Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
“We don’t need to rehash this,” I said a bit desperately, “since it’s in no way applicable here.”
“—because eventually, you come to the rocks,” she continued, shaking her head sadly. “You start to realize he’s not who you thought he was, or he wants something you don’t want, or he expects you to be someone else. You’re clinging to hope, going through the motions, but you’re afraid now. You’re annoyed, he’s annoyed. You stop smiling as much and start sending out company-wide memoranda explaining that use of the Oxford comma in professional communications should be a requirement—”
“Well, shouldn’t it?” I insisted. “Lesya, if you care about me in any way, stop this—”
“Then comes the melancholy, where one of you finally rips off the Band-Aid and decides you’re not compatible.” Lesya set her phone in her lap, stared into the middle distance, and sighed. “You’re heartbroken, even if the guy was a total asshole, because you’d gotten your hopes up, and you can’t help being disappointed. You contemplate all your past relationships and start to wonder why they didn’t work out. You throw yourself into work to distract yourself from your fear that you’ll never actually fall in love. I imagine your brain plays ‘Arms of the Angels’ as background music all day long. This is usually when you ask me to make Rassolnik. Which my sister now calls Melancholy Soup.”
I rolled my eyes to the darkened ceiling of the car and blew out a breath. “Are we almost done?”
“We’re done,” she agreed. She picked up her phone again and made a show of unlocking the screen. “After that, the cycle just repeats itself.”
I shot her a suspicious look. I distinctly remembered there being five stages the last time she’d talked about this. Wisdom said that I should keep my mouth shut, but wisdom was not one of my top five attributes.
“Isn’t there supposed to be another phase after that?” I blurted.
“Oh, the renaissance?” Lesya lifted one shoulder. “Yeah, but that’s more of a theoretical thing. That’ll only happen when you recognize that you can’t control everything in your life, you decide to surrender to the full experience of being in love, and you attain a higher state of enlightenment,” she said knowingly.
I blinked at her in shock. “A higher…?”
“You heard me.” She glanced up, then challenged, “What? Someone had to take that freaking fast-track meditation course after you and Johan broke up. It was nonrefundable.”
“And this is how you’re applying what you learned? Lovely.” I rolled my eyes again and sank lower in my seat. “In any case, none of that is pertinent here. I’m not in the melancholy, because Hugh and I were never in a relationship. We were friends. Text friends, as I said. And I told him flat out, from the very beginning, that I don’t do happily ever afters. That I simply can’t…” I said softly. “Even if I wanted to. So I may have left Cape Cod a bit… abruptly… rather than put either of us through a long, drawn-out goodbye. He stopped texting me after that.” I forced myself to shrug. “Probably for the best. I already have plenty of friends.”
Though none—none—like Hugh.
Lesya was quiet for a long moment before she finally spoke. “People can’t be kept in boxes, Oscar.” Her tone was mild and free of judgment, which only made her words harder to hear. “Simply labeling someone a lover doesn’t mean you’re truly in love with them, and labeling them a friend doesn’t mean—”
“Stop.” I swallowed. “Don’t finish that statement.”
I lowered my eyes to my tablet again, though the words wouldn’t come into focus. Heat from Lesya’s stare spread across the side of my face, but I did my best to ignore it.
Lesya stayed quiet for the rest of the drive through the wet London night, and I let myself forget all about the conversation until after our late dinner meeting when I realized we were heading to the airport instead of back to the hotel.
“Where are we going? I thought we weren’t flying to Zurich until tomorrow.”
“I made a few phone calls while you were having appetizers. The Zurich meeting was moved to next week, and I told them it would need to be virtual.” She patted Frank’s small carrier, perched on the seat beside her. “We’re heading back to New York.”
“But—”
“You told me to find time in your calendar to meet with Chuckie, and I have. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I repeated stupidly.
“No time like the present, as you always say. You’ll be meeting him in your office at one.”
“I’m sure he would have been fine with next week or—”
She looked at me sharply. “He might have been fine with that, but I would not have. You being miserable makes my life miserable. Since you refuse to do anything about your love life, that leaves work to fill the gap. You’re happiest at work when you’re helping people reach their dreams. So that’s what you’re going to do, and you’re not going to complain about it.”