“You’re right. You’re right—” I stammer, knowing I don’t need more than one battle to fight right now. “Friends, I know I messed up. I just need to talk to Stella.”
“You will do no such thing,” Pen says, stepping in front of me and crossing her arms over her chest. “Not until she wants to talk to you.”
Stella’s just two rooms away, hating me, I’m sure, and I have to fix this. I have to make her understand.
“Look, you don’t get it. I have to talk to her.” I cut right to by-pass Pen, and quicker than I thought he could move, Tyler is in my face.
“No.” The word comes out through clenched teeth. His hands are fists at his sides.
I meet his eyes, wanting him to see I’m not a threat. Not to him. Not to Stella.
“Tyler, just let me by. We’ll talk. I’ll clear things u—”
“G...et… f...uck...ed.”
His bared teeth and flared nostrils are feral. Yeah, I deserve the beating he wants to give me, but not here in Stella’s kitchen. Not in front of Maisy. Not in front of Nina. Livy and Pen would probably thrill at the prospect, but the other two would be traumatized.
I take two steps back. “Fine.”
I sweep my gaze across the room and find no quarter. All eyes—even Maisy’s—condemn me. As they should.
“Fine,” I say again and back out of the room.
I’m hot with humiliation, sick with self-loathing. I need to get in my car and just drive, but to do that, I’d have to go out through the swinging door, the one that also leads to Stella’s room, and I know that’s not happening.
I’m out the front door, aiming for the corner. My plan? Walk down the back alley, get in my Jeep, and go somewhere to sort out my head.
I’m at the turn onto Convent Street when cathedral bells peal through the Sunday morning air. Nine a.m. mass is starting.
Centuries of Catholic guilt land on my shoulders. If this isn’t a sign from God about where I need to sort my head out, I don’t know what is.
By the time I reach the Cathedral’s great double doors, I know the service has already started, but thanks to the organ cranking out “Holy, Holy, Holy,” my steps don’t carry, and only one old biddy gives me a disapproving look as I take a seat in the last pew.
The church is packed, and it’s only then I remember that it’s All Saints’ Day.
I’m a terrible Catholic.
I have been my whole life. I’ve always questioned. Always defied. Always criticized.
I’ll go for months without attending mass. But I can’t seem to leave the church entirely.
A big, loud part of me hates the church for all the ways it oppresses and disenfranchises people. Women, mostly. Homosexuals, too. All the ways it gets Christianity wrong. All the hypocrisy. All the rigidity.
Papal infallibility, my ass.
But there’s also something about sitting here, feeling the vibrations of the organ music in my chest. The hum of voices, including my own voice as we say: and also with you that soothes me.
And it’s not about disappearing into the crowd. It’s more about feeling held. Held by something bigger than the crowd.
Bigger than me.
I don’t know if it’s Catholic. I don’t even know if it’s Christian.
Maybe it’s greater than both. Encompassing both.
But I feel the same way in the field, stepping into the coolness of a cave or examining the walls of a mine. A presence that is both quiet and eternal.
Then and now, I reach for it. Bow to it.
Forgive me for being such a failure.
I shut my eyes and lean into this space.
In its quiet limitlessness, a hush falls over the chatter in my head. Even the certainty that I am a failure loosens its grip.
God—whatever God is—has to be more than anything I can conceive, right? More than anything anyone can conceive.
But most of us can’t get comfortable adrift in a sea of mystery. So we grab onto scraps of knowledge, old stories that have been passed down for millenia, visions and prophecies and poetry and legend, and bind them together until they make a raft that’s buoyant, if not water-tight, a place to lean back on as we stare up into an endless and fathomless night sky.
And we tell ourselves—and each other—if we just stick to this raft, we’ll get to our destination.
I can’t shake the notion that this is what religion is. And maybe not just religion. Maybe philosophy and politics too. Maybe social structures: monarchies, patriarchies, dictatorships, tribes, and governments. Maybe any ideology that tries to make sense of this life.
Most people need that raft. They need it so badly that anyone who doesn’t cling to it, who dares to let go and just float, is a threat to their very existence.
So they say, Get on the raft if you want to live. Don’t dip your feet into the water. Don’t tip the balance. Don’t try to build a better raft. Don’t examine the bindings and the bundled sticks beneath us too closely. Exist on this raft exactly the way we tell you to. If you don’t, you’ll ruin everything.
I think I’ve been in the water most of my life, holding on with one or two fingers to the edge of the raft where Mom and Dad and Bear and Maggie and everyone I’ve grown up with crowd together in the center.
The problem with half holding on is that the ride is rougher than being completely on the raft or drifting free in the water. You’re jerked around, cresting and falling with the raft, but feeling the pull of unseen currents below. All the while, your friends keep screaming for you to climb on already.
What would it feel like to just let go? I want to let go and just swim. Float on my back with the sun on my face. Kick through the swells. Taste the salty water for myself. Dive deep and see what’s underneath.
What I don’t know and what I’m a fool for not asking is if Stella’s on a raft—maybe not the same one I’m barely clutching—one that she’s comfortably atop. Or if she’s half-holding like me.
Or if she’s free in the water where I’d like to be.
