Page 28

Chapter 28

Moxie

T ears of frustration leak out as I peel away from the curb. If I wasn’t upset enough, the fact that I’m crying is maddening, which only makes me cry more, and damn it .

A few months ago, my biggest problem was being bored. If I’m honest, I was a little lonely, but I wouldn’t have even considered a relationship. Today, I’m barely holding myself together and am completely heartbroken.

My eyes go blurry, so I pull over before I get into an accident. I throw the car into park and look down at my phone and think about calling Hannah. That’s another problem—I used to be completely independent, but now when a problem comes up, I want to hash it out with her.

A thick teardrop falls from my eyes, landing with an earth-shattering thud on the steering wheel. I stare at the tiny puddle for a moment as frustration boils within me until that energy needs a release.

“Ahhhhh!” I yell, banging my palms against the sides of the steering wheel. I’m going full Tarzan, and I don’t even care. My hands ball into fists and I beat against the dashboard until my knuckles ache and the pent-up energy fizzles. “What the hell am I doing?” I whimper. This time when the tears fall, I know there’s no holding them back.

So much has changed, and I have so many emotions that I don’t know how to deal with. I don’t want to get hurt any more than I already am.

I need the Moxie coping method, and I need to stop trying to face this alone.

* * *

I breathe in the piney scent of the surrounding trees and allow the dizzy sensation from looking down at the forest floor to rush over my brain and drown out my thoughts.

“Aren’t I supposed to bring you soup, force you to bathe, and clean up the mountains of tissues and ice cream containers littering your place from your three-day wallow or something?” Hannah asks, a tinge of hysteria to her voice.

She’s been surviving the high ropes course, clinging to me most of the way, but just barely. We’ve made it to the final obstacle: jumping off a platform and being lowered to the ground.

“You’ve watched too many sappy movies,” I say.

“No.” The word is drawn out and shaky. “I don’t think so. I think you have unusual coping methods, and as your support person, I have to say I’d prefer if you reverted to the stereotypical ones. I’d be more than happy to bring you an assortment of Ben I need it. If I don’t get her to jump off the damn ledge before me, she’s never going to.

“Okay.” She nods to the guide, closes her eyes, and heaves a few deep breaths. She holds one foot over the edge. “But this is unhealthy—” the “Y” turns into a scream as she steps off and rings the bell on the final challenge of the course. The operator on the ground unhooks her, and it’s hard to say from way up here, but I’m pretty sure Hannah’s glowering at me. Let her. My broken, disappointed heart is going to burst out of my chest if I don’t do something.

I fidget impatiently as our guide hooks me up and asks, “Ready?”

I don’t bother with a response. I run the two steps to the edge and leap. Wind pushes at my face as I ring the bell and fall, whisking away my worries. All the anxiety in my heart feels momentarily free as my pulse quickens with the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

Then, the rope catches me.

In the blink of an eye, I'm helped out of my harness, and it’s over. No sooner have I walked over to Hannah than my misery rises back up to choke me. Although her face is still ashen from her own jump, Hannah’s eyes crinkle in concern. “Do you feel better?”

I shake my head. “I did. For about five seconds.”

Five freeing seconds, and then it’s straight back to Wyatt. His infectious laugh and cocky, playful attitude. He likes me for who I am. He’s like pure adrenaline, and while I can’t get enough of him, I’m still convinced that being with him would destroy us. It would be the downfall of his career and his passion. It would take all the light out of him, and watching what that does to him and to Noah would kill me.

Hannah links her arm with mine. “I’m sorry. I can still get that Ben & Jerry’s.”

I feel like I’m about to explode. “I need a bigger cliff.”

What little color was left drains from Hannah’s face. “No. We need to find you a less terrifying coping mechanism. I’m sorry, but I draw the line at cliff jumping. A high ropes course was more than I was comfortable with, if we’re being honest. Besides, I hate to say it, but we need to get ready for work.”

“No,” I whine. I’m crawling out of my skin here. I can’t stand still at a blackjack table for eight hours. I will explode. Spontaneous combustion. Human bonfire, right there in the casino. I haven’t made a decision about the promotion. I’m just avoiding everything. “I shouldn’t have to work when I’m in crisis.”

“I couldn’t agree more. You could take another sick day, but I'm a little worried what you’d get into without supervision. Do you need me to take the day off?”

I mentally count my days off in my head and decide that this is not the way I want to spend another one of them. “No, I can’t afford to use another personal day for this, and I’m definitely not making you use one of yours,” I say, even if I feel like my heart has been torn right out and stomped on.

Hannah sighs. “Welcome to America.”

We walk toward my car among the shadows of the tall trees. We’re mostly quiet except for the snapping of twigs and crinkling of dry leaves beneath our feet. I try to keep my eyes focused on the path, but in my periphery, she’s watching me as if trying to determine if I’m going to ditch work and attempt to go hang gliding as soon as I'm out of her sight. Every time I catch her, she quickly looks away as though she’s been looking at the brilliant blue sky the whole time. After three occurrences of this, I snap.

“Quit studying me. I'll be fine.”

“Mmhmm. This is what fine looks like? Showing up at your friend’s doorstep at seven a.m. with an Egg McMuffin and dragging them to a high ropes course that’s somehow supposed to be therapeutic.”

“Stop judging my coping mechanisms.”

“If you need mechanisms, you’re coping with something, which means you’re not fine.”

“You’re a real pain in the ass sometimes,” I grumble.

“A pain in the ass who’s trying to help you.” Hannah swears on occasion, but it’s rare enough that it sounds unnatural. It’s usually accompanied by hesitation, as if the words are stuck to the roof of her mouth like peanut butter.

