Page 113 of The Trouble with Wanting

She sits with me for a few minutes before she stands and dusts her hands off on her jean shorts.

“You asked me if I believe in soulmates,” I say, shielding my eyes from the sun. “Do you still want my answer?”

Briar crosses her arms and looks at me, debating for a minute before she nods.

“If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I would have told you no,” I say in response. “I thought people made up the idea of soulmates to justify getting rid of someone when they’re not perfect.”

“And if I ask you now?”

I look her straight in the eyes and give her a sad smile. “Now, it’s not a question of whether or not I believe in them,” I say. “I know they exist, because I found mine.”

Briar lets out a long sigh before she reaches a hand toward me. I take it, allowing her to help me stand up. Instantly the world starts to tilt, but Briar holds me against her and helps get me back inside.

The last thing I remember her saying before she drops me off in my room is, “You’re going to have one hell of a sunburn.”

* * *

When I finally wake up, my head is pounding and my entire body hurts. Thankfully, Briar took pity on me and left a bottle of ibuprofen and a glass of water next to my bed, along with some aloe vera.

Use liberally is written on a sticky note.

I smirk, then wince.

Reaching out for the bottle, I see the redness on my arms: not bad enough to last more than a few days, but bad enough to sting for a little while.

A look at the clock says I slept through the night, the liquor and the sun enough to have kept me in bed for over 12 hours. What I need is a cup of coffee and some greasy breakfast food, and by some miracle, when I get out of the shower and head downstairs, I find my mom at the counter with a full plate of bacon, sausage, eggs, and toast waiting for me.

Her narrowed eyes reflect the knowledge of a woman who has dealt with more than one Mitchell child hangover throughout the years.

“Morning!” she declares, her voice loud and bright.

I wince, jerking my head to the side, the noise causing an additional, unwelcome throb in my head.

“You’re mean,” I whisper, wishing I could roll my eyes at her cackling laugh but choosing not to because it will do nothing but worsen the pounding at my temples.

“Yeah, well, sometimes being a mother is about tender sweetness, and sometimes it’s about driving a point home.”

“What point?” I ask, searching the cabinets for my mug and coming up empty.

“That drinking to the point where you don’t want to see or hear anything the next day is a dumbass move.”

She laughs again as I open the dishwasher then close it, settling for grabbing one of the dozen other available mugs to drink out of. I fill it up to the brim with black coffee and suck some down without care for if I’m burning my mouth a little bit.

“So, what happened?” my mother asks, her voice lowering slightly and shifting into mom mode. “You’ve been bounding around town looking lovestruck for the past two weeks. I can’t believe something actually yanked you down from that cloud you’ve been on.”

I blow on the brown liquid in my mug and glance at her. “Well, believe it.”

She sits silently, waiting.

My mother knows me well. Out of all her kids, I’m the one who takes the longest to open up to her. It’s not because I don’t want to get her advice, but because I don’t want to let her down.

She has also learned over the years that if I’m going to say anything, she needs to sit silently and wait.

“Ruby left.”

I stare at the coffee instead of at my mother.

“I don’t know what happened, but one minute we were crazy about each other and having a good time, and then all of a sudden she got really quiet and pulled away and started saying maybe we should pump the brakes. I don’t know what happened between two days ago and yesterday to make her change her mind about me, but clearly I did something.”

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