What I’m afraid of is if she asked me to climb aboard with her, I wouldn’t be able to say yes.
I open my eyes, and the sounds of the congregation’s murmuring rush back to me. The mind-numbing It is right to give Him thanks and praise.
I stand up from the pew, ignoring the scandalized scowls, face the double doors, and let go.
Chapter Twenty-Five
STELLA
My six a.m. alarm goes off Monday morning, and I don’t let myself snooze it. Instead, I switch on the lamp, whip off the covers, and walk with my head held high to the bathroom.
A cold water face scrub, one ponytail lift, and a quick change into leggings and a long-sleeved top, and I’m at my bedroom door.
Just not out the door. I grip the knob and take a deep breath. In and out.
Lark is never out there this early. I’ll get breakfast started—it’s going to be blueberry bran muffins, so once I pop them in the oven, I don’t have to hang out in the kitchen until the timer goes off.
I have a lot to do today. And, sure, my heart feels like it’s been shoved through an apple corer, but the worst is over.
It has to be. Right?
Because I’ve never let myself bottom out the way I did yesterday, and I’m not going back there.
Today is a new day.
With that thought, I open my bedroom door and freeze. Because the light is on in the kitchen. Which is beyond weird.
I’m always the first one up. Always.
I bite my lip. When Lark texted me yesterday afternoon to say we needed to talk, I put him off, telling him that I understood and that it could wait. He pressed, but since he wasn’t home, it made the decision easy for me to take Maisy to a matinee showing of Paw Patrol: The Movie. She was thrilled. I was numb. We grabbed dinner at Taco Sisters, and by the time we got home, Lark was upstairs, and I never left the safe haven of my corner of the house.
If he’s in the kitchen now at the crack of dawn to soothe his
conscience and let me down easy, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it together.
I press on the swinging door and nudge it forward just enough to peek inside.
“It’s just me,” Pen says around a yawn.
A throw the door wide.
“What the hell?!”
The last time I saw Pen up this early, she was on her way in, not out.
But a quick scan of the kitchen reveals a filling coffee pot and the dry and wet ingredients for my muffins already on the counter. I pre-mixed each last night and stored them in the fridge to make the work faster this morning.
I blink and realize that Pen is holding one of Nanna’s wooden spoons in her hand.
“What the hell,” I say again, softer this time.
My best friend simpers. “Just tryin’ to take care a you.”
Without warning, tears sting my eyes and I give a frustrated sigh. I cried enough yesterday. This has to stop.
“I can do it,” I say, moving to her and taking the spoon.
Pen rests her hip against the counter and crosses her arms. “Good because I was a little worried I’d mess it up.”
In spite of the threatening tears, I eke out a smile. “Not much to mess up.” I gesture to the two glass mixing bowls. “Just combine and stir.”
“Hmmph,” she mutters suspiciously. “There’s gotta be more magic to it than that. I was prepared to burn one of my summoning candles to invoke Estelle’s help.”
The mention of my grandmother has my throat tightening again. “I wouldn’t turn that down,” I say, the words wobbling.
Pen gives me a wistful smile. “You okay, suga?”
I nod, blinking away the hot tears. I peel the cellophane off the dry mix and aerate it with the wooden spoon. “Yeah. You know me.”
Pen’s lips pinch together. “I do know you, and that’s what makes this so hard.”
I blink at her in surprise. “Why’s that?”
“Because I feel like I nudged you to take a chance with him, and I know he hurt you.”
Hearing her put it into those words gives me some perspective. “No… No. First of all, this isn’t your fault,” I tell her firmly. “Second, he didn’t hurt me.”
My best friend cock’s a brow at me.
“Okay, I’m hurt,” I admit. “But it’s not his fault either. My expectations were too high.”
She scowls. “Stella—”
“No, it’s true,” I insist, flushing hot. “I thought it was the beginning of something, and, for him, it was something else. Something casual.”
Her look is wounded wrath. “He said that?”
“He—No. He didn’t have to.”
Pen stares at me for a while, her frown turning from murderous to confused. “Stella, what happened? You didn’t wanna talk yesterday, I knew to give you space, but clearly he put you in a hole.”
“I-I’m sorry about yesterday.” I flush red again, embarrassed that I couldn’t deal.
“Hush your mouth,” she scolds. “You know I’m here for you. Don’t you dare apologize for taking a few hours to sort yourself out. What do you think this is? The Hunger Games?”
I snort a laugh. “I’m just disappointed in myself for falling apart. That’s all.”
“Well, don’t be. You’re human. We all fall apart now and then.”
Really? Falling apart seems like an irresponsible indulgence. I woke up this morning ashamed for my selfishness yesterday.
“Stella? Stop thinking you have to be The Iron Lady. You get to have a meltdown once in a while. I’m here to help when you need me, and I’m not the only one.”
I heave a wet sigh. “You know it’s not easy for me to ask for help.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have the understatement of the millenia.”
I roll my eyes at her hyperbole.
“Are you gonna tell me what happened? More than just what you texted me yesterday about being denied your Walk of Shame and having a Wallow in Shame instead?”
