Page 49 of Perfect Pairing
She rolled her eyes. “You’re no help.”
“You’re going to be amazing, Brie. It’s only for bragging rights, so there’s no pressure other than what you put on yourself. Just have fun with it.”
“‘Have fun with it’?” she asked. “That’s your best advice?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. I can only believe in you so much. At some point, youhave to pick up the slack.”
Her mouth popped open, eyes widening in surprise. “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat things for you, Brie. You’ve got two parents and four sisters who will do that for you plenty. If you wanted someone to blow smoke up your ass, you would’ve called one of them. But personally, I don’t think you want or need that. Youaretalented, more than anyone else I’ve ever met, but you have to believe it too, or the whole thing will be a total wash.”
Brie sighed, her entire body deflating as she threw herself backward onto the mountain of pillows lining the head of her bed. “You’re right, obviously.”
I smirked. “I usually am.”
“That’s something I’ve always struggled with, you know. Self-confidence.”
“Which I find insane, personally.”
This girl was thoughtful, intelligent, loyal, and, as previously mentioned, ridiculously talented. The fact that she was worried about going up against this Bryce woman—who, by the way, I’d personally never heard of until Brie came into my life—was comical. I’d bet all the money to my name that Brie could stack up against the most notable pastry chefs from across theworldand come out on top.
It killed me that she doubted it.
But I secretly loved being the one to remind her.
“Imposter syndrome is a very real thing,” she said petulantly. “Haven’t you ever experienced it?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Well, you’re a manandan only child, so I suppose you wouldn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I didn’t choose to be born this way, nor did I ask my mother to run off to god knows where before she and Dad could give me a sibling. I didn’t ask for my dad to be so busy raising me while also trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table that he never even considered remarrying. I didn’t ask for any of it, Brie. Believe me, I would’ve loved to have grown up in a two-parent household with a bunch of siblings running around, but that wasn’t in the cards for me.”
I heaved a deep breath at the end of my tirade, surprised I’d allowed myself to get that worked up.
Brie apparently hadn’t taken too kindly to it, because the line between us went dead a moment later.
Fuck.
My first instinct was to call her back and keep doing so until she answered and let me apologize, but something stopped me.
The truth was, I’d meant every word I said. My childhood hadn’t been the easiest. I’d been made fun of in school for not having a mom, for my second-hand clothes, for never being able to attend school functions because I didn’t have anyone to drop me off or pick me up. In fact, I’d learned how to use the NYC subway system by the time I was twelve simply to take some of the pressure off my dad. The second I was old enough, I’d gotten a job at a restaurant to help with bills. It wasn’t until I graduated high school and he handed me an envelope full of cash that I realized he’d been saving it the whole time, waiting for the moment when I was ready to go off on my own. In turn, I asked him to keep it safe until I finished my culinary arts program andwas ready to take that trip to Europe. I hadn’t lied when I told Brie we’d scraped together every penny we could to send me on that once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
I’d spent every moment I could since trying to repay him—an impossible task, given he was now helping me raise my own son.
Brie and I came from vastly different backgrounds. Neither the fact that I was a man nor that I was an only child had nothing to do with whether I’d experienced hardship or whether I doubted my abilities. Every day was a battle. My child was motherless, and every time I looked at him, I had to attempt to rectify the fact that I loved him beyond reason—more than my own life—with the fact that the woman who birthed him couldn’t be bothered to love him more than her addiction…or love him more than she hated her life with me.
I failed frequently. I’d known I would, but there were days when the feeling was overwhelming, when all I wanted to do was drown myself in a bottle of bourbon.
But that sort of thinking was the exact thing that had taken Hansen’s mother away from him, and I refused to cost him another parent.
I still drank but sparingly, and never simply to get drunk, alone in my room at night.
Brie had been way off base with her comments, and while I already missed her like I’d miss a limb, I wasn’t going to be the one to come crawling back.
She had to be the one to fix this.
It took her three days.
