I wanted to resist, to keep avoiding the conversation, but I knew I couldn’t. It had been bubbling up inside me all day, and I wanted to let it out to my best friend. I explained everything that happened when Tom showed up and how things had been since then.
“So, needless to say, it’s been pretty miserable. I really thought things were going well between us, and that we might have another chance,” I said.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little harsh on Mason?” Stephanie asked.
“Excuse me?” Did you not hear anything I just said?”
“Yes, I did. And that’s why I’m saying I think you’re being a little too harsh. I think you had a snap reaction, and that now you need to talk to Mason about it.”
I let out a sigh and shook my head, stirring my coffee. “I just don’t know if I want to anymore, to be honest. It’s just so ridiculously much. I’m almost thirty. I don’t have time for this sort of drama in my life.”
“What you don’t have time for is missing out on what could be the best thing that could happen to you,” Stephanie said. “Did you stop to think for even a second that maybe Mason is just still madly in love with you and didn’t want to lose you again, but didn’t know how to go about telling Tom? You said he made that promise before the two of you reconnected. Maybe if you would have given him more time, he might have told Tom on his own.”
I could see her point. A new feeling of guilt crept into my heart.
After coffee with Stephanie, I headed over to my parents’ house to help my mom bring my father to a doctor’s appointment. It was just a quick checkup, but Mom still had trouble maneuvering dad by herself. On the way there, she looked over at me with a smile.
“So, how are things going with Mason?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Everybody knows the two of you have been seeing each other again. Have you made things official? Is it serious yet? Does this mean that you are committed to each other again, or are you just trying things out and seeing where they go while you’re still in town?”
She peppered me with questions, and I tried to deflect them, but they just kept coming. Finally, I let out a sigh.
“Things are complicated.”
“Complicated? Well, what does that mean?” she asked.
“It means I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”
I felt bad for cutting her off that way, but I needed the conversation to end. Fortunately, she didn’t push, and the conversation transitioned over to her already thinking about Thanksgiving. That was my mother’s signature. While some people started putting together plans for the holidays a couple of weeks ahead of time, she was in full-on Thanksgiving mode a whole season in advance.
It was a relief to just put my brain into another place and focus just on my parents for a while. The appointment went well, and I was glad to hear the doctor say my father was well on his way to a good recovery. The relief in the room was palpable, and my mother looked like she might burst into tears she was so happy.
I felt great as we left the doctor’s office, but as we were getting back in the car, realization dawned on me. I was so happy knowing my father’s struggles were nearing an end, but Mason was far from experiencing anything like that. Both of his parents were suffering through cancer. Both of them were struggling and making painful, difficult decisions every day.
The guilt that started when I was talking with Stephanie grew, and I vowed to talk to him at work the next day.22MasonI went into the bar earlier that day to go over the alcohol inventory. Ava’s recommendation to pay closer attention to the alcohol use when she first started working at the bar had stuck. Inventory had always been a part of running the bar, but I had to admit we were never stringently careful about comparing that inventory to the number of drinks we actually sold.
Going over that those first couple of times with a major eye-opener. I had no idea how inconsistent the alcohol use was depending on who was behind the bar. It meant on certain nights we were using one and a half to two times as much alcohol as we should have according to the number of drinks we sold. Once we started paying more attention to that and utilizing standard measurements, we saw a massive savings. The best part was that none of the customers even seemed to notice.
She was on my mind so much that when she walked through the door an hour before she was expected, I almost felt like I must have beckoned her to me by thinking about her so much. I was expecting her to just ignore me the way she had been since Tom came to town. Instead, she walked right up to the bar and flattened her hands on top of it.