Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47241 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 189(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47241 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 189(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
“Beau.” I shook my head with a sigh. “Where did you go?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Four weeks went by, and there’d been no sign of Beau or his tent. I put ads in the classifieds, posted flyers around the city, and stuck a laminated letter on my garage door by the dumpster, in case Beau came by.
Beau, package came for you. Keeping it safe.
– Meri
Shawna wasn’t talking to me much anymore—just a few polite words here and there at work—but she’d mentioned that she didn’t know where Beau had gone after the party. Also, she said she didn’t want to be friends anymore because I was a mean person.
I guessed I wasn’t the saint everyone believed, and the real me, the one with a jealous side, wasn’t to their liking. So which was it? Was I too nice, too much of a people pleaser? Or was I too imperfect? Too flawed?
I wasn’t really sure, but I knew one thing: I was me, a living, breathing work in progress, and I always had been. I’d never claimed to be perfect, so why wasn’t I good enough all of a sudden?
I was beginning to think the problem wasn’t me at all. Maybe my friends were changing. Or maybe I was. Both?
Either way, I’d always accepted and loved them for who they were. For example, Kay was caught up in her looks, but that was okay. I understood why, and she had a heart of gold. Shawna was a stone-cold teardown artist who loved using humor to highlight the truth of things. I found it refreshing and hilarious because I knew there was nothing but love inside her heart. If I went down the list of every single cherished person in my life, they all had at least one outrageous flaw or quirk, but I loved them anyway.
So…so…screw them. I’m not going apologize anymore for who I am. Not like they were running around asking for grace over their icky sides.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t sorry for my screwup at game night. I felt mortified by my behavior, and I’d apologized. So why wasn’t I allowed to make a mistake? Everyone else in the world was given room to grow and learn.
As for Beau, I could only assume he’d moved on to a new city or country. It scrambled my mind how a stranger could walk into my life like that and flip everything on its head. Suddenly, I just didn’t care about my party. I hadn’t even sent out invitations or started shopping for gifts. Friendsgiving was tonight, and I couldn’t care less.
“Who am I?” Lying in bed, piles of dirty bowls and mugs on my nightstand, my cell rang. It was Kay.
“Hello?” I grumbled.
“Are you sick? Is that why you stopped going to the gym and haven’t been answering my messages?”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Meri, what’s going on with you?”
I hadn’t told her about game night. Too horrifying. “Figuring things out. That’s all.”
“Are you pouting again about not spending yourself into the poorhouse for Christmas? I never made you sign up for that cruise. You wanted to go.”
“I know. But don’t worry, Christmas is dead to me now.”
“What? What happened?”
“Nothing.” I sighed. “I need to get some sleep. Have a good Friendsgiving tonight.”
“You’re not coming?” she asked.
“No.”
“But how can I have Friendsgiving without my best friend?”
“The same way you can tell me I’m not welcome if I don’t bring a plus one.” I’m minus one. Minus a heart and the will to shop or brush my freaky hair.
“Pfft! You know that’s not really mandatory. Meri, what’s going on with you? Is it because you’re turning the big three-oh soon? Talk to me.”
My birthday was just around the corner, but that wasn’t it.
I started to tear up. “It’s all going to shit, Kay.” I went on, explaining what had happened on game night and how I was beginning to see that I was an imperfect person in more ways than one or fifty. “But what kills me isn’t that my friends won’t accept me for who I am or where I am in life at my age, it’s that I hurt someone who deserved my genuine acceptance. I showed my ugliest side at the worst possible moment. I acted selfishly.”
“So your claws came out,” she concluded.
“Yes.”
“Well, about time, Meri! I mean, come on. You never say a mean word to anyone even when they deserve it. And now you acted a little immature over a guy. So what?”
“You’re not going to disown me now, too?”
“Hell no. But you do need to start being honest with me. Did you ever really want to go on that cruise?”
“No. Not really.” If I could choose, I’d do the whole Arctic travel thing.
“So why did you’d keep saying you wanted to go?” she asked.
“Because I love you. And I did want to go. I still do.”