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Things that scare me. One by one, I would check them off.Then what?I still wasn’t sure. I’d probably come up with something else that frightened me and then do that, too. Methodical until I canmake some sense of it, until I can find the pattern.
Until I know if I am better for having done all of it.
All of my business kept my brain very full. It was hard sometimes to think beyond exactly what I was doing, but I liked to stay busy.
My phone dinged—time for a run. I enjoyed my nine-minute mile club and ran with them as much as I could. It was sort of pathetic, compared to how fast the people I met could run, but I started at ten minutes, so it was improvement. I’d never liked running and I didn’t love it now, but I did it because it was hard. Most people couldn’t do a marathon. Of course, life was short, and it was possible I shouldn’t be wasting my time doing things I really disliked, but that just wasn’t how my mind worked.
I didn’t love doinganythingjust yet. If I was honest, I still wasn’t sure I could. It would be a lot easier overall if I wanted something besides a man who hated me and wanting my business to flourish, but it was what it was. Every time I thought about Michael, it curdled in my stomach like visceral pain. He hated me, so I should hate him, right?
What kind of person did that to someone in the hospital? Would it have killed him to have waited a day or two? Whythatvery second? I would never understand it, and that was okay. I was too much, even in my own head, and for the moment, that was more than I could tackle in therapy.
Therapy.I put that on the list in my head of hard things. One day. After I took a vacation by myself, I’d learn to fly a helicopter. Running a marathon was going concurrently, since it was so time consuming. Schedules felt good.
I put on my running shoes, tied back my hair, and headed out the door.
We started in Central Park, so I walked long strides in that direction. I considered the brief walk there my warm up. I stretched and I walked, and then when the group was ready, I ran hard.
For just a few minutes, it shut off my head. It wasn’t that it eased my mind, like Michael telling me to give it to him had done. But it made it so I didn’t think at all.
Out of breath, hurting, and barely alert, I made it home to my apartment. As was routine, my mind filled back up in the shower, so by the time I got to my bed, I cried. Large, wracking sobs that made me bang onto my pillow. I pounded, wept, and when I could finally manage it, I drank more water and a protein shake that didn’t hurt my stomach too badly.
Then I shut off the light and pretended that more tears didn’t silently flow down my face. How could I have loved him so deeply while he felt nothing? Had it always been a game to him?
I hiccupped and forced myself to stop. I’d sleep deeper if I cried myself to sleep, but then my dreams wouldn’t be great.
I, Bridget Radford, had become an expert at staying busy and crying myself to sleep, all while I pretended to be confident and capable.
No wonder he didn’t want me. I could hardly blame him.Yes, I can.I’m worth something, and fuck him for not only not seeing that, but for taking what little self-confidence I had and screwing around with it the way that he did.
I remembered howI worried I might be a sociopath.No way, but he might be one.
I closed my eyes. Tomorrow, I got to do it all again. I would add two more things to my list, and going to the doctor to see if I could stop snoring would go toward the top. Plus, it might be affecting my health. Secondly—I wanted to make a list of people I harmed by helping my father. He wasn’t around to help me anymore, so I’d have to do it myself.
It would certainly be hard, which meant I should absolutely do it.
During the tenminutes I allotted myself for lunch—greens didn’t upset my stomach if I ate them with just a little extra virgin olive oil—I saw the news. Or rather Layla did.
Didn’t you say you met her? Didn’t she used to date Michael?
I stared at the link she sent to our group chat with my mouth agape.Bodyguard to the stars, Sylvie Comisier, found dead of an apparent overdose on her living room floor.
I almost dropped the phone, but I texted back,Yes.
Sylvie looked gorgeous in the picture included with the article, all dark haired and beautiful as she trailed behind a billionaire at a conference earlier that year. I blinked. Was it almost a year since I saw her?Almost a year? Holy cow. I was coming up on the anniversary of my breakup day very soon. Should I do something, I wondered?Like walk around naked in my apartment in front of the windows just because?
She overdosed?Hope answered. She must be scrolling while she breastfed. It was the only time she checked her phone lately.
I couldn’t really work up sadness over Sylvie’s death. I hated the woman, and despite the fact we both got screwed over by Michael, the connection didn’t make me like her any more. It surprised me to learn she did drugs. Did the article say which drug? It didn’t. I clicked out of it.Well, poor Sylvie. She liked Michael way too much to not have it returned, and I certainly knew what that was like.
He did have that tendency to do that to women.
I wondered what woman he did that little trick on these days, then put down my phone and forced myself to breathe.
How is the baby, Hope? I texted the chat. I didn’t want to talk about Sylvie. I never even wanted tothinkabout her again. I needed to make it feel inconsequential, so maybe someday, the whole thing could be equally unimportant.Oh, that time with Michael? Why, it was worthnothingto me. In my head, I said it with a southern accent, like I was a sophisticated lady.
Delicious.
I smiled at her response. My stomach panged. What could I have eaten to make it hurt so much? I looked down.Oh, dang it. Tomatoes.The flaw with mindlessly eating, I supposed. As quietly as I could manage, I went into my bathroom in the office and puked. With so much practice, I got good at managing it quietly so no one would notice. Nothing made it less horrible to experience, but it at least stopped the litany of people asking if I was okay. When I was done, and my stomach emptied, I put my head on my knees.
