Seemed like a small miracle that I’d gotten through the whole event without crying. But maybe by then I was kind of numb.
Plus… tequila.
I’d tried to have fun. Just keep it light. Keep dancing. Mingling.
Drinking.
I’d stuck with Danica most of the night, but we couldn’t even turn around without running into some famous musician one of us now knew. Like Johnny O.
I definitely got the feeling that he wanted to make out with me again. But then I attached myself to Amber and Dylan by the bar. I did shots with them, and I managed to shake Johnny’s attention. Pretty sure it probably just landed on someone else, and just as well. I wasn’t interested in getting involved with him on any level.
I wasn’t interested in getting involved with anyone.
That party was like a fairytale, it was filled with eligible men, and none of them interested me.
The only man I actually wanted to see wasn’t there. I was sure he was invited. But as always… Cary didn’t come.
Now
I lay on my best friend’s couch, staring at the ceiling.
Ash, Danica and I had come back to their house on Isabella Island, with Xander and Courteney and all the usual suspects, after the wedding.
Danica and Ash had gone next door to Dylan’s place a little while ago to get beer or something and hadn’t come back. Along with various wedding guests who’d crashed at Dylan’s place last night, a bunch of his family was over for the big barbecue tonight. Kids, teens, adults, babies. Apparently, one of Dylan’s sisters had some new boyfriend, and that was an event worthy of throwing a barbecue and inviting everyone they knew to come over and celebrate the beautiful miracle that was young love.
I was tired of feeling jealous of everyone around me.
I was too numb to cry.
And I was still waiting. Waiting for the nightmare to end.
I had music on. The coffee table next to me was smothered in white roses from yesterday’s wedding. And I was hanging on by a sad thread.
It was my last one. I was sure of it.
Dirty and frayed, it twisted idly, back and forth, as I dangled over the crevasse that was gradually cracking open underneath me.
I was hungover, too, which wasn’t helping anything. Thanks to an open bar and the fact that last night’s wedding was the most epic party of the year so far, I’d drowned my sorrows a little too thoroughly.
I wasn’t gonna just lay here all night, though. I had a barbecue to go to. I could hear people next door, at Dylan’s place, spilling out onto the back deck and into the yard. I’d be partying with them soon enough. Putting my game face on.
But I just needed a fucking minute.
Stop the ride. I need to get off.
Right about now, I was supposed to be helping my best friend and her husband make skewers for the barbecue. According to Danica, I was also supposed to be helping her plan my birthday party. At the end of the month, I was turning thirty.
I just couldn’t seem to muster a fuck to give about it.
Not. One. Fuck.
Three-and-a-half months had passed since Cary left that letter for me and I moved out of his poolhouse.
Ten weeks.
Seventy-two days.
And now I was decimated by the truth: that the album was done and Cary hadn’t reached out. That he wasn’t counting down the seconds until it was done, like I was.
That he wasn’t dying to talk to me. To see me.
He’d officially left me.
Obviously, he’d left me months ago. But only now, I knew it was true.
He wasn’t coming back.
Early in the New Year, less than two months from now, the Players would go on tour.
Danica would go with them.
And sometime after that, once their new album was also released, Dirty would go on tour. Maybe Brody and Maggie would ask me to go with them.
Maybe I would.
All I’d wanted was the Players’ album to be done. And now that I’d reached that precipice, and there was nothing beyond, I gazed out into the abyss, lost.
I was counting down the hours until I had to get my shit together and go back to work. I was supposed to be back in the city tomorrow to do some work for Maggie.
But right now… I just needed one more minute. Maybe three. Four and-a-half?