Kierst squeezes my hands. “Think of it this way. You and Stu were done years ago, but you were too set in your ways to admit it. This is good. For both of you. Eventually, you need to stop watering dead plants.”
Again I don’t say anything. I avoid her eyes, and Dax’s, for that matter, wondering how the fuck this turned from roasting Stuart into an intervention. Tonight was supposed to be fun.
“You’re mad at me.” She says it like a statement.
I pull my hands from hers. “I think you should stick to analyzing your own life and leaving mine alone.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re probably right. And I’m done. Said my piece. Over to you, Dax.”
She stands, picks up the empty glasses from the coffee table, and takes them to the kitchen. I’m left with the option to stare at my hands or meet Dax’s green eyes, which I do.
“Do your worst,” I say, but inside I think I’m done with this activity. It’s starting to seep in. That sinking feeling you get when you’ve made a mistake but then gained enough perspective to overanalyze every wrong turn or poor life decision. All of the wrongs that led you to invest four years in a man who irons his boxer briefs. Yes, Stuart kind of sucked. I’m starting to see that more and more. Still, I’m the sucker who stayed with him for so long. Doesn’t that mean, by default, that I sort of suck too?
“Well…” Dax clears his throat, looking as uncomfortable with all of this as I am. “I think Stuart’s an idiot. He never appreciated what he had, and I think you deserve someone better.” I’ve heard this statement before. From friends. From my sister. It’s a canned response for anyone who has taken a flying elbow to the heart. But the way Dax says it makes me believe that I deserve more than a man who left my twenty-seventh birthday party after an hour because it conflicted with his CrossFit.
Our conversation is interrupted by the aggressively loud buzzing of Aunt Livi’s doorbell announcing the arrival of the pizza.
“I’ll get that.” I get to my feet, grab my wallet, and move as fast as my tequila-fueled body can take me out Livi’s apartment door and down the stairs that lead to the back door to her bookshop. I return a few moments later with a steaming cardboard box that makes drool pool beneath my tongue.
The living room is empty. The sounds in the six-hundred-square-foot apartment hint that Kiersten is on the phone in the bedroom and Dax is in the bathroom. Aunt Livi is in the kitchen, pulling plates from the cupboard. I set the pizza down on the counter beside her. Before I can remove my hand, she covers it with one of hers and squeezes. “How are you holding up there, poodle?” She opens the pizza box, loads a slice onto a plate, and hands it to me.
I take it and walk around to the living-room side of the two-stooled galley window that separates the little kitchenette from her living room.
“Heart is numb thanks to Kiersten’s bartending skills. The rest of me wishes I could go back to the night I met Stuart so I could tell him to fuck right off.”
As the words leave my mouth, I feel it. That pang of anger, deep within my chest, aimed not at Stuart but myself. It grows and grows until it becomes so heavy it snaps, then drops to the pit of my stomach, where it acts as a solid reminder of all the times I knew Stu and I weren’t meant for forever and ignored it. A reminder of all the other things I could have done if only I would have had the guts to walk away from the relationship.
Aunt Livi shakes her head and tuts. “Oh, you don’t mean that.” She opens the box and pulls out her own slice of pizza, her gray eyes assessing me with concern.
I take a bite. The hot cheese burns the tender skin on the roof of my mouth, forcing me to hiffaw until it cools enough to swallow.
“I do. If you told me your Prius had a flux capacitor, I’d be hauling my ass back to the night I met Stuart at that bar, where I’d tell him to move right along.”
Kiersten appears at my side at the same time Dax enters the kitchen. My sister hands me another margarita. A peace offering. I take a long sip and sigh into my once-again half-empty cup. “I gave four of my prettiest years to that man and have zero to show for it.”
“You have me.” Dax says it so quietly from the corner of the kitchen that I almost don’t hear him. “We met that night as well, remember?”
Yes, we did. I almost forgot. Dax was there that night too. It was Stuart’s birthday party, but Dax had tagged along with a high school friend who was a co-worker of Stu’s. We had a few fleeting moments together before Stuart swept in, ready to woo.