The Bodyguard (85)

She held out a grocery sack, and as I looked at it, she said, “It’s the shoes you lent me for that thing. And it’s your heart-shaped baking pan I borrowed. And some books.”

“Keep it all,” I said. “I don’t want it.”

“I’m not keeping it,” she said.

“Fine. Donate it, then.”

“You love these shoes!”

“Not anymore.”

Taylor had been holding the sack out to me, but at that, she pulled it back.

“Okay, then,” she said.

“What did you need to say?” I asked then, like Let’s get this over with.

“More like ‘ask,’ really.”

“Fine. Ask.”

“Is there … anything I can do for you?”

I frowned. “That’s why you came here?”

“I just … want to do something for you. Anything.”

“What could you possibly do for me?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“Are you trying to make amends?”

“We don’t have to label it.”

Of course my answer was no. No, there was nothing she could do for me. No, I wasn’t going to let her make herself feel better by magnanimously doing me favors. No. Hell no.

But.

Something about the quietness of her voice got my attention.

“I guess,” she said then, “I just want you to know that I’m genuinely sorry.”

It’s not all that often that people who’ve wronged you actually apologize. Usually, in my experience, they go on and on maintaining their innocence. Insisting that they weren’t so bad, or they had their reasons, or you were somehow partly to blame.

But, in classic Taylor fashion, she was just owning it.

It made me miss her.

She was backing up now, and then turning, and then walking off down the hallway. The collar of her jacket was flipped the wrong way.

My plan was to let her go.

I told myself to let her go.

But then I heard myself say. “You could help me find something to wear.”

Taylor froze. Then she turned around. “Something to wear?”

I stood up a little taller. “I have a date.”

Taylor had the good manners not to ask who it was with.

I went on, “And I can’t find anything to wear. I mean that literally. The movers didn’t label the moving boxes. So you could help me find my clothes.”

Taylor tried to hold back her smile. “I can totally do that.”

“I’m not forgiving you, by the way,” I said, pointing at her as she walked back toward me.

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

“I’m just letting you reduce a small amount of your soul-crushing guilt.”

“Thank you.” She stopped in front of me. “Do you maybe also need your hair and makeup done for this date?”

I held very still. Now she was pushing it.

“I just offer because sometimes when you do your own eyeshadow you wind up looking like you got punched in both eyes by two different people.”

“Thanks for that.” She wasn’t wrong.

Also, she was very good at hair and makeup.

And I was going on a date with frigging Jack Stapleton.

“Fine,” I said. “But just to reiterate—”

“I know. I know,” Taylor said. “I’m not forgiven.”



* * *



TWO HOURS LATER, walking up Jack’s driveway, as I battled intrusive thoughts of Jack’s many, many past girlfriends, it seemed pretty clear I’d made the right choice.

If you’re ever going to let Taylor do something for you, it should be hair and makeup. And she’d talked me into wearing the slinkiest red dress I had.

I’d been tempted to put on a pantsuit.

Did I feel achingly vulnerable with my shoulders bare and the silk hem whispering around my naked thighs? Of course.

Emotionally—and physically—I felt naked as hell. And not in a good way.

“They’re the ‘befores,’” I repeated, like a mantra, as a veritable catwalk of ex-girlfriends strutted through my head. “You’re the ‘after.’”

Everything about me was quivering.

I was fine with caring as long as it was mutual. But was it? It had seemed more than mutual yesterday, when he was pressing me up against the wall in his parents’ hallway.

But yesterday was a million years ago.

I wondered if the triple punch of it all—losing my mom, then losing Robby, then losing Taylor—had left a bigger scar than I’d realized.

Was I lovable? I mean, are any of us really lovable if you overthink it?

It was tempting to chicken out.

But then I thought of Jack going bwok, bwok, bwok, and then I wondered if having faith in yourself was just deciding you could do it—whatever it was—and then making yourself follow through.

So I decided something right then: Every chance you take is a choice. A choice to decide who you are.

And so that’s what that long walk up Jack’s driveway was about for me. Not about what Robby and Taylor had done. Or what Jack might or might not say or do or feel. It was about me choosing who to be in the face of all … and refusing to give up on hope. Or myself.