Page 87 of There's Pumpkin About You
“To what?” she asks desperately.
“Tell me something, Wren. If you had the chance to move somewhere else—anywhere else—in order to do your job, would you take it?” Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t answer me. She simply stands there, rooted to the spot. “If you were given the opportunity to leave this ‘tiny town’ and everyone in it behind so that you could plan events in some big city somewhere, would you?”
“You heard them,” she says. “You heard Cally and Maggie talking about their gala.”
“I also heard you. When you told them you would move.”
She scoffs in disbelief. “Gus, I never said yes.”
“And you never said no either.” I pace in front of her, my fear and anger mixing together and flooding my veins with this unyielding energy. “How can I trust you? How can I trust you to stay when I was stupid enough to trust people when they literally told me they would never leave? My mom died, my dad left, Sam moved. They all leave, all of them! And given the opportunity, you would go and do the exact same thing.”
“Gus, I?—”
“Well, now is your time to decide, Wren. If you had to choose between your job or the people who love you, which are you choosing?”
She stutters, lost for words as I try and force a decision to be made. If my heart is going to be torn into pieces yet again, I want it done now instead of months down the line when I finally feel safe again. She doesn’t move, doesn’t even look to breathe, just stands there with her mouth wide open as she tries to find the words.
“Well?” I push, my voice rising.
“Gus, my job is…”
“More important?”
“Important, yes. It’s—” She cuts herself off.
“It’s what?”
After a minute—a devastatingly long-ass minute—she says the words which I hoped never to hear her say. She even has the audacity to look apologetic as she says them.
“It’s the one thing I have which I know will never let me down.”
ChapterThirty-Nine
WREN
Gus refuses to see reason.
He refuses to understand that my job is my life. I don’t deserve to be forced to choose between my job and my personal relationships before we’ve even really started a relationship, especially when it’s not as if it’s a choice he’s making, too.
He put me on the spot when there was absolutely no reason to and that is exactly why I gave the answer I did. Not to mention, he did so on the one night that he knew meant the world to me. I did what I had to do to protect my heart, something I should have done with Adam, and never did. I deserve to live my life without the fear of losing someone due to my choices. My job is what I gave to myself and so I should choose it every time.
It’s been a week. A whole long, tiring, soul-crushing week, each day feeling more hollow as it passes. I miss him, I will admit, but it’s for the best that I stay away from the man who will break my heart even more than it already is.
“So, can I ask you something?” Oakleigh asks, digging her hand into the bowl of popcorn that’s sitting between us on my couch. My heart grows heavy when I think about the last time we did this—the very night that Lee asked me to plan that party in the first place and told me about the farm that would change my life forever.
“Sure,” I reply.
“I was just wondering how much longer you were planning on being a mopey bitch before you realize that you’re both being idiots and decide to run to him and he parts those legs wider than the red sea?”
I stare at my best friend, astounded by her choice of words. Leave it to her to be so unbelievably blunt.
Wait, hang on…
“What the hell do you mean ‘both being idiots’? Last time I checked, I wasn’t the one who accused me of leaving before I even decided whether I was going to leave.”
Oakleigh sighs, sitting up and facing me in an array of sluggish movements, as if turning to face me is a massive inconvenience. “Alright, I’ve been meaning to have this chat with you for a week now, but I held off because I thought ‘hey, maybe she’ll eventually see sense and realize she’s being a silly bitch’ but alas, you’ve pretended to play dumb, so here we are. I’ve even had to call for reinforcements, because I’m not dealing with your denial by myself.”
She checks her phone before yelling, “It’s open!”
