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I can’t wait for you to wake up one day and realize what you lost when you lost me. I hope you choke on your regret. I hope the aftertaste of your lies tastes like shit and lasts forever. Fuck you, Carter.
She always had a flair for curses she saved for moments where she was righteously angry. They used to make me laugh and pity the object of her ire. But having that palpable anger directed at me was different.
I’d relished imagining how stupid she’d feel when she heard me say I’d played her as false as she played me. I thought knowing she’d seen it would give me a sort of closure. Instead, I was confused. Why was she angry when she looked me in the face and lied.
For the first time since I saw the pictures on her Facebook, I wonder if I missed something. I scroll through my photos to find the screenshot I took and relax when I find it.
I didn’t misunderstand anything. That’s her. Kissing him. I throw the phone back into the drawer. Being right doesn’t make me feel better. In fact, it reminds me of how deep into her I was. How deep I still am.
With nothing to distract me or drown it out, all the anger and longing I thought were behind me come rushing to the surface in a loud, unrelenting roar. For the first time in a year, I roll over to call my sponsor, Porsha.
The high I was on may have been fake, but the pain of coming down is real as hell.
PART 2
1O YEARS LATER -
WINSOME, TX
Beth
Never Enough
The instant my heel hits the gleaming deep brown hardwood floors that line the floors in the lobby of Wolfe Construction’s global headquarters, I’m assailed by the feeling of discord and anxiety I’ve never been able to shake.
The woman who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. This affirmation, a feminized version of words attributed to Confucius, has been the fuel that’s propelled me forward every single day for the five years I’ve worked here.
But today, I’m running on a different kind of energy. The mountain has finally moved, my path is clear. I glance at my watch and smile. And in thirty minutes, I’ll finally get to start walking it.
Arnie, our head of security, stands as I approach the desk. He’s a tall, elegant man who’s worked for Wolfe for most of my life. He used to be my mother’s driver. When she left, he joined the operations team at our headquarters.
When I started working for my father straight out of college, he’d kept an eye out for me, and I do the same for him.
“Somebody’s got a bounce in her step this morning,” he quips when I stop at his station. When he smiles, dimples deep enough to swallow the tip of my finger appear on each of his clean-shaven cheeks.
“It’s a beautiful morning.”
He looks over my shoulder peering out at the overcast, dreary morning. “It looks just…fine to me.”
“Hmmm, I wonder if this might turn it up to good.” I lift my hand to reveal the small bag of donuts and kolaches I was holding behind my back.
His smile breaks into a grin. “You just blew past good and went all the way to great.” He reaches up and snatches the package from my hand. I chuckle when he opens it, sniffs, and groans dramatically. “You got all my favorites.”
I shrug, embarrassed by how much such a small gesture means to him. “Favorites for my favorite.”
He winks and rolls the bag closed. “I’ll eat ‘em on my break, if they even catch a whiff they’ll be begging worse than my dogs do.” He nods to his co-workers.
I chuckle and nod, tapping a finger to my temple. “I ate mine on the way in for that very reason.”
He grins and stands. “I forgot, a package arrived for you this morning. I put in the back to be delivered later, but it’s small and looks personal. If you wait a second, I’ll grab it.” He’s out of his chair and hurrying to the back before I can tell him not to bother. It’s nothing personal. That would require me to have personal business, and it’s been longer than I can remember since I had anything close to that.
But my curiosity is peaked, so I glance at my watch and see I’ve still got plenty of time and decide to wait for whatever it is he’s got. I turn my attention to the bank of televisions that line the wall behind the desk. They’re all turned to one of the cable news channels I never watch and a breaking news alert flashes across the screen. The volume is muted, but the captions are clear.
“The notoriously camera-shy musician, Carter Bosch is expected to plead guilty to assault today. He faces up to eighteen months in jail after physically assaulting a police officer at his father’s funeral.”
The camera cuts away from the news anchor, and before I can look away Carter’s face is on the screen. His dark-green glare is trained on the cameras and at all those who dare to be spectators to his drama. The loathing in them is terribly familiar and slices through me as hot and deep as it did the night he broke my heart through a television screen just like this. I’m
as unprepared for it now as I was then. My heart races, and my lungs constrict like I've just sprinted a mile.