She’s right. I know I'm being shitty, but if I'm not angry, then I'll be sad. I'd rather be mad than devastated, so that’s where we are. When the path spills out of the forest into the parking lot, she drags me to a nearby picnic table.

“Are you ready to tell me what happened with Wyatt, and why you ran out of work yesterday?”

Over the course of a few short months, Hannah has gone from someone I barely knew to someone whose presence can calm me from an absolute panic.She was the right person to call today. I don’t want to have this conversation, but maybe it’s necessary.

“I’m so ridiculous.” I squeeze the life out of the steering wheel in frustration with myself and my circumstances.

“Why do you think that?” she asks gently.

“I was offered a promotion.”

“I’m guessing from our current situation here that we’re not happy about that, but I’m not sure I understand why.”

“That makes two of us.” My voice comes out weak and cracks.

She frowns in confusion. “Let’s try to piece it together. How are you feeling right now?”

“Like crap.” Thank you, Captain Obvious. She doesn’t even roll her eyes, just patiently waits. “Okay, I feel like… have you seen Star Wars ?”

“Of course.”

“I feel like I’m in that trash compactor scene. Like my life is mostly a steaming pile of garbage that I’m swimming through and the walls are closing in on me.”

She considers this. “The job offer could have a major impact on the trajectory of your life. I can see how that would feel like the compactor walls, but why is the rest of your life garbage?”

“Maybe that was an unfairly strong metaphor.” I laugh, swiping at a rogue tear. All the cells in my body are rebelling against leaning on Hannah, but if I'm going to let her help me, I’ve got to talk to her. “When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time at my parents’ wedding barn. I have so many vivid memories of watching the brides and thinking they were all beautiful princesses. I loved it there, and so did my parents. My mom... you should have seen the way she would light up, getting to be a part of someone’s big day. She would always remind the staff at the beginning of every event that for them it was just a day at work, but for the couple, it was the biggest day of their lives.”

“It sounds like she loved what she did,” Hannah says.

“After the business shut down, it was like a light went out of her. I remember one Saturday, standing in her room and watching her pull her hair back in her mirror before work. I thought that I would normally be watching a bride do this. Instead of seeing one of those princesses tearing up seeing themselves in their wedding gown, I was seeing my mom with bags under her eyes about to head out to a job she hated.”

The haunted look on her face etched itself into my brain. My parents tried not to let me see how hard things had gotten for them after Allison’s betrayal, but it was impossible to miss.

Hannah shakes her head sadly. “That’s terrible.”

“Putting all their trust in that one person and in that one business destroyed them. I swore I wouldn’t let something pin me down like that, yet somehow, without realizing it, I’ve gotten myself involved with a man who’s struggling through financial issues in business with his best friend. I’ve settled into working the same job for years. I stand behind a table and flip cards all day, every day.”

Hannah opens her mouth like she’s ready to defend our coworkers who have been doing this for even longer than me and happen to love it. I wave her off.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s so far from where I imagined myself. A promotion means committing more to this job that I don’t love. It means turning it into a career.”

“I thought you liked being a dealer.”

I shrug letting out a long sigh. “I do. As a job it is fine. I just thought it would be more exciting.”

Hannah makes herself comfortable, laying down on the picnic table and letting the sun warm her face. “No job is without some level of redundancy. I doubt there’s anyone out there who couldn’t name something they don’t like about their job. You’re good at what you do, and the players always seem like they’re having fun at your tables.”

She sits up. “Imagine for a moment that you take the promotion. You learn some new things and take on a leadership position, so that even if you decide it’s not for you down the line, you have that experience. In a year you could say, I’m sorry this didn’t work out . Would that be so bad?”

I ruffle my own hair and breathe out another sigh of frustration with myself.

“You’re not your parents, you know,” she says gently.

“I know.”

“Do you?” she asks.

“I’m working on it,” I admit. “Do you think I was too hard on Wyatt?”

Her head tilts to the side with a tight-lipped What do you think? smile.

“It’s scary, trusting someone with your heart,” I say.

“It is.”

“I can’t believe I threw away my chance with him.” I drop my head in my hands

“Are you sure you did? When I saw him looking at you, he had that dreamy look in his eyes. I could practically see the cartoon hearts circling his head.”

“I think you’re exaggerating, but even if he was, I lost it at the barbecue.”

“It’s kind of funny how these double dates have been complete nightmares for us.”

I laugh as my mood lightens a little, but I think Hannah is wrong. When he dropped me off that night, he was angry and disappointed. He’s not forgetting what I did to him anytime soon.

“How’s he doing?” I finally ask.

Hannah bites her lip and darts her eyes all over the place. “I don’t know. You’re going to have to talk to him about that.”

Bullshit. She knows, but she isn’t going to tell me, which means he’s either doing great without me or is a total wreck, too. She wouldn’t be afraid to tell me if he was just going along. But it’s not fair to put her in the middle. I need to put my big girl pants on and deal with it, but it’s also not right if I get his hopes up just to walk away. When I try to imagine my life moving forward, I see him there, but he feels far away while I keep grasping at straws.

“Maybe, but I think I need to sort myself out first. I need to figure out how I feel about work and what I want to do with my life before I bring someone else into it.”

“That’s fair. I’ll let him tell his own story, but I think he’s got some figuring out to do as well.”

I look at my friend, this sweet girl who came into my life and who I don’t deserve. “Thank you. Really.”

“I’m here for you. Always. But maybe next time, let’s keep our feet on the ground.”