Page 13 of Bed and Breakup (Dial Delights #15)

Molly

The moment I walk in the front door of the inn after my meeting at Wild Card, I know exactly what Robin’s doing.

She’s rearranged the whole dining room and reception area specifically to get a rise out of me.

It clearly can’t work as a cooking space.

There’s no sink. Or refrigerator. Or stove.

Yet somehow she’s got a pan with garlic and rosemary sizzling away, sending billowing steam through my whole front hallway.

This room isn’t properly ventilated; the heat and smells could cause permanent damage.

I want to demand that she clear this stuff away immediately.

I want to shut this whole thing down. But another fight is exactly what she wants.

So instead, I purse my lips, turn around, and walk up the stairs to the third floor.

I close the door to the Snapdragon Room behind me. And then I scream into my pillow.

I thought I’d moved on completely, accepted that I’d spend my life without attachments, grown into a more independent, coolheaded, unflappable person. Yet two weeks with Robin has me all kinds of flapped.

I can’t help being reminded of how I felt when I first met Robin, back when we were both only twenty-two.

I thought I had adulting totally figured out.

In some ways, I did. I’d always been ahead of my peers in the maturity department, uninterested in childish drama, less likely to throw fits over minor inconveniences, more aware of how much toys and candy and extracurricular activities cost and why that meant I couldn’t always get what I wanted.

That’s what happens sometimes when you’re born to teen parents: You end up raising yourself.

But at twenty-two, I still had a lot to learn about who I was and what I wanted out of life.

I had to realize that the only person I could ever really trust was myself.

With a sigh, I decide to stop pouting and get out my sketchpad to work on my design for Wild Card.

But even with a pencil in my hand, my mind wanders to my parents, who split up before I reached kindergarten.

Who could blame them? They were still kids too.

My dad became a long-haul trucker, always on the road, occasionally sending my mom a check for my upkeep.

Mom and I lived with my gram, and Dad would drop by once or twice a year.

It would always take me a minute to remember who he was.

He faded out of my life so gradually that I never thought to ask when he’d return.

Mom and I were closer, even if she felt more like an older sister than a parent most days.

But when I was in middle school, she got sucked in by some evangelical church.

She saw being “born again” as a chance for a new life, an opportunity to erase all her past mistakes—mistakes like me.

By the time I started high school, she’d found a pastor husband and moved all the way to South Dakota near his new church, starting over with a fresh set of kids while I stayed in Arkansas with my grandmother.

I scribble away at my sketchpad as I think of the three half-siblings I’ve never met, could only maybe recognize by the Christmas cards I used to receive once a year before I sold Gram’s house and neglected to send my mother my new address.

It was less painful to lose touch than know she had the means to reconnect and chose not to.

The last time I heard her voice was shortly after high school graduation, when Gram convinced me to come out to Mom as a lesbian, suggesting that revealing my truth might bring us closer together.

Instead, Mom suggested I “pray the demons away.” I was crushed and gave up on having a relationship with her entirely.

But I didn’t realize until years later, when I was going through Gram’s desktop computer after she died, that she’d sent Mom a fiery letter about her response, defending me tooth and nail.

The phrase “she’s not full of demons, you are full of shit” was a real standout, especially considering Gram rarely cursed.

Looking down, I realize that instead of a board-game-inspired window, I’ve accidentally sketched my favorite of Gram’s quilt designs, the sunflower one I brought with me on the road when I left the inn.

She’s the only person I ever really needed.

Gram was always there for me: to change my diaper when my parents were grossed out, to teach me to ride a bicycle, to celebrate when I got my first job at Home Depot.

She showed up at every occasion where parents were expected to support their kid, to make sure I never felt alone.

And I took care of her too. I taught myself to fix things around our house, covered some of our bills with my meager paychecks, drove Gram to her doctors’ appointments when her heart started acting up.

When my high school friends went off to college, I threw away all my fancy pamphlets with pictures of green quads and big brick libraries, picked up more hours at Home Depot, and focused on trying to convince Gram to follow a heart-healthy diet and give up her stressful job at the post office.

