Page 101 of Snowed In with Benefits

She can’t finish that sentence. Of course she can’t. If you’re unhappy with a good match, you bury it. The match is more valuable than your happiness. The perceptions of others is where happiness comes from, and if they can’t see the thing that makes you happy, it doesn’t exist. That’s what she’s taught me. That’s how she’s lived her life. She has no idea what to do with me, with this. I can sympathize with that and still mourn the mother I would have liked to have during this fraught moment in my life.

“I should go,” I say when the silence stretches beyond my capacity to hold it. “I just wanted to see you and let you know that I was back.”

Dad heaves himself out of his chair and opens his arms to me. I cling to him, inhaling his scent, feeling like a small child in his embrace. He releases me and Mom gives me a polite hug, pressing a quick, desperate kiss to my cheek before letting me go. She loves me, in her way. I know she does. She just doesn’t know what to do with things that don’t fit into her mold.

I leave feeling saddened. The walk back down the driveway is quieter than the walk up, the stained-glass windows at my back now instead of glaring at me from the front. I get in the car and sit there for a minute, not turning the key, just looking at the house in the rearview mirror. It looks the same as it always has. Neat lawn, trimmed hedges, the kind of house that looks like it has its life together from the outside. I used to want a house like this. I used to think this was what success looked like, a mortgage you couldn’t afford and a yard you maintained for the neighbors. Now it just looks like a very expensive box that my parents climbed into and pulled the lid shut behind them.

The weight of their expectations doesn’t weigh as heavily as it used to, but it’s still there. It’s less that I don’t feel like I’m enough if I don’t live up to those expectations, and more that I wish they were more open to seeing me and knowing me as I am. Their expectations only serve to disappoint them, because I’m never going to be that person.

Several days pass and Christmas is getting closer. I’m settling back into my apartment, shaking the rust off routines that are older than my relationship with Preston, imprinting myself back into this space.

I make coffee in the mornings, just for me, and it’s too quiet while it brews. I got used to the sound of somebody else in the kitchen, the clink of a mug, the scrape of a chair, Emmett’s boots on the floor. Here it’s just the coffeemaker gurgling and the neighbor’s TV through the wall. I cook dinner for one and it feels wrong, the proportions all off, too little food in too big a pan. I keep accidentally making enough for four and then staring at the leftovers like they’re evidence of something I’m not ready to name. I go on walks in the morning because I went on walks at the cabin, but the walks here are different, all sidewalks and traffic lights and people who don’t look at each other. No creek. No foxes. No cardinal. Just pigeons and exhaust and the sound of my own shoes on concrete.

More than once, I pull out my phone to text the guys. I want to tell Hunter about the funny exchange I had with the barista this morning. I want to tell Beau about a bird I saw on my morning walk. I want to tell Emmett about a shop down the street that only sells hand-hewn wood items from local artisans.

I don’t. I keep my phone face-down and ignore the pull to share my life with them. I left them, not the other way around. Is reaching out even an option? Would they even want to hear about the little pieces of my life that make me happy without them in it? No, of course not. Who would? I consider trying to mend bridges before sending those little snippets, but I don’t even know what I would say.

I’ve spent the evenings editing photos, the same way I used to at the cabin. The last few days, I’ve been editing older pictures. This evening, I finally bite the bullet and start editing the pictures from the cabin. There are hundreds of them, and all of them do something to my chest.

Emmett’s hands working a piece of wood. I remember those hands on my body. I remember the little pot of balm those hands carved for me. I remember the feel of them on my face when he kissed me for the last time. I squeeze my eyes shut and a tear slips out. Without touching the photo at all, I click to the next.

Beau’s profile as he looks out the window toward the tree line. There was something there, a bear or a deer or something that wholly captured his attention. I know it was an animal because of the look on his face. That soft, honest, open look that he never gets around people and always gets around animals. I don’t touch that one, either.

The next is Hunter, laughing with his glasses pushed up. The light is reflecting off his glasses, making him look like an anime villain. The comparison makes me want to laugh, but laughing makes me want to cry. Heaving a shuddering breath, I leave that photo untouched and move on to the next, the next, the next.

The Christmas tree with our ugly makeshift ornaments. The foxes playing in the snow. Ugly Christmas cookies by the fire. That damn cardinal in the godforsaken tree outside Beau’s stupid window. It all presses so hard on my chest that it’s hard to breathe. I miss it all, more than I’ve missed anything ever before in my life. I cry myself to sleep, having edited exactly zero photos.

The next day is Saturday and I wake up in the morning determined to give this an honest shot. I’m lonely, right? That’s the problem, isn’t it? Well, I know more than three people in this world, and I’m sure plenty of them will be happy to have me back in the fold. I think of Stacy first. She’s the wife of one of Preston’s friends, but she was always nice to me.

The thought sits funny in my stomach for a second, the fact that the first person I think to call is someone I only know because of Preston. I scroll through my contacts and it hits me, slowly and then all at once, that almost everyone in my phone is connected to him somehow. His friends’ wives. His colleagues’ girlfriends. People I met at his events, his dinners, his world. I had friends before Preston, I know I did, but somewhere along the way I stopped reaching out to them and they stopped reaching out to me and now I can’t even remember the last time I talked to someone who knew me before I was his. That’s a terrifying thing to realize on a Saturday morning in your pajamas. I don’t sit with it long. I text Stacy.

ME: Back in town. Looking for a night out. Are you up to go out?

The answer comes faster than I’d expected.

STACY: Of course! The girls and I were going to go to Baroque’s Bar tonight. Meet us at 7?

Something unclenches around my heart. I was expecting rejection, or at least awkwardness, but she’s nothing but sunshine as always. Smiling, I text her back.

ME: I’ll be there.

I spend the morning and afternoon deciding what to wear. Since these are Preston’s friends’ partners, I choose one of the dresses he bought me, paired with the matching shoes. I leave my hair out and wavy rather than flat-ironed, and I keep my makeup minimal. I look at myself in the mirror and make a face. I look… fine. Just fine. I’m wearing the right clothes and my hair and makeup are my taste, so I should be happy with the look, but I’m not. It’s just… fine.

I get to the bar at ten to seven and immediately spot Stacy at the bar. She waves me over, and as I get closer, I realize that everybody else is already here. Jessie, Taylor, Liz, and Madison, none of them known for being early. I smile at them, already feeling like I’m missing out on important context.

“We’re already a round in,” Madison tells me. “Let’s get you two glasses to catch up.”

I accept the wine gracefully, wishing that it was whiskey. I down the first glass as they all watch me, then they cheer and clink their glasses as we sip on the second round together.

“So, let me tell you about this woman I met in the boutique this morning,” Stacy says. “Okay, you know me. I’m not judgmental. But if you’re working in a designer boutique, you should have a certain look, you know what I mean?”

The other women nod knowingly. Stacy proceeds to tear the woman apart in sugar-coated language, everything from her cheap haircut to her weight to her orthopedic shoes. I have nothing to contribute to the conversation, but everybody else does. I desperately down my third glass of wine as the gossip ramps up, contributing nothing but weak smiles to the conversation.

Eventually, after Madison and Taylor excuse themselves to the bathroom, I excuse myself to go get some air. Everything feels so fake and forced and awful. I never noticed before how catty these women are, and I know that’s on me. I was always so desperate to be accepted by them and their group that I never stopped to think whether or not I could accept them.

I weave through the crowd, heading for the patio. As I’m passing the little alcove by the bathroom, I hear two familiar voices. I know I shouldn’t eavesdrop, but I hear my name and I pause.

“—ran away. Right out of the church.”