Page 2 of Easy On Me

Tyler

“So this is . . . quaint.” Marilyn tossed her sleek brown hair over one shoulder, bar lights glinting off the massive rock on her ring finger. She looked around, eyes wide and intrigued. “How have we never been here before?”

Maggie gazed at the dance floor, where a line dance to a Garth Brooks song from the nineties grew increasingly enthusiastic and raucous. “Because you’re off living the rich life, and we’re here checking out every dive bar in the boondocks.”

I smiled, fiddling with the straw in my mojito. I’d been here before with Colt, but it had been months. It’d taken me a while to go places we’d been together because I hated looking at the person I’d been with him.

Okay, the person I still was. She was still me, all the self-help books said. Her trauma and coping mechanisms lived inside me. My job was to learn new skills, healthier ones. So I’d gone back to everything I’d learned in counseling in my teens, read books and blogs, and listened to podcasts. She wasn’t going away, and hiding wasn’t healthy either.

“So what’s good?” Marilyn squinted at the menu, her corner of the booth dimmer because she was farther from the dance floor.

I didn’t even have to look. “The Big Cheesy.”

Maggie darted a look at me, curiosity lighting up her face. “You’ve been here.”

Letting my hair shield my face, I nodded on a sip of my drink. “With Colt.”

With the menu frozen in her hands, Marilyn’s expression shifted, her intrigue draining away, replaced by concern and compassion. “We don’t have to–”

“It’s okay.”

“Yes, we do.” Maggie’s voice rang with firmness, every inch of her the accountability partner I’d tasked her to be.

I dipped my chin at Marilyn. “We do.”

“Okay.” She returned her attention to the menu, flipping it over with a brisk flick of her wrist. “The Big Cheesy . . . Joey would die.”

Joey was Marilyn’s husband, a fancy pants chef from Texas who owned restaurants all over and was on the Food Network. He’d written bestselling cookbooks and came from money, and Marilyn had a fancy pants CFO job with his cousin, a wealthy jerk who ran a private security company. Marilyn’s life had blown my mind when she was cheer captain and living on a hunting plantation in Thomas County.

Her life now boggled my mind.

Somehow, we were still friends, even though she’d gone to UGA and I’d stayed behind in Thomasville with Mags. Maggie had her own cleaning business and made a killing, so much she was expanding into Chandler County. I’d started out as a sales clerk at Goodwill and worked myself up from there to answering phones at the Ford dealership in Thomasville. A couple of years ago, I’d been transferred to the receptionist job at the dealership in Coney.

That was how I met Colt – his daddy was the sales manager. He’d brought his shiny gray truck in for an oil change, and I’d taken one look at the tall drink of water he was and said yes, please.

The sex was great, at first. He was great, at first. Polite, smart, funny, hot.

But he was . . . difficult. Moody. Prone to withdrawing and isolating himself. I got that. I mean, that was me. But I was looking for the guy who understood that, who understood why I was that way.

I wasn’t looking to meet someone there and understand why he was that way.

Yes, selfish. I know. But life was hard, I had so much shit in my background, and I didn’t have the energy then to support someone else, no matter how talented he was in the bedroom.

I needed someone who was easy out of the bedroom.

And I recognized my limits. Colt had something hurting deep down inside himself, and I hurt for him. The thing was, I couldn’t be what he needed when I hadn’t healed all the deep down hurting inside myself. Instead, I’d boxed him in, nagged and pushed and even screamed.

The screaming had been the breaking point.

I’d screamed at him.

Then I’d left him because nobody deserved that.

The relief on his face when I broke things off? Made me feel deep-down awful, full of guilt and shame. It had been a long time since I’d felt like that.

The man I was supposed to love, who was supposed to love me – although neither of us ever said the words – was relieved when I said we were finished. That said a lot. Namely that we didn’t belong together and maybe I wasn’t as selfish as I told myself I was.

I mean, I didn’t hang around and make him even more miserable trying to mold him into the easy man of my dreams.