He looked so happy, so warm and comfy, and his tone was so loving that Gia got scared. They were moving too fast. Yes, they’d known each other for twenty years, but not in this way. Was she ready for this?
He was treating her as if their engagement was real, and while she had deep feelings for Mike, so much had happened in such a short time she didn’t know if she could trust her emotions.
Mike tightened his arms around her, holding her close, their legs entangled willy-nilly.
Oh, but he made her feel good, better than she’d felt in ages. Being with him was easy and fun, relaxed and breezy. A man who was at peace with himself and his world.
She rested her head on his chest. She lay listening to his heart beating, strong and solid. Contentment stole over her, and she realized she wasn’t thinking about anything. She smiled. It felt like recess. A time-out from the craziness her life had become.
“Are you hungry?” Mike asked. “I have all the makings for breakfast burritos.”
“Oh yum. I’ll go wash up and then come help you in the kitchen.”
He kissed her forehead and untangled himself from her. “You can use my bathroom. I’ll take the guest bath. Meet you in the kitchen in ten.”
Smiling, Gia padded into his bathroom and caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her hair was all over the place, messy and tangled. Bedhead. Her eyes seemed wider and her cheeks hollower.
She took a quick shower and dressed in the clothes she’d worn the night before. She started to apply the makeup she kept tucked into her purse, then decided, Screw it. Mike thought she was beautiful no matter what. She had no one to impress. She could be herself with him.
That felt good.
How many times had she tried too hard to please guys in the past? After a late-night tryst, she’d sneak out of bed before her dates awoke, slipping into the bathroom to brush her teeth, scrub her face, and apply fresh makeup and then slip back under the covers, to act as if she naturally woke up like that.
Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she realized how silly she’d been. Thinking she couldn’t be herself in order to find love. That she was responsible for everyone else getting along. That it was her job to keep the peace at all costs.
Her family had put her in that role. Not intentionally, to be sure. But they’d done it nonetheless; and Gia, because she was naturally empathetic and easygoing, had been unaware it was happening.
And when she’d had flashes of awareness, she’d brushed them aside, buried the effects that people-pleasing had on her down deep, numbed out, and rolled with the flow.
The need to stay comfortable had kept her from growing as a person.
Laziness.
She wasn’t lazy about working a job. In fact, she used kitemaking as a method of zoning out. To her way of thinking, anger and conflict should be avoided at all costs and creativity gave her that escape.
Rather, she used people-pleasing as a way of going unconscious to her own needs. Instead of expressing her wants and desires and tolerating conflict, she sank into sleepwalking through life.
Laziness.
It had closed her off.
Oof!
She did not know what jostled this realization loose. Success with the pop-up store? The invitation from Pippa to make wedding kites? Working on the quilt that held so many memories in the fabric? Faking an engagement to get her sisters to sew the quilt in an underhanded bid for control? Learning that Madison had lost a baby, and Shelley had joined a cult? Finding out how Grammy and Darynda had hidden their love to please society? Sex with Mike?
All of the above?
This then was her wake-up call. Her invitation to move through life with increased attentiveness and to stop hiding her own wants and needs in favor of catering to the needs of others.
But first, she had one last task to finish before she could turn her attention to fully healing herself. One last person to please.
Grammy.
She had to make sure she and her sisters finished the wedding quilt before Grammy came home next week. Honor her grandmother’s last request while they still had time.
Suddenly overwhelmed, she felt tears pushing at the back of her eyes as emotions swelled. Emotions she’d been tamping down and avoiding for a very long time.