Page 36 of Almost Perfect
Dread clutched at my heart. Did that mean her mother was sending her on dates with these men? And how old could she have been to have a bedtime and also be doing that? I wouldn’t ask her, and part of me didn’t want to know if she’d been abused that way. But more and more, I couldn’t lie to myself and pretend I didn’t want to know everything about her. I did, and I hoped she’d keep telling me.
“Well, aren’t you two the cutest all cozied up at the table together.” Warrick flashed me a big smile and wiggled his brows like us sitting and talking quietly meant something.
My heart tripped at the realization that I wanted it to. That it did. I hadn’t shared intimate thoughts like this with a single person I’d dated in the last two months. I hadn’t talked this easily, this deeply, with Samantha after eight months together. She’d asked about my dad, but she’d barely understood my need to grieve losing Charlie. She tried, but she hadn’t lost anything, and I often wondered if it was possible to relate when you’d never felt that kind of pain.
Calla spoke before I managed to. “That was the fastest shower in history.”
“I had proper motivation,” he said, holding up his plate and sauntering over.
“I can’t fault you there. This is great. Thank you again, Wyatt.”
Her big brown eyes blinking at me, the way she smiled and laughed with my brother, the way she’d opened up… I felt myself barreling toward one plain truth. I could deny it and pretend this was attraction. I could remind myself she was leaving and there was nothing to be had between us. But none of that mattered, because when it came right down to it?
I wanted Calla Rice, even if she was the wrong woman for me.
FIFTEEN
Calla
Giant snowflakes jetted down in an endless flow from a gray sky. It’d been snowing almost incessantly the last two days. It was supposed to continue at least another twenty-four hours. I’d accepted that I’d be stuck up here in my little mountain hideaway, and embracing that had helped the restlessness.
I’d been scribbling pages of songs, some of which were halfway decent. I hadn’t gotten to the point of writing the actual music, but some had taken shape beyond the words. I should’ve brought a guitar, but I’d been scared it would sit in the corner and create a black hole where all of myshouldswould sit and judge me. The writing made hours at a time fly, and as much as the mountains themselves, it felt like the time spent with pen to page was healing me.
I pictured my heart like a small swath of fabric, shredded. Each word on a page was a stitch. Each breath of bracing mountain air weaved a thread of strength through me, slowly but surely repairing the rent places. It was a relief to have an outlet beyond tears, something that felt less like only pouring out, but filling me up a bit too.
And frankly, it helped pass the time. My cozy little jaunt here had a fair amount of boredom sewn in.
But after seeing the fluffy white landscape, I couldn’t resist. I pulled on my layers, prayed my jeans and the leggings I’d forced them over would do a halfway decent job of keeping my legs warm, and dove out the door.
After tromping around the cabin, I fell backward, breathless and truly light for the first time in what felt like years as I stared up at the flakes now pelting me and the ground. Cold seeped into the backs of my legs, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t actually that cold, and my body had warmed with the exertion of stomping through a foot of snow.
“Everything okay over here?”
Wyatt’s voice reached me where I lay, a little muffled through the hat pulled low over my ears and the way my head had sunk into the snow.
I raised a hand to show him I’d heard him but didn’t feel ready to speak. The last week of eating breakfasts with him had done something to me. It’d changed things between us, and I didn’t know why or how. Warrick had been at every breakfast save one, and that’d been breakfast burritos to go because Wyatt had a meeting.
The disappointment I’d felt two days ago as I wandered home, a piping hot burrito rolled in foil and tucked neatly into a paper bag cradled to my chest, had been ridiculous. By the time I’d reached the barn, I’d felt almost like I’d been rejected by a prospective date, though I hadn’t ever experienced that since I didn’t actually date.
And I didn’twantto date. Did I?
Easy answer: no.
Because the second that turned into something I wanted, something bad would happen. I didn’t need any more evidence for that lovely little pattern. I’d lived a lifetime of it—wanting something on that gut-deep level and obtaining it at great cost. From the sacrifices I made to get into the music side of the business to the new management that eventually led to Candy’s endless downward spiral, I could now clearly predict what happened when I felt thatwanting, and it was never good. It dragged people down, and I couldn’t have that anymore.
The biggest thing I’d indulged in wanting was coming here, back to Silverton. To break from the noise of my life, the staff, the tabloids, the pressure to solve the problem of my failing record sales despite my manager’s insistence I have no creative input, yet again, because I wasn’t “up to it.” Yes, I’d wanted the escape, but in truth, that had been a soul-deep need more than a simple desire. So it wasn’t the same.
In the days since the breakfast burrito, which had been delicious, I eventually accepted that the change, and the source of my dejection, stemmed from the little crush I’d developed on Wyatt. And that was only on my side, as Warrick had asked him when his next date was sometime in the last week, and he’d said today.
Come to think of it, why was he even here?
“Don’t you have a date today?”
I hoped I didn’t sound confused by that because I didn’t want to be. Even though Jenna had continued to press me about “enjoying” Wyatt while I was here, he didn’t want that. Nor did he want me.
“I’ve got about an hour ’til I leave. You okay down there?” He came to stand at my feet and stared down at me, hands on his narrow hips, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
My stomach did a cartwheel. He wasn’t necessarily what you’d call unsmiling, but he didn’t give away smiles for free. Not like Warrick, who must’ve emerged from the womb wearing a grin, sure that everyone in the room was glad to see him and completely right about it.
