“Here you go,” I muttered. I passed a cupcake to my customer. “Have a nice day.”
The girl gave me a half-smile that was more like a grimace and then hurried away.
“Your people skills are seriously lacking today, sister,” Annie said from where she was seated on a raspberry-colored barstool.
I shrugged. It wasn’t just my people skills. It was everything.
I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I had known that severing my ties with David would hurt. I’d anticipated that. But I hadn’t expected to feel like I had lost a limb. Like I was slogging through quicksand, trying to claw my way out and only making it worse with every step. I hadn’t eaten. I’d barely slept. I was a walking zombie.
“You going to talk to me about it?”
“No.” I went about wiping down the counter. It was about to get busy with the lunch rush, and I needed to drink a Red Bull or 5-Hour Energy or something to stay awake. Mostly, I just wanted to go home and cry myself to sleep again.
Because I knew I’d made a horrible, horrible mistake.
I was the master of my own demise.
I needed to find a way to make it right, but at the same time, I knew that I couldn’t. That I’d broken what we had. Even if I went to David right now, I didn’t know what I’d say. Except that I was miserable without him. And I was so tired of being miserable.
But it didn’t erase all the things I’d said.
Or make them any less true.
“All right,” Annie said, going back to her schoolwork.
“You’re awfully calm.”
“Sut, I’ve been here through it all. I know when to shut up and when to push you. Right now, it’s better to shut up and let you figure it out on your own. I think you’re already there anyway.”
Yeah, my best friend knew me too well.
“I don’t know how to fix it.”
“You can’t. You have to accept how you feel about Maverick and about David. If you don’t do that, there’s no fixing.”
I nodded. She was right, of course. Acceptance was the hardest part. I’d thought I was already there with Mav. But raking my emotions over the coals every week wasn’t helping anything.
The bell rang overhead.
“Well, looky here,” Annie said.
My head popped up, and I saw Morgan saunter into Death by Chocolate.
“Oh God,” I grumbled and made a beeline for the back room.
“Sutton Wright, don’t you dare,” Morgan said. She slapped her hand twice on the counter and tapped her four-inch high heel on the tiled floor.
I stopped in my tracks and sighed. Then, I slowly turned and walked back to the cash register. I plastered on a fake smile for my sister and said, “Welcome to Death by Chocolate. What can I get you?”
“I’ll take some of Kimber’s famous chocolate cake.”
I was glad that she’d actually ordered, so I could busy myself at work and not have to think about what she was going to say to me about David. Because Morgan was here on her lunch break for a reason. I was sure of it.
I passed the cake her way. “I don’t want to talk about David.”
Morgan grabbed it and a fork and plopped down next to Annie. “Good. I’m not here to talk about David.”
I scrunched up my brows and looked at Annie. She shrugged her shoulders, just as confused as I was.
Morgan dug into her cake. I helped three customers as she ate, anxiety eating at me. I knew she wasn’t here for cake. And it would come out eventually. I’d had a bad enough week. I wasn’t sure I really wanted a lecture from my older sister.
By the time the rush cleared, I was super exhausted. Not sleeping wasn’t helping anything.
“Spit it out,” I told Morgan. “I know I need to talk to David. I know I was harsh and need to make this shit right. But I’m still totally messed up about what happened.”
“You made your position on David perfectly clear,” Morgan said. “I’m here about you.”
“Me?”
“Seems fair,” Annie said.
I pointed my finger at her. “Hey now.”
“To be frank, you died with Maverick.”
My heart stuttered at those words. At the reality of those words.
“Yes, you’ve kept on for Jason, but inside, you’re dead.”
“Morgan,” I gasped.
“But you’re not dead, Sutton. You’re very much alive. You have so many people who love you, and all we’ve wanted for the last year is to see you happy again. To show that love you’ve always had shining through you. Maverick would have wanted you to be happy.”
“I know. But it’s not that easy.”
“Of course not. But I’ve seen you happy with exactly two people since he died. First, with Jason. You want to guess what the second is?”
