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Chapter 10
The next two weeks crawled by. One of the bright spots was seeing the site of the new bakery and getting to figure out where my office was going to go. I didn’t have any plans to leave this job anytime soon.
“What do you think?” Martha asked as we walked through the empty space. It was going to need a lot of work. We’d have to knock out most of the walls and install a garage door for easier loading and unloading, and about a million other things.
“It’s going to be amazing,” I said, putting my arm around Martha. Linley smiled and stood on my other side, and Mitch joined us as we surveyed the space.
“It’s going to be so much work,” Martha said with a laugh.
“We can handle it,” I said.
“Team Sweet,” Linley said.
“Team Sweet,” Mitch said, putting his fist out. We did a little cheer and then decided we should never do that again.
Other than seeing the new bakery, I did my best to stay away from Alivia. That didn’t mean that I stopped talking to her. No, we went into full flirt mode via text, and I stayed up way too late talking to her about everything and nothing. She even gave me her lasagna recipe, and I made it for Natalie one night and we both almost died because it was so good.
Alivia opened up a little more about her siblings and the dynamic with her parents. Basically, it was complicated. She did love her siblings, but they were so busy with their own lives that the majority of the caring for her parents had fallen on Alivia. It seemed completely unfair to me, but I didn’t say that. We talked all during the day and into the night, and I sacrificed a lot of sleep, but I didn’t care.
I liked talking to her.
She asked me to hang out and I said that I didn’t know if I could handle that, and she said that was fine. Once the wedding was over, we’d figure out what to do. I just had to get through that day.
Ten days before Linley’s wedding, I was doing some file cleaning up on my personal laptop, going through and deleting old pictures and organizing files. I was humming along to a new album when I opened up a folder that was within another old folder.
Fuck.
I slammed the laptop closed and almost threw it across the room. I’d thought I’d deleted all the old pictures I’d taken with my ex, but apparently not. The minute I saw our smiling faces together, I felt like I was going to throw up. I sat on my bed with my eyes closed, trying to deep breathe and swallow the nausea back down. It had been a year! Why did I still have these little moments? They happened less and less, but I was never prepared for them.
When the nausea subsided, the tears came, and I was rocketed back in time to that moment when I’d put my key in the door and it hadn’t worked. When I’d typed a text message to my girlfriend, asking if she could let me in, only to get a text back that it was over, and I’d have to set up a time with her to get my stuff.
I still didn’t have an explanation, and I didn’t think I was going to ever get one.
I curled up on my bed and waited for the pain to pass. It always took longer than I thought it would
This was why I couldn’t get involved with Alivia. I couldn’t handle this pain again. I wouldn’t survive it.
* * *
“I’m getting married in a week,” Linley said that Saturday as we hung out in her apartment. It was raining, so our plan to hang out at the beach had been ruined. Paige, Esme, Natalie, and Em were all here too. Gray was off doing his woodworking, so it was just the girls for a chill day. We’d all brought some food and drinks to share and were pretty much just watching movies, doing our nails, and loafing around while the rain pattered against the windows. A completely cozy Saturday.
“You’re going to be all old and boring now,” Paige said, bumping Linley with her shoulder.
“No way. I promise not to get boring. I’m not going to lie, though, I am excited about setting up some of my wedding gifts.” One of the items was an extremely fancy mixer in Linley’s signature purple color. I couldn’t wait to eat whatever she made with it.
“The time you get as excited about a new dishwasher as you do about a good orgasm is when we’ll start to worry,” Em said.
“I’ll let you know before that happens,” Linley said.
“Are you nervous?” Natalie asked as she put the finishing touch of rose-gold polish on her toes. Our wedding shoes were close-toed, but we’d all decided to match the wedding colors, with some of us doing blue.
“Not really. Should I be?” Linley said.
“I mean, it’s just a day. Just one day and a big party and then you go on with the rest of your lives and file joint tax returns,” Em said. “For all intents and purposes, you’re already married.”
“Still, it is going to be weird changing my name. I think that’s the part that’s really making it real,” Linley said.
“So, you are changing your name?” Paige asked, reaching into the bowl of chips before dipping it in the queso that Natalie had brought from our apartment.
