Page 33 of Happy After All

It just felt like I had been dragging baggage with me everywhere I went. From Bakersfield to LA. I didn’t want to bring it here.

I had forgotten I even had it. Sort of. Mostly, I forgot there was another life.

After three years in Rancho Encanto, it has become my life.

NormallyI don’t even get sad on my birthday.

It’s the Chris factor.

The invasion of it all.

“I made you pie!”

I look up from the grill in total disbelief as Elise comes toward me with Emma, Sofia, and Angel trailing behind excitedly, holding the most beautiful lemon meringue pie I’ve ever seen.

“Pie! Pie! Pie!” The kids are singing what amounts to a hosanna chorus about the dessert, and I can’t really blame them.

I want that pie, this weather, my best friend, the adorable kids to pull me out of my weird funk. I’m thinking too much about the past, which I really don’t want to do. But the past is getting into my present, thebeforeis getting into myafter.

Then there’s Nathan.

I’m still in a minor tizzy about his random booking.

Putting it mildly.

I got my feelings hurt, and I might have overreacted. Internally. It’s not like Iyelledat him or anything, but for heaven’s sake. He warned me away from him like I’d accosted him.

The guy doesn’t like me—he’s made that very clear.

However, I think that’s maybe part of why I’m drawn to him. Not in a playground way. Not in an I-want-to-pull-his-pigtails way. It’s not that at all.

I’ve analyzed this possibly too deeply in the last five months, because I’m still thinking about him, in spite of being mad.

But I think I get it. Even better, I like the reason I’ve come up with.

He’s safe.

He’s never going to make a move on me. He’s proven that. He’s never going to look at me and see the fantasies I’ve had about him moving like a slideshow through my eyes and pull me into his arms. He’s never going to ask me to make them real.

That’s why I like him.

That’s why he excites me.

I can’t have him.

I’m not being martyrish, I’m really not.

He’s safe like this. A safe space to have pleasant, warm feelings without ever having to worry about the consequences of those feelings, because there are none and won’t be.

He’s like the human man equivalent of Rancho Encanto itself. A place out of time and space, where my issues don’t follow.

He isn’t my reality.

But this pie is.

Elise and Emma are. Sofia and Angel are. Wilma, Gladys, and Lydia are. Even Albert is. Even though he’s cornered Jonathan and Joseph off in the barbecue area and is saying something about the shortening attention spans of youths and the implications on real art. Then Jonathan says something about Marvel movies, and Albert is off to the races.

I know for a fact Jonathan has done this for the sole purpose of riling Albert up. I respect that about Jonathan. Also I’m tired of hearing screeds about the regurgitation of content and the soulless spectacle of green screen effects.

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