I’ve tried to talk to her and dad many times about going to therapy. About talking things through with each other. But those conversations have gone nowhere. I gave up on talking, and just continued doing. Saving. Helping when I can.
But now that I’m here at the shower, Greyson’s blue SUV parked in the spot beside ours, I am thinking about Ford. Nonstop.
What if he’s, I don’t know, super successful, or he’s aged well, or his picture perfect wife and kids are here? I’m proud of my choices. Proud of my path. But I’m struggling a little right now in both my personal and professional life. I’d strongly like to avoid any reminders of where I’m falling short, or how I’m fucking up.
“Hosting duties got you nervous?” Julia asks from beside me, one hand on her swollen belly. “You know it’s just a baby shower, right? Y’all really didn’t need to do this.”
“Yes, we did. And no, I’m not nervous. No, wait, that’s a lie. Maybe I am a little nervous.”
“About running into Ford?” she asks.
My friends know about my history with him. They know we haven’t seen each other in almost ten years.
They also know not to talk to me about him. It’s an unspoken rule between my girlfriends and I not to discuss Ford Montgomery. Years ago, it just hurt too much. Now it just seems silly, my nerves notwithstanding.
“So he is going to be here,” I say.
“He is,” she says with a nod, expression softening.
My stomach does a backflip. Lord save me.
I scoff. “God, how pitiful does that make me? Being nervous like this. Ford and I broke up years ago. This shouldn’t—I shouldn’t care this much, I know.”
Gracie grins at me in the rearview mirror. The two of us met a few years ago through Julia, and we’ve become close since. “It’s all right to care. He’s a really nice guy. Really good looking, too.”
I let out a little moan.
“Sorry, sorry. Wrong thing to say,” Gracie continues. “I just worked with him on the expansion at Holy City Roasters last year. And I guess what I’m trying to say is that I get it—why you’d be feeling off-kilter about seeing him. What happened with y’all, by the way? In college, I mean.”
I lift a shoulder, eyes still glued out the window. “We met sophomore year and pretty much got hot and heavy right off the bat. We were both free spirits back then—both English majors. We were obsessed with books and concerts and cheap beer. Ford was this lethal combination of brilliant student and dirty talking bad boy. He was always the one who wanted to rage at a party or get a new tattoo. And the things that guy could do in bed…the dirty things he would say in bed...” I shake my head. “Anyway. The college we went to was kind of an intense place. Campus was full of overachievers who wanted to become doctors and consultants and stuff. I never got caught up in that game, but over the years, Ford did. He ditched English for Economics. And then he ditched me the day we graduated.”
“Are you serious?” Gracie asks, wide-eyed.
I offer her a grim smile. “Yup. Five minutes after we threw our caps, he pulled me aside and said, quote unquote, that we’d never work because the futures we wanted were too different, and that my plans and my career choices weren’t ambitious enough. He was off to get his MBA at Stanford, and I was going to work at a barbecue restaurant in Atlanta. When we first started dating, he loved that I wanted to be a pit master. But over the years, his opinion of me clearly changed.”
The car erupts in a collective ouch.
It doesn’t hurt now. But Lord, did the pain of that breakup almost kill me when it happened.
I knew Ford had changed between sophomore and senior year. But I was still madly in love with him. How could I not be? He was kind (most of the time). Handsome as hell. Great in bed. Charismatic and interesting, too, even though he was increasingly obsessed with keeping up with our classmates.
When he pulled the rug out from under me, it sent me into a tailspin. For months I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep.
He never called. And I never called him, even though I wanted to. So badly.
To be fair, I was starting my first job at that barbecue joint in Atlanta (it was the hub of southern cuisine at the time, in my mind at least). Working eighty hour weeks, washing dishes and sweating my ass off tending to smokers, meant I had zero time for any kind of personal life.
Besides. Ford had made it sound like his mind was made up. He didn’t want a pit master for a girlfriend. He wanted a banker. A surgeon. Someone who’d chosen a stable, prestigious career path.