And I still love him.That’s the worst part.I love him so much I can barely sit upright under the weight of it.
Zoe gets up long enough to grab tissues and water. She peels my clutch away from me like I’m a toddler holding a knife, takes my phone before I can stare at the text again, and comes back with a blanket even though it’s not cold.
This is so much worse than the breakup with Aaron. That was nothing in comparison to the way my chest feels like it's been gouged by an axe.
“You can stay here,” she says, matter-of-fact, like there is no universe where I would be anywhere else. “As long as you need. We’ll make the couch work again. It's okay.”
I nod because speaking feels impossible.
“And if you don’t want to go back to Sparkks right now, don’t.”
I stare at her.
She shrugs one shoulder. “I can put you on barista shifts at the shop until you figure out your life. It won’t pay anywhere near as much, obviously, and I make no promises about the aprons being cute, but it’s something.”
That nearly breaks me all over again.“Zoe?—”
“Don’t be proud right now. I’m offering. Take the lifeline.”
My chin wobbles. “You’d do that?”
She gives me the driest look in human history. “Carly. Obviously, I’d do that.”
A sound escapes me that is half sob, half laugh.
She squeezes my knee. “It’s not forever. It’s just until you can think straight.”
I take the water she offers because she keeps glaring at me until I do. I kick my shoes off. At some point, she helps me unzip my dress and she forces me into her newly remodeled shower, telling me I need to wash the mascara off my face and neck.
And as I stand there in the scalding water, willing myself to do anything, to wash, to move,something, all I can do is think about what happened.
Nothing about this feels okay. Nothing about it feels fixable. It feels like standing in the wreckage after the crash, staring at all the twisted metal and wondering if I can somehow put it all back together with my bare hands.
And I can’t. I can’t put it all back together.
That’s the worst part.Not that I’m losing him or Penelope.Not even that I’m losing the life I had started building.
It’s that there is nothing I can do now except feel it happening.
Chapter 36
Grayson
I feellike a ghost in my own house.
I’m just passing through it, room to room, task to task, breathing, eating, working, sleeping — if you can call it that, day after day after day. I’m existing in a way that technically counts but doesn’t feel much like living.
The days blur together. Weeks, I think, have passed, but I can’t for certain point to how long it’s been without looking at a calendar and forcing my brain to do math through the sludge that plagues it.
My office downstairs has become command central for a life I no longer want to participate in. I take meetings there with the camera off. I approve designs there. I review numbers there. I ignore calls there. Another designer has taken over Carly’s portion of the NFL line, and I signed off on it with two clicks and no opinion. Everyone at work has figured out not to ask me questions.
I haven’t shaved in long enough that my jaw feels permanently rough. I haven’t been into my home gym. I haven’t swum laps. Ihaven’t done much of anything except put one foot in front of the other and make sure Penelope is taken care of.
Even that hasn’t fully been me.
Dana has been helping.More than helping, if I’m being honest.
She’s picked Penelope up from school more afternoons than I have these last few weeks, kept her at the house with Drew and Lucy when I’ve had calls run long, fed her dinner twice, helped me with reinforcing the redirect when Penny starts to get upset about Carly. It’s more than I deserve, really, considering how I’m doing nothing for Cole and Dana in return.
