Toby saw you, a voice in the back of my head said. He did care about you. And can you blame him for not trusting you when you pushed him away like every other person in his entire life has, from his family to his exes, the second he didn’t meet some crazy standard of perfection? The voice, which sounded suspiciously like Toby’s, reminded me, “You said motive matters, Beale!”
“Toby was right,” I said softly. “Mase, I love you, but I’m an adult human being capable of making decisions, and I don’t need protecting. I knew who Toby was before anything happened between us. He didn’t lie about that. The only thing he lied about was Jayd.”
“And from what Mason said, that situation wasn’t really his fault either,” Fenn said, stroking a comforting hand down Mason’s back. “For better or worse, he had reasons for not telling you. He was trying to protect Jayd from being outed. And if he knew about the bullshit between Young Rafe and Jayd…”
My stomach sank. “He did. I told him.”
Fenn grimaced. “Then Toby was doing you a favor by not asking you to keep a secret he thought might test your loyalty.”
I tried hard to hold on to my anger, since the alternative was feeling guilty and sad. “He still should have told me. If he’d told me, I’d have…” I broke off and shook my head.
God, I wasn’t sure. And if I wasn’t sure, how the heck should Toby have been?
My anger evaporated entirely.
“I was wrong,” Mason admitted softly.
“Yeah,” I agreed. That seemed to be going around.
“I need to go find him.” Mason nodded resolutely and headed for the door. “Or at least call him. Apologize profusely.”
“Right behind you, Loafers,” Fenn said, grabbing a pancake off the tray and stuffing it in his mouth.
In the bathroom, I found Toby’s toiletry bag right where we’d left it the night before. I lifted the bag to my nose so I could take a breath of his sexy cologne—the happiest breath I’d taken all morning—and I got a crazy surge of hope because he wouldn’t just have left this stuff behind. That meant he was coming back, right?
But when I brought the bag into the bedroom, my heart dropped again because my bracelet sat on the dresser, coiled atop a note that said simply, Beale: Your soul mate is one lucky guy. Thank you for everything, and I’m truly sorry. —Toby
I stared at the stones for a long moment before I picked the bracelet up and held it tightly in my hand. It seemed crazy that just a few days ago, I’d felt such an intense connection to these stones when now they felt empty.
I felt empty.
My phone buzzed with a notification.
LITTLEJOHN: Not with me. Dropped him at the airport last night and he’s back in NYC. You done fucked it up, Goodman.
I clutched the phone in my fist and threw my head back to the ceiling.
I remembered Toby on the boat the other day, talking about his family. Saying he’d left town after they’d hurt him and he’d never gone back.
LITTLEJOHN: He was in tears, in case that matters.
I shut my eyes tight and sucked in a breath. It mattered. Fuck, just thinking about Toby crying made me want to cry, too, and in that minute, when it was way too late, the truth hit me: I’d fallen in love with Toby Elford.
He was not the soul mate I’d intended to manifest for myself. He was snarky and cutting, self-absorbed and high-strung. He didn’t trust me. He might never love me back.
But none of that seemed to matter to my heart.
Toby had told me that I was enough, even when everyone else seemed to be saying something different. He’d helped me clear the stumbling blocks in my mind so I could choose what I wanted for my life, even if what I wanted was what I already had. He’d believed in me and made me believe in me.
The man deserved more than an apology… he deserved to have someone clear a path for him.
It was time for me to stop waiting for the Universe to hand me good things; it was time for me to start making them happen.
17
Toby
Help Me Hagatha (Issue #2444)
Dear Aunt Hagatha:
I’m having trouble with my cat. Every time my boyfriend stays over, she pees on his belongings, and it’s really starting to cause a strain in our relationship. He’s tried to be patient, and I understand why he’s upset, but I love my pet and I hate to think of surrendering her. There doesn’t appear to be a simple solution here. What should I do?
Pitiful in Platte
Dear Pitiful,
Simple and easy are two different things, but if you truly love your cat, you’ll fight for her. When you love hard, you’ll fight harder, even when it seems hopeless. I suggest talking to your vet. Also, check out the articles linked below. I’ll be thinking of you. Check back soon.
Love,
Hagatha
“Tobias, are you even listening?” Jeanette’s disembodied voice came through the phone as I sprawled on my sofa, staring out my ginormous curved window at the city skyline.
That view over Chelsea, which was worth at least a couple million dollars of the apartment’s 3.5-million price tag, looked wrong.
The sky wasn’t blue enough.
Big, blocky buildings littered the horizon where palm trees should have swayed.
Nothing in my cramped apartment smelled like coconut sunscreen or fresh air.
Even the roar of engines and honking cars muted by the thick glass windows jarred me, when a few weeks ago, they’d been my usual evening lullaby.
I’d been back in New York for five days. Not a single appliance, dubiously domesticated cat, or rogue watercraft in the city had tried to murder me in all that time, which was probably for the best since there were no shining-armored knights around to save me, but somehow the lack of death-defying experiences made my days feel flat…
Or, fine, maybe it was the lack of knights.
Either way, nothing about my life worked right anymore. My ultra-plush mattress was hard as a rock when Beale wasn’t holding me, I couldn’t watch movies without wanting to redeem the villains, for all the good that would do, and it was hard to fall asleep and even harder still to wake up. I was getting grocery deliveries of Peanut Butter Party ice cream with such regularity that I’d told Franz the doorman to just give the delivery guys my key when they came through, and I swore I could feel the cholesterol hardening my arteries in real time.
In short, I was unhappy to report that breakups—even fake breakups of impossible relationships—were no more fun at thirty-five than at nineteen, and in fact, they seemed to get worse as you aged.
Like chicken pox, or whichever pox it was.
At least when I was a teenager, the most reactionary thing I’d done to get over a breakup was to find a rebound hookup. Now I was contemplating far more drastic action, like quitting my job and moving to Malé for real.
Someone needed to call Aunt Hagatha to stage an intervention.
Oh, wait.
“Tobias!”
I sighed and turned toward the ceiling. “Jeanette, precious, my eardrums are perfectly functional,” I informed her. “I gather that you’re displeased with the content of my column today.” I studied my nails in the late-afternoon sunlight. “I’m not sure why. It was thoughtful, responsible advice, and I linked to subject matter experts. My commenters seem to relate to it.”