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Chapter Twenty-Six
Alice
I feel like such an idiot. I let Boris get under my skin, and I made a stupid decision. I couldn’t tell Simon that. But I also stand by what I said. Simon had given me no indication that he was going to say yes.
Shouldn’t I have had an inkling of his decision?
He clearly thought he knew what I was going to say. I still don’t think he’s truly ready; he just won’t admit it to himself.
I leave and go straight to Desi’s, and now, I’m curled up on her couch, a glass of wine in hand, staring listlessly at the television, while she bustles around, fixing a charcuterie tray of some sort.
“Do you like salami?” she asks from the kitchen, and I look over at her, brow furrowed. “Salami,” she repeats.
“Oh, yeah,” I say, and she goes back to what she was doing, humming.
I realize the show is muted, and I wonder why I’m sitting in silence, so I grab the remote and click it on, right as it switches to news of Blindly Ever After and how the live went down tonight. I stare for a moment, catching a glimpse of Simon’s face when my answer was read, and then I hit the channel button, changing it.
“Here we are, a little bit of everything,” she says, setting the tray down on the table in front of me.
I take a long gulp of my wine, not even tasting it.
“You need to eat something.” She points to the crackers aligned around the edge of the tray. “That’s your second glass, isn’t it?”
I glare up at her. “What are you, my mom?”
“No, but I don’t want you to have a hangover from hell.”
“I miss Waffle,” I mutter, taking another drink, a sip this time.
He’s still at Simon’s house, and I didn’t want to risk running into Simon to go get him and bring him here.
“Waffle is fine. They are going to feed him and give him water, and you can get him tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to go over there. It hurts.” I clench my shirt, right above my heart. I know I’m being dramatic, but with the way I feel and the alcohol coursing through me right now, I don’t really care.
“I know, babe. I know,” Desi says softly.
The couch dips as she settles beside me. She loads two crackers with meat and cheese and hands me one, and then she dives into the other, the sound of eating filling the air.
“This is really good,” I tell her, sniffling.
She leans over, rubbing a comforting circle on my back.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, and I consider it.
Do I want to talk about it? What is there to even talk about really?
I made my decision, and then I stuck by it when Simon confronted me. I have this gut feeling that if he wasn’t willing to admit his feelings to me before the last show, then he’s just not ready for a relationship at all. Everything he told me before was true, and I ignored it.
I’m the idiot here.
But no more.
“I’m really going to miss that little girl,” I say, sniffling again. “Ivy won’t know what’s going on, and that breaks my heart, thinking about explaining it to her.”
“Kids are resilient,” Desi says before taking a sip of her own wine. “But you do need to talk to her.”
“I know. I will—tomorrow. I have to go get my things.”