I wrinkle my nose at my remembered histrionics. Stalling, I uncover the larger mixing bowl of wet ingredients—applesauce, coconut oil, orange juice, and vanilla and start cutting in the flour, oat bran, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
“Stella.”
“Fine,” I huff, clapping the now empty dry bowl into the counter. “Saturday night was nothing short of spectacular.”
Pen stares at me. “Well, obviously, I can see why that would make you inconsolable on Sunday morning,” she deadpans.
“Your snark is not as amusing as you think it is.”
She glares.
Here goes nothing. I sigh. “I fell in love with him.”
Her amber eyes widen.
“No.” I shake my head, needing to speak the truth. “I realized I’d fallen in love with him.”
“And you told him?” Her eyes are still bugging out.
“Of course not!”
Pen blinks. “Then what happened?”
“We…” I don’t think I can put into words what that night meant. And I don’t think I’d want to if I could. Jesus, when I think about what I showed him—
“We shared something. And I got the wrong idea.”
She frowns. “How so?”
I press my lips together. When I speak, my voice is tight and raspy, but I get through it. “I thought we’d wake up together Sunday morning, and come out here as a couple.” I swallow against the sailor’s knot in my throat. “Instead, I woke up alone.”
The soft way her brows draw together, I know she’s hurting for me, and I have to look away.
“At first I thought I’d just woken up to find that he’d gone up to change or brush his teeth or start coffee,” I say, shrugging. I don’t want to feel again the slow sinking, the unwelcome dawning of disappointment.
And the humiliation. My God, I couldn’t bear it.
“When he didn’t come back, and there was just radio silence… When I knew it couldn’t have meant to him what it meant to me—” My voice catches. I make myself meet Pen’s eyes, and I know she understands.
She presses her lips together. “I feel responsible.”
“You’re not,” I insist.
“I practically launched y’all together.”
I shake my head. “No, you didn’t. We were drawn together from the start.” I fill my lungs and exhale slowly through the ache in my chest. “You were right. And the Tarot was right—”
“Of course the Tarot was right,” Pen blurts incredulously.
It almost makes me laugh. Almost. “I mean that it was time to take a real chance with my heart.”
Her soft frown is all concern. “Even if your heart gets broken?”
I shrug. It feels like it’s breaking already. I’m not a fan. But what I’ve felt for Lark is bigger than what I’ve allowed myself to feel for any other man.
And what if there’s a man out there that I could share that with for more than a couple of stolen nights?
What if there is someone who will want to wake up with me not just the morning after, but every morning?
I can’t help it. I picture Lark in that role, and the pain is searing, but if it’s not him, maybe I’m ready to try to find out who it might be.
“Maybe it’s about time my heart got broken.” I shrug again. “Maybe the cracks will be big enough for someone else to find his way in.”
Pen presses her lips together and nods, but the glint in her amber eyes has me bracing. “That’s hopelessly cheesy,” she says, still nodding. “But you’re right.”
I try to swat her, but Pen is quick and dances away, laughing.
And now, I do laugh. A little. Then my eyes fill with tears. Because I don’t want someone else to find his way in.
I want Lark.
“Oh, Stella.” Pen launches at me and squeezes me in her familiar, bony hug.
I hug back and let myself cry for a moment. Just a moment.
I heave a watery sigh and pull away. “So maybe I’m not yet ready to let someone els
e crawl through the cracks,” I croak, swiping my eyes with my knuckles. “Not just yet.”
“This is going to sound cheesy too, but just give it time.”
I nod, throat tight. “Yeah.” I turn back to the muffin batter, grip the solid wooden spoon, and continue mixing. “I just need to keep busy.”
Pen looks at me doubtfully. “Busy?”
“Yeah. I have a business to open. That oughta help take my mind—” But I can’t even get through the thoughts before a fresh wave of tears attempts an assault. I shake my head and refuse to let them fall. Really, yesterday was the day for tears. Today is the day for picking up the pieces and forging ahead.
I clear my throat hard.
“I don’t have any clients today. I’m reaching out to two contractors to get bids for the conversion work,” I say, tilting my chin in the direction of the dining room. I sniff and stand straighter, the tasks ahead already demanding my attention and energy. “And I’m going to let Tessa know that I’ll be leaving at the end of the year.”
Pen’s look of delighted surprise gives me the bolster I need. “Good for you.”
My smile is bittersweet because I am proud of myself. Truly, I am. This is a big step. And giving my notice means that I’m really ready to take this chance on myself. And maybe this heartbreak is just the kick in the pants I needed to inspire me to pull the trigger.
I thought about it all night. It was like after I cried for hours yesterday, I felt like I’d shed something. Something that was holding me back. Maybe it was fear of failure. And once I shed that, what was left behind was the drive to begin something new.
So launching my business is what’s on the agenda today. And it’s just the thing to keep me busy.
“I’ve got to file for my LLC, register with the Department of Revenue, and apply for an EIN.”
Pen wrinkles her nose. “Boring.”
I shrug. It might be boring, but I can handle that.
I take out two muffin tins and line each with cupcake wrappers. That way, Nina, Livy, and Lark can take muffins on the go today if they need to.
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