It’s nice. Really it is.
It’s also frustrating that Sawyer seemed toshow mehow he cared, but then tossed me aside. With my shoulders drooping, I walk toward the farmhouse as Ripley cuts across the purple blooms toward me. When she reaches me, she gives me a warm smile, tinged with sadness too. “Hey, friend,” she says, then wraps her arms around me.
I fall into her embrace and moan. “Everything hurts, and I’m mad.”
“Of course you are. Bridget’s on the way. Let’s go to the porch.”
“The location for all sad talks,” I say.
“That’s what porches are for—feelings.”
I head to the porch swing, slump into it, then pout. “I’m mad and I’m sad,” I say, and it comes out like a whine.
Feels like one.
Ripley rubs my shoulder as we swing a little bit. “I get it,” she says as Bridget pulls up to the edge of the farm and pops out of her shiny blue car.
“I mean, he just…discarded me,” I say as she walks down the path toward us. I give a faint wave. “Hi.”
“Hey. Did your day suck more than an unsalted pretzel?” she asks with a kind smile.
“Yeah,” I say, managing a small laugh. “I had to work with him and act like everything was fine, and I just feel stupid and foolish, and why do I have the worst instincts when it comes to romance?”
When she sits down on the other side of me, she hugs me too. “Who even has good instincts with romance? Is that a thing?”
“I don’t know anyone who does,” Ripley says, then turns to me. “But…what exactly went down yesterday?”
I couldn’t even talk to them last night. I was too…hurt. I needed to be alone with salted caramel tiramisu ice cream. Plus, Bridget was working late, and Ripley had a date with Banks. So solitude was my only option.
“He kicked me out like I was hot garbage in the middle of summer. Like last week’s leftovers. Like the freeloading cousin who’s stayed on the couch too long.”
Bridget laughs, but then quickly clears her throat. “Be more specific.”
“The one who makes your couch smell like weed and stinky feet,” I say.
“I mean be more specific about what happened with Sawyer,” Bridget says. “You didn’t give us any details beyond the fact that you broke up in secret. I’m guessing it somehow relates toBall Is Life.”
“Cute video of Jubilee, by the way,” Ripley says.
“I know,” I mutter in acknowledgment, then I tell them everything. “August showed up, and he tried to horn in on my territory, and then there was this wholestay away from my womanmelee, and Sawyer knocked him into the water, and then Jubilee jumped in, and then the handler freaked, and Sawyer dove in after her, but obviously she can swim. And when it was all over and his employees were cheering him on for being human and not a robot, he just seemed like he wanted to kick himself into a garbage can. And then he told me he needed to take stock of his life, and he wasn’t acting professional, so I basically said, ‘You’re breaking up with me.’ I laid it out like the fact it was.”
“And he said yes?” Bridget asks, like she’s confirming the information—and perhaps also making sense of my executive summary.
I rewind to yesterday at his car, and my chest aches painfully. “It sounded like yes to me.”
“Yes, but was it a yes?” she presses.
I scrunch my forehead, replaying that moment again even though it stings. “It wasn’t a no. He said, ‘No, I’m not. I just—’ And when people use that word—just—it means they’re about todisappoint you. It means they’re about to let you down. They’re going to hurt you.”
“Okay, so what did youjustdo?” Bridget asks, clearly trying to get to the heart of the matter in her calm, problem-solving manner.
Still, I can’t help but feel like I’m being cross-examined. “I said, ‘I can tell you are.’ It was clear that’s what he wanted to do—break up with me,” I say defensively, because I’m right on this matter. I am. I’m sure I am. “He said he needed to figure things out and get some balance. I said fine and walked away.”
Ripley furrows her brow and raises her finger, but she doesn’t speak. It’s like words are caught in her throat. She finds them. “So he wanted to pull back and then you said you should break up?”
That feels accusatory too.
I set a hand on my chest, defending yesterday me. “I didnotbreak up with him.”
