Bet on It (79)

Miri waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Trust me, I have been dyin’ to have you open up to me about this since Jade’s dinner party. It was so clear that y’all were completely fuckin’ in love.”

“I guess that’s the issue then. He’s back home in Charleston now, barely shot me a good-bye on his way out, and I’m here, sad and angry and trying not to be in love with him.”

Miri took a bite of her food, taking time to chew and swallow before speaking. “If I had some advice on how to do that, trust me, I would have followed it years ago.”

The man Miri had been seeing casually had been dropped shortly after Jade’s dinner party. Aja hadn’t known her friend was harboring a secret love for someone else. Maybe the conversation didn’t have to be all about her after all.

Aja’s face must have shown her curiosity because Miri released a sigh that Aja didn’t think was nearly as begrudging as she wanted it to seem.

“I was married,” Miri said simply, rocking Aja’s whole world with three words. “Well, I guess I still am, technically.” That made her head spin even more. “We met when we were kids and fell in love somewhere along the way. I had a husband before I was legally allowed to drink. But it fell apart, because everythin’ does, and neither of us was strong enough nor wise enough to know how to put it back together. But it’s been impossible for me to let him go completely. I don’t know how. So here I am, stuck lovin’ a man I’ve loved for most of my life and haven’t spoken to in years.” She shook her head. “I know that’s … a lot. But I guess, my point is that I absolutely know what it’s like to try not to love somebody. I know how impossible that shit feels, how it takes everythin’ out of you.”

That didn’t make Aja feel any better. She’d hoped that Miri would tell her it got better, that it was actually possible to do.

Aja shut her eyes, appetite gone. “I’m just stuck here, then? Stuck feeling this way forever?”

“I don’t know how it’s goin’ to go for you. It might not even take you that long to get over him. Hell, in a couple months, you might be ready to work your way through all twelve of Greenbelt’s eligible bachelors,” Miri said with a snort. “But I can tell you from experience that there’s no use tryin’ to force it. You’re only going to hurt yourself tryin’ to feel things you’re not ready to feel.”

They were almost an exact repeat of the words Dr. Sharp had said. But Aja hadn’t been fully ready to take them in then. Honestly, she didn’t know if she was now either. It was so much better to imagine that there was an easy way out of the pain. That there was some secret door she could unlock that would send her back to a time when she wasn’t hurting.

“But it hurts.” Aja was ready to cry again. “I can’t help thinking that I’m always going to feel this way. It would have been easier if he had been an asshole and broken my heart on purpose. At least then I could feel angry at somebody other than myself.”

“Trust me, you definitely don’t want that. The on-purpose heartbreak just makes the fact that you still love him even worse.”

Aja released a feral sound from the back of her throat, a barely restrained scream. “I honestly can’t understand why anybody ever wants to fall in love.”

“Because it feels so fuckin’ good.”

Aja grunted.

“You know it does.” Miri’s voice went dreamlike. “You’re in pain now, but you weren’t always. Remember how it felt when he touched you for the first time? How he looked when he was laughing at a joke you made? How everything felt good and perfect and bright?”

“Like a music video,” Aja said absently, almost seeing the clips of their love story behind a sunshine-y sheen. It was disturbingly cheesy. She was devastated when the clips turned darker, then ended with her left standing alone, heartbroken.

“A music video with hella sex scenes.”

“God … the sex…”

“Yeah.…”

The meal Aja had made went cold in their laps as both women got lost in their heads. She couldn’t bring herself to feel bad about it. She already felt bad about more than enough shit.

Miri clicked her tongue. “Girl, you’ve got me out here reminiscin’ and shit. Now I feel like I’m about to cry.”

“I’m sorry, Miri. I didn’t mean to bring you down into my little pool of sadness. I was honestly just trying to vent. I hoped that getting it off my chest would make me feel better.”

“Did it?”

“Not really,” she said honestly. “Now I can’t get Jazmine Sullivan to stop playing every time I picture him in my head … which is constantly.”

“I’m sorry, baby girl. I swear if I had the answers for how to make you feel better, I’d give them to you.”

She knew in her gut that Miri had been right when she’d said that the only thing that would help Aja was time. She definitely wasn’t focused on moving on from him to someone else—the mere thought revolted her. The more she tried to stop thinking about Walker, the less it worked. It didn’t seem like she would ever get to a place where the good memories weren’t followed by an aching heart, but that couldn’t possibly last forever. Nothing did. She knew that firsthand.