Page 120 of The Fine Art of Faking It
“Wait. What happens now?” Eden asked, her mind spinning. Were there forms to sign? Apology gifts? She glanced at Davis who was looking at his watch.
“Nothing happens now,” Bruce moaned.
“We’ll make a public announcement in the next issue ofThe Monthly Moon,” Wilson explained.
“Then we’ll begin reviewing our matching process to see where we went wrong and if we’ll be able to continue our services in the future,” Gia said, her voice laced with regret.
Bruce stifled a sob. “Decades of hard work. Over.”
“On the bright side, you go back to exactly the way things were before,” Ellery said with a half-hearted smile.
Eden flinched.
“Thank you for your efforts,” Davis said formally, rising from his chair. His gaze returned to Eden, and she blushed furiously. “See you at HeHa this weekend,” he said.
“Wait!” Eden began. But she had nothing. “So, that’s it? We’re free to go?”
Davis nodded politely to the committee members and left the room. Eva and Gia looked at her, two sets of puppy dog eyes trained on her.
Eden rose, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She hadn’t even needed to take off her jacket before being handed the victory she’d worked for.
“Um, I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” Eden said lamely and walked out of the silent room. She closed the door quietly behind her and leaned against it, wondering why she didn’t feel victorious.
48
HeHa was here. All of Blue Moon turned out in One Love Park bundled up against the harsh December wind. It had snowed overnight, but four inches of the white stuff wasn’t going to stop the town’s population from an entire day of do-gooding.
They’d divided and conquered. Eden was in charge of the park festivities while Davis was off coordinating the volunteer teams at the high school. There were senior citizen walkways to shovel, leaky windows to seal, and watery hot chocolate to choke down.
Helping Hands Day was hands down—ha—Eden’s favorite day of the year. Usually. The entire town mobilized to do their part, no matter how large or small, to make life a little better for someone else. Blue Moon was blanketed in good vibes… except for Eden.
She was mired in a sticky quicksand of regret, self-loathing, and general confusion. And it was all Davis’s fault. She shook her head to clear the thought. It was a deeply ingrained habit to blame him for everything. This time, the bad mojo was all on her. Exactly what did she have to complain about? Davis had gone and given her everything she wanted, a Davis-free, Beautification Committee-free life.
Eden was back to pre-stink bombing. Except now she had the knowledge of what it felt like to come on Davis’s hard cock while he whispered dirty little nothings in her ear. And she’d never experience that again. She told him what she’d wanted, and he’d delivered.
Only now she wasn’t so sure that what shethoughtshe wanted was what sheactuallywanted. This last week without him? Well, it had none of the shine of her pre-sex-with-Davis life. She had to face facts. Having sex with Davis, havingfeelingsfor Davis, had ruined her life.
“Can I sign up for the last two weeks in February?” Mildred, everyone’s favorite liquor store clerk, dragged Eden’s attention back to the present. The freezing cold, lonely present where her only concern was supposed to be signing up volunteers to cook food for townsfolk in need.
Mildred snorted when she looked at the month of August. “Mrs. Nordemann’s going to have her hands full. The Merrill girls are both due right around then!”
Eden gave a half-laugh and thought of her friends starting families… in their healthy committed relationships. Well, if she ignored the fact that Eva was an accessory to arson and hadn’t told her husband, yet. But they were building somethingwhilerunning successful businesses.Was she missing out by focusing only on work? Did she want more?
She pressed a hand to her fluttering belly through the layers of thermal and down.
“I expect you and Davis will be joining in on the baby train,” Mildred said cheerily. “Oh! There’s Mervin Lauter. Yoo hoo!” Mildred scampered off to torture someone else with offhanded comments about their life choices.
Word hadn’t spread yet, and Eden didn’t blame the Beautification Committee for being slow to admit their first spectacular loss. She hadn’t felt like sharing the news herself. It was a far cry from the gloating she’d planned on doing had it all gone to plan.
The Beautification Committee’s loss didn’t feel like her win. Eden tried to tell herself it was because she was cheated out of the big public breakup with Davis taking one for the team and finally being the bad guy. She’d been counting on the vindication. But that didn’t explain the emptiness she felt every time she lay down in her bed… alone.
The fact was, they were all losers in this situation.
The B.C. failed at a match. Davis was still out of a kitchen. And Eden was… so damn lonely without Davis Gates.
Eden rubbed her gloved hands over her face. She’d used what happened in high school as a defining moment. And she’s shaped her entire adult life around trying to prove to everyone that she wasn’t that vengeful teenager. But look at what she’d done. Hadn’t she just proven to herself that she was still that same wounded person?
She needed to talk it out. Needed to make sure she hadn’t already made a huge mistake. Because right now, she was fairly certain she had.
