Page 3 of My Star-Crossed Summer

I pick at a tiny hole near the hem of my dress. “What Mom thinks she knows about us could fill an ocean.”

Gwen snorts. “But what she actually knows might fill a teaspoon.”

For example, Mom didn’t know that Theo tried to mold me into his perfect image of a wife and constantly undermined me to preserve his massive ego. He hated that I outperformed him at Rayanne’s and that I actually made friends with my clients. He was manipulative in that way that narcissists always are: they make you feel cherished one minute, like you’re the best thing that happened to them. In the next, they’re making you feel like a villain for having the audacity to not give in to their demands. He made me feel bad for standing up for myself and communicating my own needs—whether that was wanting to take a weekend trip to the coast by myself or disagreeing with him on how we should handle renovations of our house. The longer we were together, the more his resentment of me grew. Once I realized he was never going to change, I bailed.

And the job Mom thought was so great? Staying at Rayanne’s firm made me feel comfortable (mostly) and meant I wasn’t Mom’s primary target anymore. But it meant that I had to keep working with Theo—and that was a hard no.

Once Theo was out of the picture, I felt free. Now I want to cut out all of the other parts of my life that are a mismatch, too.

“What’s really going on with you?” Gwen says. “The Victoria I know would stomp right over to Mom and tell her where to shove her spin before she dropped the mic and flounced out of that partyReal Housewives-style.”

I let out a heavy sigh because she’s not wrong. Stifling my own needs has become my default, and I don’t want that anymore.

“I’ve been wasting my life,” I mutter. There’s a hollowness in my chest that I can’t explain, but I’ve been feeling it for months.

“Whoa,” she says. “Big leap. Back up, sweetie.”

I shake my head. “Mom’s been trying to reframe all of my missteps to everyone here—and I gotta say, Gwennie, laying them all out like that just makes it super clear that I’ve been on the wrong path for a long time.”

Like, since the second I let Mom get me that job with Rayanne’s real estate firm.

Gwen sighs. “You’re a force of nature. Don’t let Mom convince you otherwise.” She reaches over and taps her finger to my temple. “Don’t let her in here. You’ll have to burn a truckload of sage to get her out.”

“You know the worst thing?” I say. “I don’t think I even like real estate anymore. Maybe I never did.”

She nods but doesn’t look surprised.

“I’m good at it, but it doesn’t bring me joy.” I stretch my legs in front of me, feeling defeated. “I want what you have. I want to do something that truly makes me happy.” I sigh, feeling this envy, this want, deep in my bones—and then instantly feel a wave of guilt because my sister deserves to be happy, and I love that she’s built this amazing life for herself. “I want to be passionate about something, the way you are with the cafe. I want to do something that has purpose.”

“Oh, honey,” Gwen says.

“I just wish I knew what that something was.”

She slides closer to me and places her hand over mine. “I have no doubt you’ll find your happy,” she says. She means well, but her words are a knife in my chest because I’m not sure ofanything anymore. I feel like I’ve been doing everything wrong. I’m so far off my path, I can’t even see it anymore.

“I’ve been looking at job listings everywhere since I left Rayanne’s,” I confess. “but nothing appeals to me. It’s like I don’t know myself the way I thought I did. I feel unmoored.”

“To be fair, you’ve had a lot of upheaval in a short amount of time.”

She’s right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. When I broke off my engagement with Theo back in December, it blew up my whole life. I moved out of our house the very next day. A week later, I left my job with Rayanne, in part because Theo had convinced everyone in the office that I’d entered my villain era. He could be charming when he wanted, and he had all of our colleagues under his spell.

Theo didn’t respect me, and he’d never truly seen me as his equal. He’d been threatened by my success and expected me to sacrifice my career for our marriage. It wasn’t until I saw Gwen with her new boyfriend Logan that the truth really sank in. And that moment galvanized the fact that I wouldn’t just be settling with Theo—I’d be sacrificing my identity and squeezing myself into this mold he’d made for me. Realizing that on the day of our wedding wasn’t the best timing ever, but leaving him was my only option.

After the wedding debacle, I moved back into my house at the lake, next to Gwen. I’d been renting it to Logan, but once I broke things off with Theo, Logan ripped that lease in half and insisted I come back to my home. Gwen won the lottery with that guy, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous of that, too. Everything in Gwen’s life seemed to be falling into place while mine felt like it had been blown to smithereens.

“I have to find a job soon,” I mutter. “I’m burning through my savings.”

“My offer still stands,” she says matter-of-factly. “You can be the cafe’s marketing strategist and social media wunderkind. Logan would pay you an obscene amount of money to do it.”

“And I do appreciate it,” I tell her. “But I can’t let you do that. I have to do this on my own. I have to find what lights me up.”

She nods in agreement. I could do the job she offered—easily. But I know it’s not my path. I didn’t blow up my life just to settle again.

That dwindling savings, though. It’s a beast with big teeth.

“What about that job your friend Roxy called you about?” Gwen says.

I laugh. “Director of a kids’ camp? Come on. I don’t know what to do with kids.”

---