A tub of ice cream and a bag of potato chips isn’t all that good for me, but I told myself it was probably better than nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The thing I wanted to happen: secure in the knowledge that I’d done the right thing, I would feel very sad for a few days, then moderately sad for maybe a week, then satisfied that the worst was past, after which I wouldn’t have to feel sad at all.
The thing that happened in reality: the sadness of missing Sidney—of having hurt them and then not being able to talk to them about it—deepened over time until it became something closer to despondency. I didn’t want to do anything. I could hole up in my in-law unit for a little while, but Mason kept texting, then the girls, then Oscar, with Mason never really letting up.
I said I was sick. I said I had the flu. I said maybe I was getting better but I was still rundown and needed to rest. I skipped drinks. Twice.
I couldn’t face them. Not after they’d been so happy for me. For us. Not after I’d screwed up so spectacularly when trying not to screw up worse. Had Sidney needed to cancel the show? The more I replayed it all in my head, the less sense it made. Why had I run? Sidney was logical. If I’d just explained that I couldn’t do this, that it wasn’t in me, they would have understood. Probably.
Except whenever I started thinking about that, I remembered how I’d barely been able to breathe by the time I got to my car, and I’d cried all the way home, and for most of that night, and...
But I didn’t want to think about all that, so I tried not to.
I cleaned up the fish bowl, coiling the cords for the laptops Jack and I had used, making neat piles of things that should probably be carted away, like the trash can and the file cabinet. When Deb found me doing all that she told me to set it back up again; the fish bowl would be my base of operations until she decided where to put me.
She’d lowered her voice and added that since no one used the fish bowl, no one technically knew I was there, which might come in useful “down the line.”
I had no real idea what that meant, but one side effect of misery was that I didn’t really care. I liked the fish bowl. I felt comfortable there. I plugged my laptop back in and rearranged things so I had a sort of desk area facing the window.
In better days I would have taken a picture and posted it on Instagram with a trending hashtag about my new office. Instead I thought about doing that and realized it was way too much work.
For stretches here and there I wasn’t thinking about it. Us. Sidney and me. I got through Monday, then Tuesday, reporting to Deb in the morning, doing whatever she assigned me to do. I reorganized a storage room for all of Wednesday and most of Thursday. On Friday I covered a desk for someone who’d gone home sick in Deb’s department, which meant she got to show me a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have normally seen about her job.
When I accused her of grooming me to be her second in command she only winked and I acknowledged to myself that if I could feel happy, this would have made me feel happy.
Mostly I just felt tired. And still sad. I didn’t know why I couldn’t shake the sadness. It didn’t seem like Sidney and I had known each other long enough for me to be this sad. And we’d only been officially dating for a couple of weeks. Hardly any time at all, right? We’d barely scratched the surface of friendship, of...of love.
God, it was just...really sad, though. Seen from any angle, seen in a microscope, seen from space...really, really sad.
I thought my weak flu excuse had held up pretty well until Mia and Mason showed up at my house Saturday morning, calling my phone over and over from the driveway so I’d come let them into the yard.
“You look like shit.” Mason’s first words to me.
“Honey.” Mia paused. “He’s right. You look terrible.”
“Wow, thanks for coming over. You can go home now.”
They barged right in.
Mia made a press of coffee and poked through my cabinets while Mason disgustedly began shoving my dirty clothes (now making up an archaeological record of depression on my floor) into a hamper.
And I sat. On my bed. Watching them. And, after a few minutes, crying again. It was the kind of ugly crying that came with a sort of vague sense of relief, like popping a massive pimple. It was gross and it was messy, but it also felt inevitable and now, finally, it was happening.
“I fucked up,” I babbled through my tears. “I fucked up so so much.”
They came to sit with me, one of them on each side, coffee and laundry forgotten.
“Baby, you’re wrecked.” Mase brushed back my hair, his touch familiar and comforting. “What the hell happened? One minute you were happy and the next you aren’t on The Love Study and Sidney looks shell-shocked and neither of you show up for drinks.”
“Everything seemed fine at the wedding,” Mia offered. “Actually, I have no idea. I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”
I leaned into her. “It was your wedding, that’s all you were supposed to be doing.”
Her arm wrapped around me. “So everything wasn’t fine? I know it’s not fine now because Sidney looks—well, better than you do, but not great.”
“You’ve seen them? I mean obviously you’ve seen them. Are they okay? How are they?” I did not demand to know if they’d asked about me because they wouldn’t have. Boundaries and stuff.
Mia gave me a shoulder squeeze. “They’re not great, like I said. But how are you?”
“I don’t know. I thought I was fine, but then I started feeling bad, and I kept thinking about how I can’t do romance, everyone knows I can’t, and how Sidney did the sweetest thing for Valentine’s, they set up my perfect date, and I couldn’t get into it at all, and it felt so empty, but they were into it, and maybe the problem was me like Mase said, and—”
“Hold up, hold up. When did I say what now?”
“How I’m not romantic and Sidney obviously is and I was fucking it up all over again except this time I ended it faster so I couldn’t hurt them.” I tried to get words out between sobs, but it was hard. “I hurt you so much, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone like that ever again.”
“You broke up with Sidney because...you and I aren’t romantically compatible? Sister, you were right. You fucked up.”
“I tried to fix it—”
“No, not that.” He grabbed both of my hands, squeezing them. “I didn’t say you weren’t romantic, Dec. You’re plenty romantic. You just do it in a different way than I do, and that would have hurt both of us if we’d tried to stay together.”