Maybe that had been a good idea, after all. Maybe it had been genius. After all, if you wanted someone to fuck the real you, you had to be visible. Maybe her problem for so long had been that she’d dated guys who’d never known the real her. What was it she’d thought they would like about her, anyway? The wall she’d put up? The clothing she wore like a costume? The fake confidence?
She’d been herself tonight, as much as she could manage right now, anyway, and Gabe had liked it. So maybe...
#2—Ask your friends for help.
Girls’ night was coming up. The same night as her birthday. Maybe she’d feel more mature. Maybe she’d be more experienced. She’d have Lauren and Isabelle alone and she could ask for their advice about Gabe or her dad or her job. And she had days to work up to it.
But first she had a date with Gabe.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dear Veronica,
I’ve received an amazing job offer that would allow me to move from Wyoming to a big city on the West Coast. I’ve always wanted to live somewhere fast-paced, and even though the budget would be tight, I could swing it. But I haven’t mentioned this offer to anyone else. The problem is my fiancé. He can’t move and he would never want to live in the city. I love him with all my heart, but if I stay here and get married, I’ll never get to follow my other dreams. I’m only twenty-five. Maybe I’m not ready to live in Wyoming for the rest of my life.
—Torn
VERONICA STARED AT the screen. She’d alread
y opened this email three times. And closed it twice.
She hadn’t received many letters this week. It was a slow time of year, but she wondered if the live Dear Veronica readings were cutting into the normal mail she received. Maybe people wanted to save up their questions for the live event. Regardless, she hadn’t yet found another letter that was compelling, sounded true and focused on a dilemma she hadn’t answered already.
But she didn’t want to answer this one.
She considered digging back through the letters she’d received months ago but felt like a worthless coward even thinking about it. This woman needed help, and she needed it quickly. So...
Veronica opened a new text window, copied the letter into it and then stopped with her hands poised over the keyboard.
Unless it was a subject she knew nothing about, she tried to go with her first instinct when answering a letter. Her gut response. Then she’d close the letter, let it sit for a few hours and go over the question and her answer more deliberately later. She’d found that the key to being a good advice writer was recognizing which of her responses were based on personal triggers and then working through it from there. You could never be completely objective or you’d lose all the style and insight people were looking for, but you couldn’t base every answer on “Here’s what I’d do.”
And that was her problem with this letter. She wanted to respond by banging out in all caps, “DON’T GIVE UP YOUR REAL LIFE FOR A FANTASY OF HAPPINESS IN THE BIG CITY, BECAUSE THE BIG CITY IS NOTHING BUT LIES AND LONELINESS.”
Yes, it was her first instinct, but it was maybe a tiny bit too subjective.
She ordered herself not to close the text window, then flexed her fingers and rolled her shoulders. “Okay,” she said. “Ready.” Then she dropped her hands to her lap and let her head fall back until she was staring at the ceiling.
This woman had written in because she had dreams. Veronica knew what that was like. She’d lived for nothing but dreams for so long. Dreams that she could leave this place and find love and success and a spine. She’d wanted to find herself, as if her confidence and strength had been hidden in a scavenger hunt that wound through the dirty, damp streets of Manhattan. How many miles had she walked through the skyscrapers and the parks and the subway stations, looking for things that had never existed?
She’d never been anyone. Just an amorphous, undefined child. Who the hell was she to tell this woman what to do with her life?
Veronica closed the window and dragged the email into her Unanswered Letters folder. The letter behind it was still on the screen, yet another query stained with virtual tears over a cheating spouse. She got them every week. Some from men, some from women. Some were filled with nothing more than tortured suspicions. Some writers knew all the gritty details.
Maybe she should answer this one despite that she’d published another two months before. It was clearly a common problem. Veronica told herself she should be happy she’d never had a partner, because that meant she’d never been cheated on or tormented by the fear that she would be.
But when she thought of Gabe MacKenzie, she wasn’t sure she cared what he ever did with other women, as long as he did it with her, too.
The thought of Gabe broke through her haze of self-hatred. After all, if she’d stayed in New York or even found herself a boyfriend here in Wyoming, she’d never have kissed Gabe. And kissing Gabe had been...priceless.
She smiled stupidly at her useless hands. They might not have much to type today, but they’d been smart enough to touch Gabe’s chest. To explore him a little. She turned her phone over and pulled up her text messages. His was at the top. I can’t wait, it said.
He couldn’t wait. For their second date. An evening hike tonight.
She wasn’t quite sure what to think of that, a hiking date on a Saturday night. Her first impulse had been giddy joy that he wanted to do something she actually enjoyed. But now in the light of day it didn’t seem very...sexy. And she desperately wanted to be sexy for him, but she couldn’t wear a push-up bra or high heels on a hike. Then again, he did seem to like her legs, and they’d be exposed. Who the hell was she trying to impress with her not-quite-B-cup breasts, anyway?
And whether it was sexy or not, a hiking date would be her. The real her. Not the Veronica who’d gone on dates with stockbrokers and salesmen and middle-management bankers in New York. She’d faked her way through those dates just as she’d faked her way through everything. She’d gone to the same kinds of restaurants her dad liked instead of the homey, comforting dives she really loved. She’d gone to art shows instead of Broadway musicals, because corporate ladder–climbing twentysomething men couldn’t schmooze at the theater. And she’d worn the highest heels she could stand, along with the nicest secondhand outfits she’d been able to assemble.
Looking back, she had no idea what those men were supposed to have liked about her, anyway. The layers of falseness she’d painted over her less-than-adequate self?