Page 21 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
But then reality came crashing in again.
We pushed through the double doors into the cool night air of May in Rhode Island—still clinging to the tail end of winter,with spring lurking around the corner. The scent of damp wood and thawing earth hit me, and I sucked in a breath that didn’t taste like panic and community judgment. My shoulders lowered a fraction.
Adele bumped her arm into mine. “I think you’re building this up in your mind to be more than it is.”
“You don’t get it. You were born here. Everyone accepts you by default. I have to prove myself.” The words came out sharper than I intended, edged with something that tasted like envy and a lot like grief. Adele had roots here. I was still trying to figure out if the ground would even hold me.
Cheryl stopped and leaned against the weathered wooden exterior of the town hall and crossed her arms. “Okay. Let’s talk this through.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s already done. Finito.” Maybe if I stopped talking about it, I could pretend just for tonight that this didn’t really happen. That Glamma hadn’t just publicly implied Marc and I had been harboring feelings for each other for two decades.
Which I hadn’t been. At all. Neither of us felt anything positive toward the other.
Obviously.
Adele raised an eyebrow, her mom-friend powers activated.
I exhaled through my nose. “Fine. The yoga classes to help the animal shelter passed. What else is there to say?”
The edges of Adele’s lips curled up. “It did pass.”
“And that’s …” Cheryl waited for me to finish her sentence, and when I made no move to do so she did it for me. “Good. It’s good.”
“But …” The word slipped out before I could stop it.
Adele’s smile widened like I imagined a cat does when it starts chasing laser pointers. She was so damn good at making me face what I didn’t want to. “There it is.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Yes, you can,” Cheryl said, her bluntness, usually reserved for me in private, came out in full force. “You’ve done something similar to this before. You even said so.”
“But this time I have too much to lose if this goes wrong?—”
“It won’t,” Adele insisted.
“But it might.” I crossed my arms tighter, digging my nails into my biceps.
Cheryl shook her head. “Okay, let’s go with this pessimistic attitude of yours. Animal yoga goes off the rails, and the residents of Ruby River think you did a shit job … what then?”
“They hate me.”
“What then?” she asked again.
I glared at her. “They kick me out of town.”
“What then?”
“I’m getting really annoyed?—”
“What then?” Adele and Cheryl said together, like the world’s most irritating chorus.
“Fine! I have to go live with my parents in their pristine suburb in Seattle where no one talks about anything real, and I feel more alone than I did before my aunt died, and her ghost will haunt me for ruining the only legacy she left me—the only place I’ve ever felt like I might belong. And Marc—” I stopped.
Both of them leaned in.
“And Marc what?” Adele asked, way too innocently.
“Nothing.”
