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Chapter 45 – Safe or Sabotaged
Ruby
Amber and Minty left together after lunch, with Minty reassuring me that she secured the emergency closure sign on the door at Spuds. I knew I couldn’t stay closed indefinitely, there were bills to pay. I had to find my way through this.
I made a hot chocolate, full cream with whip on the top, and carried it into the family room. Amber and Minty left me with a lot to think about.
I’d totally missed how they saw me. I’d missed a lot of things. Most of those things direct results of my own decisions.
The last brave and fearless thing I’d done had been going to B.C. for university. After that, I played it safe, always, to protect myself.
But had I protected myself?
A perfect memory of Gus angling his wide shoulders through the hospital doorway, Gus with his forehead on Amber’s, the look on Gus’s face when Amber gave birth to Alex, unfolded in my mind.
Superimposed over that was Vander angling through his office doorway, his eyes on me. Vander pressing his forehead to mine, thanking me for Jace. The look of wonder on Vander’s face, still, when he looked at Jace, the gratitude when he looked at me afterwards.
But Vander’s gratitude was mixed with grief, shame, and sorrow, those things that my decisions played a part in purchasing for him.
Playing it safe meant narrowing my world down to thirty square kilometres, a fish tank world as Yiayia once called it. Playing it safe meant not telling Vander about my agoraphobia, not going to him that summer, not leaving a job I’d long since grown tired of, not traveling, not moving out of my childhood home, and not dating. It meant choosing to settle for the progress I’d made instead of continuing with therapy.
Playing it safe included not texting Vander after the conference, and that ensured that he missed out on doctor appointments, Jace’s first tooth, first step, first day of school, first everything.
It bought Jace mentioning Gus being a good dad with that note of yearning in his voice that cut me so deeply.
It meant Vander not being there when Jace asked to do things, and my first instinct, which I eventually pushed past, to say no.
Safe? Or sabotaged?
I rinsed my mug and placed it in the dishwasher.
Walking through the kitchen to the front door I opened it tentatively. Maybe I’d just sit on the front step.
Nope! I laughed lightly.
Okay, then.
There would be no avoidance this time.
Back on the couch, I thought back over the past weeks with Vander and remembered, for the first time, that it had always been like that with us. Laughter, and fun, and togetherness, and yes, even then, he had the tendency to be bossy. All these years, I’d focussed on the pain of our parting, the losses between us, the negative space in the picture of what was us.
I did that with all my choices. I assessed every option, searching for every negative possibility so I could avoid it.
No matter how improbable.
Anytime I had to drive somewhere, I traced the routes on my mental road map, choosing the one with the least perceived risk.
Every time I refused to let Jace try something, every time I had an opportunity for a relationship, every decision I made, was a sacrifice made to the god of risk avoidance.
Every single time, I made the safe choice that suddenly didn’t feel as though it kept me safe at all.
Jace would be home from school soon, and I needed to talk to Vander first.
I picked up my cell and dashed off a text before I could think too hard about it. Fifteen minutes later he barreled through the front door, his face pinched with concern.
“You okay, koukla mou?”
Without removing his coat, he moved towards me and pulled me out of the couch and into his arms.
