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“Don’t you?” Courtney asked.
The question surprised me. “Of course not,” I said. “You need a reason to be sad, but not happy. Happy is just the absence of sad, isn’t it?”
I was asking her, but I was really asking myself. It’s what I’d assumed all my life, but at this moment, there were plenty of reasons to be sad. I wasn’t in denial about them either, though I was avoiding bringing them up. Even while those major balls of stress bounced around in the back of my head, I was still happy. Extremely happy.
“I don’t think it is,” Courtney said. “I thought happiness was success in my career and I kept chasing that, but it didn’t work. Instead, it ended up being in my best friend, who I was deeply in love with, but didn’t realize it.”
I’d met him. His name was Colton, and he was the kind of guy who could make you fall in love with him within seconds. I always thought Courtney was lucky to have him and, in my own way, I was a little bit jealous. Not just because he was so attractive and charming, but because they were so clearly perfect for each other.
And thinking about it made me doubt myself a little bit. It must have shown on my face because Courtney asked what the matter was.
“I just…” I trailed off as I tried putting it into words. It all sounded so cheesy, like a little girl playing with dolls, but deep down, aren’t we all still that little girl? Believing in fairy tales and that there’s a right man for us out there, despite all the evidence to the contrary?
“I don’t know if he’s my Colton, you know?”
Courtney laughed.
“Girl, you hooked up less than 24 hours ago, don’t start asking if wedding bells are in the future. Let me ask you something: does he make you happy right now? Right this second?”
“Absolutely!” I didn’t even pause to think about it. Just his cute face popping into my head was enough to make me want to squeal with joy.
“Then, for right this second, enjoy those endorphins and dopamine,” she said. “Let it last so long as you want it to and, if someday, you decide that it’s not what you want, then you move on.”
There were so many doubts, though. “But he’s my boss,” I said. “And he’s so much older than I am.”
“So?” she asked. “Does it bother you?”
“Well, to be honest,” I said, “kind of. Like I told you, I had a thing going with my last boss and it didn’t end so well.”
Courtney nodded. “Wesley isn’t Bradley,” she said. “Just because they were both your bosses doesn’t mean they’re the same. For all his grumpiness and negativity, Wesley is not an asshole. He’s professional and often curt, but he cares about other people in his own way and isn’t a narcissist.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. And I guarantee he’d never cheat on you. He’s just not that kind of man. And, even if he was, he heard your story. Nobody would dare cheat on you after that story you told.”
I blushed. She had a point. A man who overheard that story and still wanted to get me into bed? He wasn’t the kind of guy who would even dream of cheating.
“Some of us have a tendency to be a little gun shy after breakups,” Courtney said. “I know I didn’t ever want to get hurt again. But I think you’re wrong. The absence of sadness isn’t happiness, and the absence of pain isn’t pleasure. Avoiding getting hurt won’t make you happy. You need to charge forward and trust your heart, even if it may have led you to dangerous places in the past.”
She was right. And she was making me feel more comfortable about the whole situation.
“Don’t worry about what anybody else thinks,” Courtney said. “Sometimes other people will give you good advice and other times they’ll lead you astray. People make mistakes just like hearts do. But if you’re following your heart and doing what you want to do, at least you’ll be making your own mistakes instead of somebody else’s.”
She gave me a big hug and it was so firm and reassuring that all the doubts in my head melted away. I didn’t know what the future was going to bring between Wesley and me, but I wouldn’t let self-doubt and worries about what other people thought get in the way of it.
CHAPTER16
***WESLEY***
Istopped at the drug store and looked through the magazines, trying to remember if there was one I hadn’t picked up yet for my mom. All the young celebrities looked the same to me. And the cover artists airbrushed them to the point that they almost didn’t look like humans anymore. But I was stalling. It didn’t matter. My mom loved the magazines, but it wasn’t like she’d tell me to leave if I didn’t bring them. I just grabbed five of them off the rack — if she already had any of them, I’m sure she could have shared them with her friends or whatever.
So, I drove over to the home and parked and, even then, I was afraid to get out of the car. What if my mom told me that I was right? That I was turning into my father and that she was disappointed in me. Sure, I could counter with I just did what she told me to do… well, sort of. She told me, in no uncertain words, to have sex with Sloane, but she didn’t say I should do it in one of our client’s houses.
That wasn’t the point, though. What I needed her to say was the thing she always said when I was a kid. That everything would be okay, some way or another. Even if it wasn’t true, it was what I needed to hear. And that was a time when things were decidedly not okay. When my father was taking our family and driving us off a cliff over and over again.
You’re her only child, I reminded myself. She’s not going to push you away because then she’ll have nobody to bring her magazines.
That was enough to motivate me out of the car. It was tough to force my feet forward to the entrance way, but once I passed into the entranceway, there was no turning back. Everyone there hanging out in the recreation room recognized me and waved and smiled and one of the attendants went to go fetch my mother.
