“Nothing has happened with Rowe. Well, not really.”
“Yeah, that’s the part I don’t get,” Violet admitted.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve been mooning over that man since the first second you laid eyes on him. Literally the first second. If I believed in cheesy bullshit like it, I would say I swear it was love at first sight. But I don’t, so I won’t. But you have been into him for years. And that man looks at you like you’re a goddess or something. So why hasn’t anything happened? We will circle back to that ‘not really’ once we cover the basics,” she added, brow raised.
Suddenly, Malc’s words from the woods came racing back to me.
Someone’s gotta have you, Billie. You can’t take on all their shit, and have no one to turn to yourself.
Maybe the reason I hadn’t been able to move on, to let it go, was because I’d hoarded it all. Because I’d been embarrassed. Because I’d been much more hurt than I should have been seeing as we hadn’t ever been an item.
Maybe sharing it with Violet would help me let it go finally.
It would be nice to start feeling good again, feel like myself again.
“He didn’t want me, Vi,” I said, hearing the rawness in my voice. Hell, I felt ripped open just saying it.
“What?” Vi asked, swinging her legs off the couch to face me fully.
“He didn’t,” I said, rapidly blinking away the tears I felt stinging my eyes.
“Oh, come on. When have you ever been insecure about all—“
“He told me he didn’t want me, Vi,” I told her.
“Maybe you misinterpreted him?” she suggested.
“His exact words were ‘I want to make something very clear. You and me, we are never going to be a thing. So you need to stop trying. It’s getting sad.’”
“That motherfucker,” she snapped, jaw getting tight. “Oh, he’s lucky he got his ass out of here before I heard that. I would have cracked another couple of his vertebrae.”
“He’s allowed to not like me.”
“The fuck he is,” Violet growled, so serious that I managed to feel a smile break through the sadness that had been building in me. “And even if he was allowed to not like—which he’s not because you’re fucking amazing—letting you down like that? That’s not cool. I can’t believe Malc hasn’t beaten his ass over… you didn’t tell Malc, did you?” she asked, reading it on my face.
“I haven’t told anyone.”
“Anyone?” she asked. “Not even your mom?”
“Not even. No one.”
“That’s just… that is really not like you,” she said, lips pursing a bit.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I… I don’t know. It was embarrassing, I guess.”
“You? Embarrassed?”
“I know,” I said, sighing out my breath.
“Come. Sit,” she said, patting the seat beside her. “Now,” she continued when I joined her on the couch, “I think we can both agree that the feelings crap, that is your wheelhouse, not mine. But you need someone. I’m here. Brain dump on me. You’re, you know, mentally and emotionally… constipated,” she decided, getting a snort out of me.
“You’re not wrong,” I admitted, raking a hand through my wet hair. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I told her. And as soon as I started talking, I could feel the dam inside breaking. Everything was bursting out. “I was really… I don’t know… crushed by what he said.”
“He should have been the one crushed. Under a steel-toed boot. Preferably mine,” Vi grumbled. And I loved her borderline homicidal ass.
“It’s not like me to be so stuck on something like this. It’s not like it was the first time I’ve been rejected in my life. I’ve never cared before. I don’t understand why things were so different with him.”
“Maybe because you liked him more than the other people who have rejected you?” Vi suggested. “I mean, you never get hung up on someone. What did you grieve for like ten minutes after you broke up with your high school boyfriend? And he popped your cherry.”
“I hate that phrase. Virginity is a social construct.”
“Yeah yeah yeah hippie-sex-goddess-lecture later. Right now, we need to talk about this Rowe thing.”
“I don’t know, Vi. I was definitely always into him. And I think I was certain that it was only a matter of time before something happened with us. So, it was like having the rug pulled out from under me, I guess.”
“Maybe you loved him,” Vi suggested, shrugging. “And not in a ‘You love everyone because you think we’re all connected’ way. In a big way.”
“I couldn’t love him.”
“Why not? You can’t say you didn’t know him. You knew him for years. Feel free to tell me I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. Because I don’t. I probably know more about neuroscience than I do about being in love. But it just… it seems like the kind of shit we watch our cousins go through when they love someone, don’t you think?”