I Think We Missed Our Turn - L.A. Witt Page 0,17

her, fully expecting her to be pissed off that we were screwing with her schedule, but to my surprise, she was really nice about it.

“I’m always here, so take your time,” she told me, sounding perfectly pleasant. “Drive safely—the weather is terrible right now.”

“We will,” I said. “Hopefully we’ll see you sometime tomorrow. Probably in the early afternoon.”

“Oh good! I’ll have lunch for you.”

That was a surprise. I’d been expecting her to be upset, but now she was making us lunch? Okay. Cool. I could live with that.

We ended the call, and I filled Marques in after he’d taken care of our rooms.

“Thank God.” He handed me my keycard. “Otherwise we’d have to tell your dad to talk her down.”

“Are you kidding? He’d tell us to get our asses on the road and get there tonight.”

“In this weather, when we’re both tired as shit?” Marques snorted. “Really?”

“For a Zoe Neelan collection? You better believe it.”

He quirked his lips and seemed to think about it, then nodded. “Okay, I can’t argue with that.”

We headed up to our rooms, which were next to each other, and we said goodnight. I was kind of bummed to be away from him now. We’d been all but joined at the hip since we’d left Virginia Beach, and I always liked his company anyway. Last night, I’d pretty much just faceplanted in bed as soon as I’d gotten into my room.

Being on my own right now felt…weird.

All day yesterday and today, I’d expected a text or call from Tanya, but I’d had to keep reminding myself we’d broken up. Then again, maybe she’d call to try to work things out. Or to tell me again to go fuck myself.

In the end, my phone stayed quiet the whole day. And I…wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Or rather, about how little I felt about it. The texts and calls were kind of part of my daily routine, so it was weird not to hear from her, but it was…

I felt like a dick for it, but it was a relief. Not hearing from her. Not being with her. There were still some loose ends we’d have to tie up as far as what we did with our apartment and our things, but otherwise, it was over.

I wasn’t worried about her trashing my stuff or something out of spite. For all we’d frustrated the hell out of each other, that wasn’t her. She might get on Tinder and have some revenge sex in our bed. Or hit up one of my friends who we both knew would take her up on the offer without a second thought. But I wasn’t worried about her doing something destructively vindictive.

At this point, I mostly just felt guilty for being relieved, and I felt stupid for waiting so long to end things. For one, there’d been any number of opportunities to do it face to face instead of over the phone (though maybe I’d needed to do it over the phone so I wouldn’t be a coward and back down). Now that it was over, it was like the anticipation was worse than the aftermath. Like I’d worked myself up, put it off, expected the absolute worst, and then—that’s it? If it was going to be this easy, then why the hell did I wait so long?

Okay, except it hadn’t been easy. Ripping off a bandage hurts less than doing it slowly, but it still hurts.

This just…didn’t hurt as much as it seemed like it should. We’d been together for four years. Now that was over. I should’ve been grieving. I should’ve been looking through pictures of us on my phone and on social media, thinking about all the good times and wondering if I’d made a mistake.

Right now? Hell, what could I say—right now, I wanted to download Tinder, cast a net, and go embrace this newfound freedom. I wished Tanya the best, but we were obviously terrible for each other, and now that I’d let go, I wanted to enjoy life without being weighed down by constant conflict.

I also couldn’t deny that spending the day on the road with Marques had helped a lot with shaking off that weight. I hadn’t told him about splitting up with Tanya. I hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and we’d found plenty of other things to talk about instead. The traffic and weather were stressful enough. We didn’t need to add a breakup to the mix. Especially since I wasn’t all that