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THIRTY-FOUR
Raya
“Sorry!”I mouthed out the window.
I had been so lost in thought driving home, I nearly ran a stop sign and hit someone. The moment it hit me what could have happened I started shaking, and I was glad I had snapped back to reality before anything bad came from it. The driver of the other vehicle wasn’t happy, flipping me off as they continued through the intersection.
I didn’t blame them.
I worked with people every day who dealt with residual trauma that came from things like car accidents. I often wished people would be a lot more careful on the road, and I hated it when I was the one who did something that could have caused an accident. But, nothing happened, and the other person drove off.
They were mad, but that was about it, and I could continue home. I forced myself to pay better attention to the road, however, only thinking about how good the day had been with Bailey.
She had managed to get both Gypsy and Romeo into the corral to ride. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to let her work with Romeo at first, but she was so excited to know he was about ready to join the other horses, she managed to talk me into letting her ride him. And he behaved beautifully.
I told her how proud I was of her, and how far she had come in the past few months. She beamed when her mother came to pick her up, and it just reinforced in my mind why I did what I did. It was so rewarding. Even when it was difficult, it was rewarding to see how people responded to the treatment to work through the issues they had.
I was sure it would never get old.
But, for as much as I wanted to just think about how good Bailey was doing with her treatment and how well Romeo was doing becoming part of the team, my brain refused to let me go very long without thinking about Cole. It was no secret to anyone who knew I was seeing him that I was devastated by the breakup, and several of my friends were infuriated that he didn’t give me a reason.
“You should at least have a reason,” my boss told me. “I hate it when men just say it’s not you, it’s them, and leave it at that. Like, how are you supposed to reconcile that in your mind? All it does is make you wonder in your next relationship what you did wrong in this one, and you become paranoid, and things don’t go well. It’s a mess.”
“Right,” I said as I rolled my eyes. I wanted to believe he had a good reason, but for the life of me, I couldn’t excuse the fact he had done this without giving me anything to go on.
The only way he had shown me he respected my feelings was breaking up with me face to face rather than taking the chicken way out and doing it over text or a phone call. But that wasn’t much of a consolation considering how much my heart was shattered with the breakup. It didn’t matter if I knew I was foolish for falling for him so fast and so hard.
It wasn’t like I could help it.
Cole had been everything I had ever dreamt of in a man, and I had been certain we had a future together. So certain, in fact, I had actually slept with him despite the fact I was a virgin and determined to save myself for the right person. I didn’t feel I had made a mistake with Cole.
But, I wasn’t happy with how things had turned out, either.
I pulled up to my place, ready to spend another night on the couch with a bottle of wine and crying my eyes out. I had plenty of ice cream in the freezer, and there were plenty of options for bad reality tv on all my streaming networks. It would be another great pity party, I was sure of that.
That is, until I saw Wrenley was waiting for me.
“Hey,” I said when I walked up the sidewalk to the door of my building. “How long have you been waiting? I would have hurried more if I had known you were here waiting for me.”
“Not long,” she said. “I just got off work half an hour ago, and by the time I walked over here, I only had to sit for like ten minutes before you showed up. How are you doing?”
I held up my hand and let it waver back and forth.
“Depends on the day,” I said. “I was about to head inside and cry and drink wine and eat ice cream. You want to come?”
“You know I do,” she said with a grin. “And maybe we can get to the bottom of this without too many tears and more moving forward, right?”
I knew she wasn’t entirely disappointed with the fact Cole had broken up with me. She was still pretty sure he was a giant asshole, and she wasn’t sure I had been wise with choosing him to be my boyfriend. But, that didn’t mean she was happy about it.
She fell in that in-between area, wanting me to be okay, but also relieved I wasn’t with someone she didn’t think was right for me. At least, that’s what I was assuming. She surprised me when we walked inside and she started talking about Cole.
“You said he just drove up, broke up with you, and left, right?” she asked.
“Right,” I said. “I wanted to call him and get a reason, but when I finally broke down and did, his phone was either turned off, or he blocked me. I’m not sure which.”
“Probably turned off his phone,” Wrenley said. “I don’t think he would block you.”
“What makes you say so?” I asked.
