Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,52
about. Rohan was a serial dater. But the job? She’d always wondered if part of the reason girlfriends never stuck was that he was married to his job.
“I think I’m having a third-life crisis. Is that a thing?”
She laughed, but only from relief—only because she was happy he wasn’t dying. “I don’t know. I’ve heard of midlife crises and quarter-life crises. So you’re either ahead of the curve or behind?” She was teasing, or trying to. She didn’t know what to say. Her brother was normally easygoing. This kind of drama was not his style.
“I just…I don’t know.” He rested his elbows on the railing and stared out at the lake. “I turn thirty in the fall and I started thinking, what am I doing? What have I done with my life?”
“Um, you have a BA from U of T and an MBA from Wharton and you’re a VP at Boeing—or I guess you were a VP at Boeing—and you have an awesome condo in Chicago? And you serially date amazing ladies that you break up with after a few months?”
“Yeah, but what does all of that mean?” He was still resting on his elbows on the railing, but he turned to her with a strange, almost pained look on his face. “I have money. I have fancy degrees. But I work for a company that makes airplanes that are destroying the climate. And in my free time, I spend hours running, like, literally running. What’s it all for?”
“Oh my God, you are having a third-life crisis!”
“Yeah.” His straightforward agreement alarmed her.
She went in for a hug, forcing him to peel his arms off the railing. “Well, I’m glad you came home, then. How can I help?”
He gave her a short, hard squeeze before letting her go, and when he pulled away he looked more like his usual self. “Number one, by not telling Mom and Dad. I need to get my head on straight before I tell them I quit my job.” She nodded. “When Dad said he was going to sell the store, it sort of tipped me over the edge.”
“Oh my God! You want the store!”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Holy shit, Rohan!”
“I just…When he said he was going to sell the store, it was a little bit…”
“I know.” It was a little bit…fill in the blank. Shocking. Confusing. Sad. Scary—for her, anyway, because it made her realize how much she’d come to rely on the store as her backup career.
“It’s not like I want it,” he went on. “So I don’t know why it threw me for such a loop.”
“I know. It did me, too.” He put his elbows back on the railing, but instead of looking out on the lake he dropped his head in his hands and started massaging his forehead. “I just need some space. A break from my life.” He was silent for a long time, and she thought he was done talking, so she laid a hand on his back. He lifted his head and looked out over the lake. “I was running along the lake at home with Kara. We were toward the end of a long training session, and my building was in sight. I just suddenly didn’t want any of it. Including Kara, which is terrible, I know. She was sweet and fun. What is wrong with me?”
“That part I can’t help you with, because I ask myself that about you all the time.”
“It was just that she was so agreeable.”
“You dumped your girlfriend because she was too agreeable?”
He huffed a laugh. “I think I did. I meet these women that on paper I’m compatible with, and then it’s so…boring. Kara was into the same stuff I was. She worked in the same industry. She was…”
“Perfect. Perfectly boring.” Maya saw his point. It was hard to imagine getting excited about someone who always agreed with you.
“Yeah,” he said. “So the day after this run, I was getting a massage. My usual therapist was on vacation, so I was seeing someone new. She wasn’t using enough pressure. I could barely feel it. For a massage to work, you need some pressure, you know? Some friction.” He shrugged. “I started to think maybe that’s true in life, too?”
Maya could not help but laugh. “So you had a massage-as-metaphor epiphany and bailed on your whole life.”
“Pretty much.” The corners of his mouth turned up as he looked at her. But he grew serious again as he pushed off the railing. “But you