And then, quick as lightning, she was gone.

While the rest of my friends were getting drunk at frat parties, I was ordering death certificates for various insurances and debt collectors and taking Gram’s will to probate.

Alone. Mom, who was eight months pregnant at the time, didn’t even send a condolence card, much less travel down for the funeral.

It made more sense after I discovered the letter Gram sent to her after I came out, but it still stung.

I was still reeling from my loss that day at Home Depot when Robin wandered in, looking devastatingly hot in her ripped jeans and vintage Toad Suck Daze festival T-shirt, her messy dark-blond hair sticking out from under a red beanie.

Perhaps any cute lesbian who asked me for a barn-door-mounting kit with a mischievous gleam in their eye could have changed my life that Thursday afternoon.

I was desperate for someone to cling to, to keep me afloat.

It just so happened to be Robin who walked in and became my life raft.

By the time I met Robin, I was an expert at getting left behind, so I should have been ready for her to abandon me at the inn six years later.

If I could survive my dad leaving, then my mom, then losing my gram, always somehow coming out stronger on the other side, I knew objectively that I could make it through Robin running away in pursuit of fortune, fame, and a hotter, more ambitious woman.

I had already suspected there was something going on with her and Georgina, her competitor on Let’s Do Brunch, the series she spent six weeks filming about a year before our split .

The best reality TV producers in Hollywood couldn’t have made that romantic arc up.

When I confronted her, Robin said she’d been pushed to talk about her natural connection with Georgina and the production team cut all the confessional footage of her talking about me.

Her wife. Whether or not that was true, the effect was the same.

I was humiliated, heartbroken, and furious at myself for not seeing it coming.

Robin’s betrayal hurt worse than any of the ones before it, I realize as I flip over on the bed and turn a page in my notebook.

At some point in our six years together, I’d let my guard down.

I’d started to believe that we really could be together forever.

That I really wouldn’t have to go through life by myself.

Shocking that I could still be so na?ve after all I’d been through.

It’s a mistake I won’t make again. You come into this world alone, you leave it alone, and you might as well spend the time in between alone too.

If only I could be alone in the Hummingbird like I planned.

Robin’s presence is messing with my head, making it impossible to keep my emotions carefully locked away.

While I start a fresh sketch of the streets of downtown Eureka as a board-game map, I think about how I should focus on my work, support Keyana, and get back on the road as quickly as possible.

Even though Robin’s driving me bananas, as I trace the familiar streets, I can’t deny that Eureka feels like where I’m supposed to be right now.

I’ve given up on putting down roots, but being here brings back a tiny bit of the youthful optimism that drew me to the inn in the first place.

Maybe there is something I need to do here.

Pausing my work, I look up at the sad gray walls and mass-produced furniture in the Snapdragon Room.

To be honest, my fingers have been itching to tear out the ugly fake flooring and cheap light fixtures since I first laid eyes on them.

Clint’s idea isn’t bad. I do want to return the inn to its former glory and leave it in trustworthy hands.

I just don’t want to do it with her. Too many distracting memories of those sweaty, exhausting, blissful months after we first bought the inn, of falling deeply in love as we worked our way through the long list of necessary repairs and figured out what to do with all of Miss Addy’s antiques, of hiding little surprise gifts and silly notes for Robin in unexpected corners, and of how full my heart felt when I uncovered her goofy, sweet pranks in return.

I sit up from where I’ve spread across my bed, pencil still in hand as the memory gives me an idea.

I grab my empty laundry bag and run down the stairs to the basement, not sparing a glance in Robin’s direction as I pass her new kitchen setup.

Then I dig past all the items I organized earlier until I find the one I’m looking for: a dusty old box pushed to the back corner under the stairs.

Peeling back the layers of tape, I pull open the box to find a dozen sets of glass eyes, staring at me like they’ve been waiting a decade for this.

It’s time for the revenge of the dolls.