“I know what the second is.”
“Shouldn’t that be your answer then?”
“I thought you weren’t here to talk about David?”
“I didn’t bring him up,” she said cleverly. “And, anyway, this is really about you. Because you are standing in the way of your own happiness. Yes, David is my friend, and I don’t like to see him hurting, but you’re my sister. You’ve been suffering for so long. I care about you.”
“She’s right,” Annie said. “You know she’s right.”
“Of course she’s right. She’s Morgan. She’s always right.”
“I’m not always right, but I am right about this. Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“Because I’m afraid to lose him,” I whispered. My heart contracted. “I know I pushed him away, and it’s the same thing when it comes down to it. But what if I put my heart on the line, and in the end, he still dies?”
Annie reached out and gripped my hand. “Is he worth taking the risk for?”
Morgan shook her head. “Imagine you were so worried about that with Maverick that you never took that chance with him. You never got married or had Jason. You’d erase all those happy times. Would you do it?”
“No,” I gasped. “I’d never want to erase Maverick.”
And then it all hit me. What I hadn’t seen before in my fear. What I hadn’t let myself express, even as I was pushing David further and further away. I would never get rid of those happy moments with Maverick even if I’d known what was coming. I would have held on tighter. I would have demanded more time, more love, more affection. I would have been able to remember the last thing he said to me that day on the Fourth of July. But I couldn’t. And it haunted me. The loss of him crushed everything.
But I’d still rather have those few years than none at all.
Why was it different with David? Because I’d already known such heartache? I was trying to protect myself. To keep me from hurting again.
But what I was really doing was erasing that hope for the future. I wasn’t clinging tight to the memories that would happen. I wasn’t demanding more time. I wasn’t stealing more affection. I was foreseeing our inevitable demise and leaning into it rather than clinging to the good.
And that was what people meant by Maverick wanting me to be happy.
Not that he wouldn’t, of course, want me to love again.
He would have wanted me to cling to life.
That was my happiness. As it always had been.
“If you love him, then you can’t let him leave,” Morgan said.
I glanced up. “Leave?”
“Didn’t you hear a word I said? David tried to quit Wright. He’s on his way to the airport to go back to New York.”
“Oh my God! He can’t go back to New York.” Then, I was rushing out from behind the register. “Tell Kimber I had to leave. And that I’m sorry.”
“Wait, you’re going now?” Annie asked.
“Right now. No time to waste. Thank you. I love you both,” I cried over my shoulder as I left the bakery.
I ran full speed to my car around the back of the building. I sped toward the airport, but I knew it was about fifteen minutes to get there. If David had already boarded a flight, I was screwed.
I dialed his number, but I wasn’t surprised to find that it went straight to voice mail. Either he was ignoring me or his plane was about to take off. Airplane mode was the devil as far as I was concerned.
My panic was going through the roof by the time I pulled into the parking lot outside of Lubbock International Airport. I parked near the front and dashed across the street and through the sliding glass doors. My eyes traveled all around the check-in area. It wasn’t a big airport. It would be obvious if he were here. I hadn’t asked Morgan how big of a head start he had on me, but it must have been significant if he was already through security.
I found the first airline that had a plane flying to New York City today and cringed as I charged my bank account for an absurd one-way flight. The woman looked at me as if I were insane when I bought the ticket. My lack of baggage probably didn’t help anything.
I snatched the paperwork out of her hand and hurried to the security line, which was mercifully short. I impatiently tapped my foot and prayed I wasn’t too late.
The person in front of me was probably the most annoying flyer I’d ever met in my life. She didn’t know if she needed to take out her iPad, she forgot to take off her shoes, and then her belt went off. And she complained incessantly while it was clear that she was the problem since she couldn’t follow instructions.
By the time I was through, I grabbed my purse and hastened to the terminal. My heart skipped a beat when I caught David standing in line for first class to board.
In that moment, he glanced up.
Our eyes met.
And everything felt like it would be all right.