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The longer she sat there, the more wrong it all felt.
Alice touched her arm.
She startled. “What is it?”
Alice shot her a rueful grin. “I’m here, but you’re a million miles away.”
She winced. “I’m sorry.”
“I was going to wait until you volunteered it yourself, but now I really want details.” Alice nudged her arm playfully. “The weekend was a success, I take it.”
“I may retire Bob.”
Alice’s eyes became comically wide. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “I didn’t know it could be like that. But the thing is, even when we were just sitting together, it was wonderful.”
Her friend sighed, a look of dreamy longing on her face. “I’m so happy for you, Rachel. You deserve to have all the happiness.”
She blushed. “I love him.”
The smile on Alice’s face was pure delight. “I knew it!”
She waited for an opinion, but when Alice said nothing more, she said, “No ‘but Rachel, you just met him’?”
Alice shrugged. “It only takes a glance to know you love someone and that they fit into your life.”
Rachel goggled at her friend. Was she talking about Chris? “You say that like you know.”
She ignored Rachel’s leading question. “For someone who’s so newly in love, you don’t seem very happy.”
Just like that she was back to the prospectus and her promotion and all the doubts that’d sprung up seemingly overnight. “I look at everything that’s familiar and it seems not right. The thing is, yesterday it was all right, but today it’s not.”
“Because of Jamie?”
She shook her head. “Because of everything. Work, Jamie, me,everything.”
Alice nodded slowly, like she was trying to understand. “Is that how you felt when you decided to leave Kevin?”
Rachel stilled. “What?”
“When you left Kevin.” Alice gestured with her hand. “One day it was what you wanted, but the next you realized what you thought you wanted wasn’t actually the thing you wanted and that you wanted something else.”
She shook her head. “Huh?”
Her friend grinned. “Keep up.”
Frowning, she turned to stare at the fountain. She thought about her word:focus. Was she focusing on the wrong thing? Was she making the same mistakes she made when she decided to marry Kevin? She thought she’d broken that loop, but what if she hadn’t?
Lottie didn’t think she had. She heard her grandma’s voice in her head.Why do you give so much of yourself to people who don’t appreciate you? How much longer are you going to wait to start living?
She REALLYdidn’t want to make another mistake like she’d made with Kevin, in her personal life or at work.
She shook her head, staring at the fountain. It looked so lovely, but no one was really enjoying it. Why was that? “Have you ever felt like taking off your shoes and putting your feet in the fountain?”
“This fountain?” Alice blinked at her.
She nodded. “There are all these people, and it’s hot out, and no one wades into the fountain. Why is that?”
