Page 92 of Getting Over You

“You’re allowed to be sad about it, you know.”

“I’m not sad about losing her,” I admit. “I’m happy she’s out of my life for good, and hurt over the scene she pulled tonight. I’m starting to think she hired you because that was her plan all along.”

“To kiss me?”

I shake my head. “To ruin something that was making me happy, so I’d have to spend time with her. Because all that matters in Belinda’s universe is her own feelings.” My heart hurts. I want to cry. I do. But my mind won’t let me. Like my brain is protecting me from a breakdown.

“It’s things like this that make me glad me and EJ’s dad just dipped,” Cade says, running grains of sand through his fingers.

I turn to look at him. His eyes, and frankly, the rest of him, look… sunken in. “What do you mean?”

“Well.” He swallows, clears his throat. “Like, that way, he couldn’t disappoint us repeatedly, right? He did his one-and-done act of neglect and didn’t try to take any prisoners.”

“I—”

“Gigi,” Cade says. “If you are about to try to defend that woman right now for the way she treats you, you’re a lunatic.”

“I was going to say you were right,” I tell Cade gently. “One big break is better than a bunch of tiny ones.”

And that applies to more than just my fractured, unrepairable relationship with the woman who gave birth to me and decidedly did little else.

“She’s always been like this?” Cade asks.

I nod. “Makes sense if you take a second to think. Who does Belinda love the most in this world?”

Cade hesitates. “College students? Sleeping with college students? I guess that last one is an activity.”

I would laugh if I had the means. “Herself. She lovesherselfmore than she will ever be capable of loving someone else. Evenher owndaughter. She loves herself more than she will ever love me, if she feels anything positive toward me at all.”

“Gigi. I am so sorry.”

“Please stop apologizing. I knew this would happen with us, eventually. It was only a matter of time.”

“You lost your mom today.”

“I have a mom already, Cade. Belinda was the spare, and she’s not needed anymore.”

“You’re acting like you just popped a tire, not severed a familial tie.”

“I’ve been preparing for the depressive episode of Belinda being gone for good for a long time. I’ve cried enough about her not loving me. I feel numb right now.”

“You need a shower,” Cade decides. “The breeze didn’t blow off the sadness. Maybe a cleansing will.”

“I don’t think I can right now,” I tell him.

“I knew it was a bad idea to act like you had a choice,” Cade says. Before I can register what’s happening, he lifts me up into his chest.

It hits me instantly: clove, his warmth, the gentle caress he uses when he touches me. I’m upset he thinks he can’t be mine forever.

“You are taking a shower, whether you think it’s necessary or not.”

“Thank you,” I mumble into his chest.

He doesn’t reply, but I don’t expect him to.

Cade understands. That’s all I need.

It doesn’t occur to me until after I’m out of the shower, sopping wet, that I didn’t bring pajamas. And, in typical man-apartmentfashion, there’s no towel hanging on the rack. I’m so used to those things being there, existing without me thinking about them.

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