Well Played (Well Met #2)(78)
So instead of telling him where he could shove his inadequate almost-apology, I decided to take it at face value. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m not doing great right now, but I think I’ll be okay.” Sure, that last bit was a lie—but he didn’t need to know that.
Dex’s expression cleared, like a puppy with a short attention span. “Good.” He gave me a gentle punch on the shoulder, which was probably meant in the spirit of camaraderie, but really just showed me that he had no idea how to relate to a woman he wasn’t actively trying to bed. “I gotta get back.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Show in a few minutes. But good talk, yeah?”
I blinked a few times as he all but bounded away. “Yeah,” I said after him. “Good talk.” I strode down the lane, away from the Marlowe Stage as fast as my feet could carry me. I needed to get the last day of this topsy-turvy Faire season out of my system; I could start fresh next year. I twirled the dragonfly pendant between my fingers as I walked. Dragonflies meant change, Daniel had said to me last summer. I’d had a little too much change.
At the same time, I’d had no change at all. Back to work on Tuesday. Book club later that week. I’d stayed up late a couple nights finishing the book since I was supposed to lead the discussion, which left me overtired and irritated. The little sleep I’d managed was fragmented and interspersed with dreams that hinged on the plot of the book I’d just read—a woman finding herself and moving on after a breakup. Or were the dreams about me? I was too tired to try and figure it out.
By the time I got to book club that night I’d had three cups of coffee too many and a bad day at work. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about some fictional woman’s problems. But I forged ahead anyway, helping Chris’s daughter Nicole arrange the chairs in a circle, setting out the wine and snacks as Emily and I always did.
“So, what do we think?” The bright smile on my face belied my churning insides as I consulted the book club questions provided by the publisher. “When Molly chooses to leave her old life behind to renovate the farmhouse in the Midwest, what does that symbolize? Does anyone have any thoughts on that?”
On my right, April shrugged. “I’m not a symbolism kind of person. Can’t a farmhouse just be a farmhouse?”
Chris snorted and popped another cube of cheese in her mouth. “I don’t know, I could go either way with that. I think I can see where the author was going with the symbolism. Scraping off the old paint as a way of showing how Molly sheds the skin of her old life.”
“Right.” My mom leaned forward, clearly interested in this line of discussion. “She talks about the house being vulnerable before the new coat of paint goes up. Maybe that’s how Molly feels herself, being between relationships? Raw, like a layer of herself has been scraped away? And once she gets into that new relationship, with the guy who helps her put the new coat of paint on the house, she feels strong again.”
“But why?” April made a tsk sound. “Why does it have to be a guy, or a relationship, that makes you feel strong? I don’t like that message: that a woman can only be strong if she’s with someone. Why can’t Molly have painted the house on her own?”
“I agree,” I said. “What kind of message is that, that you’re nothing without a guy? That’s crap. There’s nothing wrong with being single. In fact, it can be liberating. You’re not dependent on anyone else to make you happy, you can just . . . live your life. Right?” I turned to April, who looked a little amused by my vehemence but was also nodding in agreement.
“Well said.” She held up her hand and I high-fived her.
“There’s also that theme of starting over,” Nicole said. “Speaking of liberating. Molly goes to this whole new part of the country where nobody knows her, and she’s able to start over, reinvent herself just like she’s reinventing that farmhouse. I mean, when I started college, that’s one reason I went out of state, you know? I wanted to go to a school where I wasn’t going to classes with the same people I knew in high school. I wanted to see if I was the same person when I wasn’t around the same people.”
That was a really astute thought, and any other time I would have actively engaged her on it, delved deeper into that idea, which was the kind of thing you were supposed to do at a book club. But I was high on exhaustion and caffeine and sadness. So I latched on to the exact wrong thought. “Must be nice.” Oh, no. My voice was bitter and there was nothing I could do about it. “Must be nice to just . . . leave town. Start over. Be able to pursue your dreams and chase the life you want, instead of getting stuck, while everyone else goes on and lives out their dreams. . . .” I stopped talking because I realized, to my mortification, that I was crying. Everyone in the circle looked at me with varying degrees of confusion, pity, and what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-her.
“Okay.” April plucked the paper with the discussion questions out of my hand. “On to the next question. Weather. What did the freak snowstorm in September represent?” She looked around the circle as I fled to the back room to get myself together. “Other than climate change and we’re all doomed, right?”
* * *
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Mom was silent during the drive home from book club. It wasn’t until I turned into the driveway that she spoke up. “Do you want to talk about it, honey?”