Feels Like Falling - Kristy Woodson Harvey Page 0,27
to deal with it. I shrugged. “Just make what you would make if you were having girls’ night.”
Diana nodded. “Perfect. Easy enough.”
With that, I grabbed my laptop—and my Trey—and headed up to the office to get some work done, leaving Diana and Marcy to work out the particulars.
* * *
When you get divorced, you have to choose one of a few well-established personas. Well, maybe some people don’t choose per se. Maybe they just are. There’s the bitter divorcée who blames her ex-husband for every single thing that’s wrong on the entire planet. The one who wallows in her self-pity forever, refusing to reclaim her life. There’s the divorcée who immediately jumps into another serious relationship like nothing ever happened. And there’s the one who goes through a wild phase, dating every inappropriate man (or woman) she can get her hands on. I had to choose which kind I was going to be before the kind I didn’t want to be chose me. So I settled on the free-spirited divorcée and practiced saying in my mirror, “It was a beautiful period of my life and now it’s over.”
That was my external persona. Outwardly, I was fine. Fine, fine, fine. I was grateful for our years together, for Wagner, for what Greg and I had shared, and now I was happy we could both move forward. Inside, I was anything but happy. I was sad to have lost someone I had shared so much of my life with. I was scared that I would never find anyone else and would be alone forever. I was embarrassed that I had to walk around, the woman scorned, with every Southerner and her mother doing the thing I hated the very most: pitying me. And, most of all, I was furious. Furious at Greg for not being able to keep it in his pants. Furious at Brooke for being such an opportunistic hussy. Furious at myself for being the kind of woman who calls another woman an opportunistic hussy and, worst of all, for falling for a man who I knew deep down, even from the beginning, could never give me the kind of partnership I wanted in this life.
And now, speaking of lifelong relationships, I was wishing that I hadn’t checked my e-mail one last time before my friends arrived. But I had. And the note at the top of my inbox was a charming one from my sister. Trey must have been busy, because he was pretty adamant about immediately transferring any e-mail from Quinn into its own secret folder in hopes that I would never see it. It wasn’t his worst idea, but the inevitable moment of reckoning had arrived. The subject line: My Previous E-mails.
I hadn’t read her previous e-mails because I knew what they said and, well, I didn’t want to hear it. But now I couldn’t help myself. I fell on the sword.
Dear Gray,
I know you don’t want to hear what I have to say, but I promise you it comes from a place of love. God doesn’t like divorce, and I am only thinking of you when I urge you to reconcile with Greg, to save your marriage. Think of Wagner. Think of your family. And, most of all, think of your immortal soul.
Love,
Quinn
I know everyone handles grief in a different way, and I guessed this was how Quinn was handling our mother’s death. But to go from being the ultimate party girl—and the ultimate devoted sister—to being solely focused on Elijah Taylor and his church was so extreme.
People almost always know when they are about to cry. There are warning signs: the tears welling up, a lump in the throat. Reading Quinn’s e-mail didn’t give me any of that. In fact, I only noticed the tears after they’d already started. Which made me realize that, despite my cool exterior, I fell into the divorcée category of total and complete mess.
I heard Diana’s voice saying, “Gray,” and she was beside me before I could pretend I wasn’t crying. The natural reaction to another person’s tears is to ask them what’s wrong. Diana didn’t ask. She sat down in the chair on the other side of my desk, looking right at me, and said, “Honey, I know it feels like your life is falling apart. Hell, your life is falling apart. But my life falls apart all the time, and what I’ve realized is that when your life falls apart, the universe is just teaching you how to