often than not.
Shaking my head, I ease my hand away from Cade’s and put it in my lap. I’ve dreaded knowing I’d have to admit the truth to him at some point. I guess I thought it might never happen or it would happen later than this.
But after last night, I don’t want to lie to him. Not about anything, even what I do here at the restaurant or the reason why.
Unable to look up at him, I stare at the silver and gold design on the table and begin. “I never call myself anything fancy. I know Alex likes to say I’m some kind of chef, but that’s not true. I have no formal training, and until last year, all I ever did here was wait on tables sometimes for extra money when I was in high school.”
That’s the easy part. Now comes the hard part of what I have to say.
“Last year, I was in school for psychology. I was a grad student and life was going just as I planned. Then in a matter of weeks, my life turned upside down.”
“What happened?” Cade asks, probably thinking I’m going to say something like I failed a class.
If only it was that simple or that minor.
I look up at him and try to smile, but I can’t fake it when I have to tell him the truth about what happened. “I fell apart when something in my life changed.”
Those aren’t the words I know I should say, but using the word breakdown always sounds so damn pathetic. I don’t want to tell him I had a mental breakdown.
He doesn’t say anything, but I see on his face he’s confused. I don’t blame him. I’m almost talking in code because I dread having to admit the truth in case it chases him away.
“This time last year, I was engaged to be married. My life was perfect, at least I thought it was. I was well on my way to the career I’d planned for years, and I had a fiancé who I thought wanted to get married like I did. I found out that wasn’t true, though, one night when I walked into his apartment and found him in bed with her.”
“Damn, Hailey. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t remember much after that. I drove back to my place somehow—God only knows how because I was a mess—and I crawled into bed. And then I didn’t get out of bed for months. By the time my parents stepped in, I’d lost thirty pounds and I’d failed out of school so I didn’t have any money to pay rent or my car payments anymore, so the bank repossessed that.”
The look on Cade’s face is the one I see when I tell people what happened. Not too many people have gotten the full story, but I always see a mixture of horror and sadness looking back at me. Pity sometimes too. I hate seeing that, but I understand why someone would feel that way when they hear what happened.
Thankfully, I don’t see pity in Cade now. I don’t think I could handle that.
He remains silent, but nods his understanding. I know why he has nothing to say. I get it. I wouldn’t know what to say either if someone told me this story.
But I want him to know the whole truth because if we’re going to keep seeing one another, he deserves that from me.
“So since I was such a mess and my parents weren’t sure what I’d do if left to my own devices, they had me come here every day to keep an eye on me so I didn’t do anything to hurt myself. I wasn’t suicidal, though. I just didn’t care about myself or if I kept going. I didn’t see any reason to.”
My eyes fill with tears like they do when I think about those days. Now I can’t even imagine feeling that way. I don’t know that person I was then, and it hurts to remember how little happiness I had in those days.
“Making sweet things gave me reason to go on. I found some kind of joy in that, so my parents encouraged it. I know it probably sounds strange, like how could that help someone come back from falling apart, but it did. Every day I would come in here and go back to my little spot in the kitchen where I could hide out and play with ingredients to make things. At first, they were just for