Scream For me

JADE

I lay on my couch, my cheeks stained with tears. Olivia stood in my open-plan kitchen, baking up a storm. She’d come over after I hadn’t

taken any of her calls or replied to her texts.

“You should have told me,” she said. “I started getting worried when you didn’t come on Wednesday like you usually do.”

She took a baking sheet of sugar cookies out of the oven and put it on the stove to cool before putting the cake batter in round tins into the oven.

“I didn’t know what to say,” I said in a creaky voice.

I pushed my fingers into my tangled hair and massaged my head. I hadn’t done anything since Hannah had fired me, and Aaron had dumped me, all in one day.

“You could have told me what was going on,” Olivia scolded. “After talking on Monday morning, everything sounded so great.”

“It was too good to be true.”

Olivia sighed and brought me a cup of tea from the kitchen, sitting down on the couch opposite me with her cup of tea. She would wait in the living room until the cake was ready to come out of the oven.

“If I eat everything you’re baking me, I’m going to get fat,” I said. “But I’ll eat it all because it won’t matter that I’m fat. No one will see me, anyway. No one that matters.”

Olivia groaned. “Tell me again what he said.”

I sighed. I didn’t want to go over it all again, but Olivia wanted to be there for me. The least I could do was let her.

I ran over the whole conversation I’d had with Aaron at his office again. I’d turned over every word in my mind so many times. It was ingrained in my mind forever.

After I told her, she shook her head. “I think you’re pulling this out of proportion.”

“Thanks,” I said and struggled upright from my lying position. I tucked my feet underneath me and took a sip of the tea Olivia had made. It was sweet like the type of tea people gave victims of a crash when they were in shock. How apt.

“I’m not trying to be a bitch about it. Just see it in perspective, okay? He said he’ll call you.”

“I don’t want him to,” I said.

“Why not? He didn’t cut things off with you.”

“He might as well have. He said we should leave the week in Aspen where it was and continue with our lives. Do you mean to tell me that that doesn’t mean he’s done with me?”

“He said he’ll call you,” Olivia urged again. “I don’t speak ‘man,’ but that sounds to me like he didn’t want to cut it off with you completely.”

I shook my head. “She’s back in his life, and he chose her over me,” I said.

“You barged in on a meeting.”

“He couldn’t wait to get back to her.”RêAd lat𝙚St chapters at Novel(D)ra/ma.Org Only

“You said that to me a few times now, but I don’t know…it sounds to me like you might have read something different into it than he meant.”

I glared at Olivia. “I love that you’re here trying to cheer me up, but you weren’t there. You didn’t see how he looked. You didn’t hear how he said what he said. Even if you’re right and he just wants to figure this stuff out before we do our thing, he told me that he wanted me, and then he told me he didn’t.”

Olivia looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. I was glad she didn’t. I was in a bad mood, and taking it out on her. I knew it was wrong. I wanted to believe her. I desperately wanted her to be right about Aaron and that he wanted to be with me, but I’d been hurt before. My breakup with Mike had sounded so similar to this. We just don’t want the same things. You want to get married, and I’m not ready for that yet. We should do our own thing, try a break, try something new. Be with different people, try new things…and when the time is right, we’ll end up back together.

As if the “right time” would magically throw us back together. Mike had used that line on me, and even though Aaron hadn’t said those words, it had sounded the same. God, I felt like such a fool, falling for someone when I should have known that I was just a nanny and that I would never be anything more.

Though, I could be less.

“What are you going to do about work?” Olivia asked, changing the topic.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I have money saved upit’s not a whole lot, so I should do something soon, but it’s enough that I can make rent and buy food and stuff like that.”

“You’re in a much better position than you were before,” Olivia pointed out.

I nodded. I was. I’d learned from my mistakes, at least financially. It had taken me a lot longer to learn from them emotionally, but I guess I was there now, too. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again, that was for sure. I would just send away the next man who came to me promising me some kind of forever.

“I want to start my own business,” I said. “I still don’t know what I want to do, but I have more than enough time on my hands now to figure it out, and since I’m not going to be focusing on someone else at all, I guess I’m in the best position I can ask for.”

Olivia stood and came to hug me.

“You’re going to be okay, Jade. You’re going to figure this out, and you’re going to rise above it.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“This is just a slump, a rough patch. Things won’t be bad forever.”

The oven timer pinged, and Olivia’s eyes brightened. “That’s the cake.

We’ll just let it cool, and then we’ll decorate the shit out of it.”

She skipped to the kitchen, and I smiled despite myself. Maybe Olivia was right. This was just a slump. All I had to do was claw my way out of it, figure out my direction in life, and then everything would be different.

Right now, it felt like an impossible task, but we would take it one step at a time. I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and then I had to close my eyes and jump. I didn’t need a man in my life to be successful and happy, right? I just needed time and people standing by my side, and I had that.

I would figure it out eventually.

But first, cake.