cradled in the crook of his neck, was the most serene wake up I’ve had in my lifetime. I closed my eyes and wished for time to still.
It didn’t, of course. I realize the only way for those feelings to last is to make a life here. Grow roots. Settle in. The idea warms me. Then, all the doubt bombards me. All the questions, the what-ifs. What if it isn’t different here. What if it’s me? What if I’m the problem? What if I’m unlovable, or unworthy of love?
After my perfect morning, the afternoon was bleak in my lonely pity party. There was another email from my mother, claiming she’d never speak to me again if I didn’t call soon. As if I was giving her the choice. Which I am not, since she was also very clear that I was ungrateful and evil for not contacting Pierre and ending his worry, as well.
Pierre emailed me again. Despite a no contact order. He’s the type to play by his own rules, always.
Are you whoring it up with someone else, now? Is that why you haven’t come home or even called? His dick will never be as good as mine. He’ll never love you like I do. He can’t. Nobody else could love you.
He knows how those words sting. How they linger and fester, from a burn, to a blister, to a long-lasting scar.
Nobody else could love you.
I’ve believed it for so long. But why? What’s wrong with me? I’m too tall. Too skinny. My breasts are on the smaller side. One eye sits farther from my nose than the other. My demeanor tends to the quieter, shier side. Unless I’m too drunk. Then, I’m obnoxious and talk too much.
I’m not sure what my personality is anymore. Whoever I was on the road to becoming was stalled when I met Pierre. Then, I was onlyhis.
Now, I can’t seem to have even an afternoon inside my own head without becoming some morose shell of a human.
Though, I’ve found a lost part of me since living in Irma’s house. I’m baking again, a hobby I missed and love. I’m allowing myself the space and time to simply exist. To have a quiet moment here and there. To sleep in without guilt that I’m being unproductive or lazy.
Lazy bitch.
His voice is so clear, I step outside to let the sound of the rushing waves help chase it away. It’s late, now, later than I realized. The sun is descending, and soon, it will dip its toe into the sea. Not long after, she’ll take her evening dive. If the world were flat, would she be illuminating the deep sea?
I sit on the sand, my toes curling in it, finding the cooler version below the sundried grains. There’s a breeze that will have my fine strands of hair twirling into little knots that I’ll have to carefully undo later. It doesn’t matter. The last moments of today’s sunshine on my face make it worth it. Tiny diamonds sparkle on the water, a trail from the shore to the glowing ball in the sky. I almost believe I could walk on them, dancing my way to another world.
One without self-disparaging thoughts. Or without abusive ex-boyfriends that haunt the dark recesses of my mind.
“Can we join you?”
I look up from my whirlwind of thoughts to find Maggie and Paige hand in hand, a couple of blankets thrown over the elder’s arm.
“Of course,” I say, happy to have the company. Since I don’t know how to be alone with myself today.
Maggie drapes a blanket around my shoulders before donning one herself. Paige climbs into my lap, lounging with her face toward the sun and her fingers spinning twists in the ends of my hair. Maggie smiles at how comfortable the girl is with me, and my heart does that thing it always does when I sense that Paige approves of me.
“It’s going to be a pretty sunset, Lulu,” she says.
“How can you tell?”
“Because the clouds are already pink.” She points south, where the thin strips of clouds are already changing colors in the watercolor sky.
We sit in peaceful silence as the orb dips slowly lower and lower, until she’s blinked out of the sky, and Paige’s happy sighs turn to a soft purring snore.
“She’s wiped out.”
“You seemed to be, too,” Maggie says. “Is everything all right?”
“I think so,” I say. “Just one of those days when the world is too quiet and my head is too loud.”
“It will take time, I imagine. For the other voices to quiet and your own to find her strength again,” she says. “Give it the space it needs.”
That resonates. Because I haven’t wanted to do that. When I left home, I wanted to push and push until I couldn’t hear my mother’s disapproval of me. Forcing it to quiet like I was muzzling it with duct tape. So desperate that I let another voice replace it, and now I’ve been trying to do the same with him.
I can’t muzzle it, though. I need to let it fade.
