Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 93417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Even though we’re so much more. “Guys,” I say, feeling all emotional and wistful at once.
“Yes?” Rhys asks.
“This was so much more than the missing O. You have to know that.” Their passionate gazes tell me they do. The way they look at me with fondness and genuine affection gives me the courage to say the next thing. “You made me feel…connected to my body in a way I never had—a way I wanted desperately to feel. You helped me relax. You helped me let go of…my anxiety. That means so much to me.” But there’s one thing we didn’t do in bed. One thing I think about. A lot. “And I wanted to feel all of you at once. But I don’t think I can, knowing it’s ending. It’s so intimate I’m afraid I won’t be able to go back to friends.”
No one says anything probably because no one disagrees. It is intimate, for all of us, and it would make the next part even harder.
When we clean up.
When we leave.
When we return to the cottage for our last night together.
When they say goodbye early in the morning before the sun rises, and they leave to catch their flight. When I do what I’ve been practicing all week—letting go.
I let them go.
56
DON’T EAT ALL THE TOILET PAPER
Briar
The walls are too close. The home is too silent. My mind is too loud. Everywhere I go, there are reminders of them.
The hot tub. The kitchen. The bedroom.
I try to settle onto the couch with Donut by my side and work on my column. But my mind is a tangled freeway. Everything is too tight, too close, too much. I try answering emails, letting the assisted living home know I’ll stop by with Donut this week for stretching, then sending some stress-relief class ideas to Nova, but it’s too hard to concentrate with all these memories pressing down on me.
I pop up. Pace the hall. Straighten towels in the bathroom even though they’re hanging properly, fluff pillows in the bedroom even though they’re fluffy enough, make sure the coffeepot is clean, even though we all cleaned up before the guys left this morning.
I have the place for one more night, but I don’t think I can stay here without them.
After I set the squeaky-clean coffeepot on the counter, I rush down the hall to the bedroom and toss all my things in one of my suitcases. With the speed of a cheetah, I do a final double check of all the rooms. Donut follows me from room to room, tilting her head, asking questions in her anxious trot. I stop, kneel, and scratch her chin.
“We need to go,” I tell her.
She licks my face.
A few minutes later, I’m yanking open the front door, my dog’s leash wrapped around my wrist, wrestling with my suitcase when I spot Kailani walking along the cobblestone path.
She waves to me, bracelets jingling down her tanned skin. “Just wanted to check in and make sure everything went okay with the place? And to bring you a little thank you gift.”
I blink. “A thank you gift?”
“Yes. I know it was kind of a pain to have to share. So I just wanted to say thanks for being so easy to deal with.”
When she reaches me, she hands me a candle from her oversized tote.
I’m…stunned.
I don’t deserve a gift for being a good sport. I let go of the suitcase handle and sniff the candle. It smells like the mustard flowers, vanilla, heady.
A lovely reminder, and I take it for what it is. A gift. A kindness. We need more of that in this world. More gratitude. More grace. Less taking. More giving.
“No, thank you for finding this place for me. Getting me into it early. It all worked out in the end. It was great.”
She swipes her hand across her forehead. “I’m so glad. And maybe you can come back next year. The festival organizers said everyone loved your workshops. They were very popular.”
I try to remind myself that’s what I came here for. To build my business. To make a name for myself. “I’ll be here whenever you need me.”
I say goodbye and head to my father’s house.
He’s expecting me. But when he opens the door, he still lifts a brow curiously. “What are you doing in these parts?”
My heart climbs up my throat and I almost, almost tell him. Instead, I swallow down my emotions. Something I’ve done my whole life. Something I did when my mom left. When I learned how to grin and bear it. How to move on. How to hide what I’m truly feeling.
Trouble is, those tactics don’t work so well anymore, I’m realizing.
I can’t hide my feelings, and I’m not sure I want to. I shrug my shoulders, and instead of telling him I miss three men, I say something else that’s equally true. “Sometimes I’m sad that Mom left.”