Page 40 of Thirst For Me
Even this dump.
She pops her head in as I drop my duffel bag and suitcase on the bed.
“You’re not actually going to unpackright now,” she says. “It’s Saturday night! Let’s have girl talk and do our nails. You need to chill, babe.” She perches on the corner of the bed as I unzip my suitcase open and lay it flat.
“I know, but you know I can’t sit still when I’m stressed.”
“But I think sometimes you need to. You’ll burn out.”
She watches as I start putting clothes away in the minuscule closet and search the corners for evidence of moths and rodents. Thankfully, I find none.
“You’ve gotta process what happened,” she says.
“How?”
“By feeling all the feelings, sitting with them, building some tolerance for dealing with them.” Sophie’s into things like therapy and feelings in a way that I can’t comprehend. Paying someone to let me emote at them?No. “That’s how you build resilience. Then you do your best to let them go. If they come back up, you do it again. If you just stuff them away without examining them, you’ll get angry.”
“I’m already angry.”
“See?” She tosses a pair of balled-up socks at me. “So, tell me. What exactly did Kyle say when you talked to him today?”
Yeah. So that happened.
As soon as I got my phone—and my coffee mug—back from Mason’s bartender, I had a very tense conversation with Kyle. I wasn’t planning to talk to him yet, but he called almost as soon as I turned on the ringer, while I was still in the bar. Mason had retreated into his office and shut the door, I was still reeling from our conversation, and I really wasn’t thinking straight when I answered.
“Honestly, he was petty as hell. I think he’s still mad but trying to pretend he’s not because he’s so above it. He said he was calling because he ‘wants his vinyl back.’”
“Just like the Gotye song,” she says sadly, like,Can’t he even be original?“Next he’ll be changing his number.”
“One can only hope. He said he’d have a ‘friend’ come get his records. Can you imagine if he senther?”
“Even Kyle can’t bethatout of touch.”
“Can’t he, though?” I give her a look. “I think he was taking my temperature. Like, making sure I wasn’t gonna do anything dramatic. You know, show up at his house and make a scene in front of the neighbors. Dump the dirty laundry he left at my place on his lawn. I don’t think he even remembered I’m out of town. Which is extra special since the whole reason I came here was to spend time with him. I guess he’s already wiped clean any memory of our lives and future plans together.”
“Babe, I’m sorry. He’s a dick. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty clear with every condescending word he breathes that he blames me for everything. Including losing the investment because I don’t actually deserve it. And ending up single because I just don’t have my shit together.”
“So, basically the worst things you fear about yourself,” my best friend points out.
Which is when all the emotional buildup from this whole terrible week threatens to bust down the floodgates and Ialmostburst into tears. I bury my face in a T-shirt and try to scrape myself together.
“Oh, Si. I didn’t mean to almost make you cry. I know you hate crying.”
“You didn’t. Life did.” I take a deep breath, blink away the unshed tears, and hang up the shirt. “Hedid.” In the back of my mind, I wonder if I’m really talking about Kyle, or ... Mason.
A man I just met.
How gross, that I could let him make me feel this shitty about myself.
And also, where did my internal man picker go so fucking wrong over the years?
I need you to leave.
I can still hear his voice, see the look on his face, jaw set and blue eyes burning with determination as he said those words to me.
“You’re just ... in a slump,” Sophie says kindly.
