No One Else (The Ladies Who Brunch 2)

Chapter16

Amelia

Charlotte: Are you coming to brunch?

I toss my phone on the coffee table and pick up the tube of cookie dough again, gnawing on the end as another tear falls from my eye.

It’s Sunday morning, and I should be at Frankie’s right now drowning my sorrow in mimosas and commiserating with my best friends about the bomb that Ethan dropped on me last night. But I haven’t left my couch since I ran through my door and threw myself down on it as soon as I got home—well, except to retrieve the tube of cookie dough from the fridge to drown my sorrows in about five minutes ago.

Staring up at the ceiling, I replay the last few weeks on repeat in my mind, torturing myself with how happy I was just a few days ago to how I ended up here now, alone and miserable, missing the boy and the man that had me thinking I had found my future.

But look at how wrong I was…

On the outside, everyone would assume I have a handle on my life. I feel like I’m on solid ground in every facet, except for when it comes to love. Hell, I even advised my best friend to put boundaries in place when she decided to enter into a fake relationship because I know that’s what you should do. But when it came time for me to do the same, I threw caution to the wind and did whatever I felt like doing in the moment as soon as Ethan entered my life. I acted impulsively. I sacrificed who I was and who I knew he was for the chance to be with him, hoping at the same time that I could change his mind and we could create something unique and powerful.

Being with him was unlike any other relationship I’d been in. He was addicting, even in the worst ways, with his commanding and irrational persona. But then, those were the same qualities that made me feel wanted and desired by him, a feeling any woman can relate to. But when I found out he was divorced and had a child, it seemed like all the versions he showed me of himself made sense. And when he opened up to me, I saw how beautiful of a man he truly was—until he shattered my heart last night.

Throughout my twenties, I prided myself on using a list of criteria for how I would pick my men—not too loud, agreeable and not argumentative, good-looking but not hot—and I rarely ended up hurt, while many of my friends, including the girls, would nurse indescribable heartbreak.

I always picked the safe guy, the one with very few red flags, or any flags, that made him addicting or gave him the power to destroy me.

Now I realize that Ethan was the exception to all of my rules. He was the type of man I had been avoiding my entire life because I knew the devastation he could render if I let him. And boy, did he do one hell of a job breaking me apart.

I lose track of how long I stare up at the ceiling before I hear a knock on my door.

“Amelia! Open up!” More banging. “I swear, you’d better have a good excuse for missing brunch!” Charlotte shouts as I groan, roll off the couch, and head for the door. “You’d better be sick or…” Her words stop as soon as I open the door and she sees me, Noelle and Penelope standing right behind her. “Oh hell…”

I take another bite out of the tube of cookie dough, and then my lips start to tremble. “I’m sorry I missed brunch, okay? I just…”

Charlotte rushes toward me, encasing me in her arms as pieces of cookie dough fall out of my mouth while I sob. I don’t know what I was thinking, not letting my friends be there for me, but I just couldn’t leave my house today. Not today…

“Amelia?” Penelope asks beside me, rubbing my back. “My little Be Delia, what’s wrong?”

“I…Ethan…Oliver…”

“I think she’s trying to tell us something,” Penelope says mockingly as Noelle reaches for the tube of cookie dough from my hand, removing it slowly.

“Ya think?” Charlotte moves us further into my house, and I hear the front door shut, but I cling to her for dear life while we continue to stand there, avoiding lifting my head to look at them. My friends let me have my moment, the same way I would do for them because sometimes you just need to cry out everything you’re feeling.

When I finally feel like I’ve gained some composure, I raise my head and breathe in a shaky breath. “Ethan and I broke up last night.”

“What?” they all say in unison as we move to the couch, and I take the tube of cookie dough back from Noelle.

“Start from the beginning, babe,” Charlotte suggests, continuing to rub my back from the side where’s she’s sitting next to me.

I spend the next several minutes filling them in on the last week since, as of last Sunday at brunch, I was boasting about how in love with Ethan I was and all the things we had planned together in the coming weeks.

“You heard him actually say he never wants to get married again?” Noelle confirms.

“Yes. And we both told each other where we stand, so what was I supposed to do?”

“I mean, I get what you’re saying, and hell, I even agree with what you did. You stood up for yourself and what you want. But do you honestly think you two can’t work this out?” Charlotte asks.

“How do you work this out? He doesn’t want to get married ever again, and I do.” I shake my head, letting a few tears run again. “The thing is, deep down, I knew he might feel this way. It would only make sense, but I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to have faith that things would be different between him and me, that the way he felt about me would be stronger than his fear and disdain toward marriage. But I was wrong, and now I just feel…” Taking a deep breath, I admit what’s causing me the most heartache right now, “Stupid.”

“Look, you convinced yourself that you would be the woman to make him change. Any woman can tell you that they’ve been there a time or two with a guy,” Penelope says, and the other two girls nod in agreement.

Hell, I’ve had many clients think the same, so I know I’m not alone, but it doesn’t make me feel better at the moment.

“Letting yourself get wrapped up in Ethan doesn’t make you a failure, Amelia. It doesn’t make you any less of a professional or a woman. It just makes you human.”

“Yeah, well, this side of being human sucks.” I chomp the tube of cookie dough again as Noelle winces.

“You know there’s actual edible cookie dough you can eat now, right? The kind that doesn’t come with the risk of contracting salmonella?”

“Newsflash, Noelle. We’ve all been eating raw cookie dough our entire lives, and only a rare few have died from it. I take the risk.” I gnaw at the end of the tube again, crunching down on the chocolate chips as they hit my teeth, trying to find solace in the sugar but having no such luck.

“Sorry. I’m just trying to look out for you.”

And then something internally snaps. “I wish I had been looking out for myself!” I shout, flinging my arms to the side as a chocolate chip goes flying across the room. “I should have known better. I should have listened to my gut when it told me that getting involved with him would only lead to heartbreak.”

“Even though you’re scaring me a bit right now, Amelia, like you might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I support you, girl,” Penelope declares. “Let it out, sister.”

“I should have never said sorry to Ethan for walking away.” I grow more emotional again within seconds, the emotional rollercoaster I’m on sending me up and down hills of feelings. “He’s the one that drew a line in the sand. He’s the one that put the limit on what we could be. And because I want more, I’m supposed to apologize? Fuck that.”

“Oh, Amelia’s cussing! I love it!” Penelope claps her hands as she bounces up and down in her seat.

“I’m just so angry and mad, and…” Here come the sobs again. “Sad, you guys. I’m really freaking sad. I…I love him. I love his son. I thought I found the one, and now…”

Charlotte pulls me into her chest as chocolate drool falls out of my mouth, and Noelle grabs the cookie dough again. “Shhhh. It’s okay, Amelia. It’s okay. We’re here. Cry it out, honey. It’s gonna be okay…”

And that’s the last thing I remember before I fall asleep on my friend.

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