doesn’t even think of me anymore. I think the part I hate the most is not knowing what might have happened if I’d stayed.”
“You mean stayed for the last night at the wedding?”
“Yeah. Even though I’m convinced we were just heading toward a messier, uglier breakup further down the road if I’d stayed…part of me still wonders if maybe he would have proven me wrong.”
Geri heaved a sigh, squeezing her friend’s knee. “You know…I get why you did it. It’s part of who you are. You’re Strong Jackie, because that’s who you’ve always had to be. But the other side of that coin is knowing when to tell someone what you’re feeling. Especially when you’re involved romantically.”
“But I told him how special he was to me,” Jackie protested.
“Did you tell him you were afraid that it wouldn’t work? Or that you worried he worked too much?”
Jackie deflated. “No. It just…seemed obvious.”
Geri sent her a severe look.
“He openly and freely talked about his lack of free time. How he could barely get one day off per year—one day per year, Geri. That doesn’t sound like he’s in any position to have a girlfriend. Not one he’d actually spend time with, anyway.”
“But leaving without talking to him about it? Like, actually opening up to him and hearing his side and hashing things out? You were only ever shooting yourself in the foot.”
Jackie’s pout deepened. “I wasn’t shooting myself in the foot. I was protecting myself.”
“Were you protecting yourself? Or were you really just punishing yourself?”
Silence settled between them as Jackie mulled over her best friend’s words. Jackie finally sighed, feeling the clarity of her friend’s perspective settling over her. “You know I hate it when you make too much sense.”
Geri laughed, squeezing her friend’s arm. “It’s because I love you. I want you to be happy. And every time we’ve met up or gone for coffee this past month, you’re still moping.”
“I’m not moping—” Jackie started, but then cut herself off when she noticed that hard look from Geri returning. “I was moping a little.”
“You should talk to him. At least text him from your new number so he has it.”
Jackie sighed. “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
The friends chatted for a little while longer before Jackie scooped up her mail and headed back to her car. Now it was time to head to her newest assignment—back to Marin. It was a quick little house-sitting gig that had cropped up earlier that day. And good timing, too, since the family with the dog named Henry’s assignment got cut short.
She punched in the address to the new assignment in her GPS and got moving. Geri’s words haunted her the whole way there.
Because she was right. Jackie’s defense mechanism—pull away before anyone could hurt her first—toed the line with self-punishment. Instead of taking a risk and diving into something that might be worthwhile and fulfilling, she’d chosen to just end it herself to avoid the threat of hurt or rejection. To just punish herself by closing herself off to the chance of anything, good or bad.
Is that really how you want to start the next chapter of your life?
It was a thought that kept returning to her ever since the wedding. Now that she was less than a year away from graduating and beginning her long-sought-after career, it stood to reason that other things in her life should begin clicking into place.
But she wasn’t going to be obtaining new results if she didn’t try new things. And ditching Daniel on the last day of the wedding, well…that was just one more example of how she tried to protect her heart. She’d been battered enough by growing up in the system. Wasn’t that enough?
She gripped the steering wheel of her car as she drove back to Marin, the cycling thoughts making her teeth clench.
As far as she saw it, she had two options: she could continue to do things as she’d always done—close off, shut down, run away—or she could take a risk on something new.
Choosing college and an eventual career—that had been a big risk. And it was working out. She was succeeding.
So maybe her love life deserved the same risk-taking.
Just this once.
By the time she arrived to the new assignment—after a little bit of circling the wrong block—she had made her decision. She wanted to reach out to Daniel. And if it meant she had to show up at his penthouse and stand by the front door until he came home? She’d do it.