Page 100 of Follow Your Bliss

“But when I went back to school to become a therapist,” Mom said, “gosh, I learned so much. I started seeing all these couples with real problems. But also? With real connections. I thought couple’s counseling was all opposition, a last-ditch effort to reanimate something already dead. But more often than not, it’s two people who love each other so very much that they’ll do anything to make it work. To deepen or rekindle their connections, not to break them. Men as equally as women. And no, they weren’t all married. Marriage isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. But I’m so sorry I didn’t bring what I was learning home to you and Lily.

“Until I met Steve, I didn’t know how amazing a true partnership could be. Our life together is built on mutual respect and unconditional love. A commitment with the right partner is life-changing.” She laughed. “Even if it’s with a man, and he still can’t find shit in the pantry if other shit’s in front of it. No one’s perfect, Rosie. And good relationships still take a ton of work. It’s not all chocolate and orgasms. It’s both of you choosing each other, repeatedly, over all the other problems. Because you each know in your heart that the other person is worth it.”

“How do you know they’re worth it?” I sniffled and wiped my nose. “How do you know if your relationship is worth it?”

She blew out through her mouth. “That’s a hard one. I think you have to just…feel it. Of course, we’re assuming far and above the low-bar baseline of they’re not abusive or someone who would cheat. When you’re both good people, it’s really a personal decision because no two relationships are the same. But intention matters. Compatibility matters. Willingness to say, ‘I’m sorry’ and not only mean it, but actually do better. That matters a lot.”

Jasonhadapologized and gotten Misty kicked out of the wedding, and that wasn’t nothing. I closed my eyes. Weweregood together. So much laughing, all the time. Daily life with him was weirdly fun. Even doing dishes. He approached everything we faced as though we were equal partners, even went above and beyond to do more for me. Until StudFinders and wanting to hide me from his mom, I’d never questioned his intentions. He admitted he’d messed up, without excuses, and he vowed to make changes. But would he?

All I knew was that my whole body ached from the loss of him. I teared up again. “I don’t know what to say, Mom.”

She sat me up and pushed more tissues into my hands, pulling all my hair back again as I blew my nose. “Say you won’t judge Jason by anything other than who he is and who you are together. And admit that it’s okay that he’s not perfect. He’s still learning and growing like the rest of us.” She pulled out her phone and tapped her way to Instagram. “I went to see what I could learn about this Deck Daddy. Did you see what he posted today?”

I shook my head. The day after I left, I’d gotten one too many pop-ups from his socials and turned off all my notifications.

She started a video and handed me her phone. “Take a look.”

My first sight of Jason in days made my breath catch and my heartache intensify. After his cheesy opening sequence of photos of him building and being his goofy self, he appeared. Shirt on for a change, he stood beside a superimposed still image of the video we made together of my table.

“Hey everybody, It’s your Deck Daddy, Jason, and today I want to talk about this video.” He pointed to it. “Not the video itself, but the woman in it. It’s time to set the rumors to rest. Yep, you caught me. This is Rose. And I am”—he pressed his hands to his heart—“hopelessly, completely,transcendentallyin love with her.”

He said that to the whole dang internet? Mrs. Betty and Big Brother StudFinders must be crying into their tea and beers.

“In case you missed it,” he went on, “she’s the genius designer and seamstress behind Sweet Roses Bridal, and I recently posed with her to help get her Instagram up and running. We’ve both shared photos from that day, but here’s my favorite.”

The screen filled with the photo of us kissing that he didn’t want to post before. My eyes filled with tears and Momaww’edbeside me. “Y’all are such a beautiful couple.”

I’d forgotten how devoted and in love he looked in that photo, his brow lowered, his eyes closed, his hand along my jaw as if loving me was the most serious thing in the world.

“The only thing more beautiful than that gown is that woman’s heart,” Jason continued. “And while we were evacuated in Florida because of Hurricane Oscar, she saw this cool wall shelf made from an old church window in a shop. She wanted it for her crystal collection, but neither of us had the extra cash. So I made her one to look like the windows in our converted church home.”

A corner of my mouth twitched up. Again with the “our home.”

I watched the whole video with tears streaming down my face, from him designing the shelf, cutting the wood, bending the pieces to make the curved point at the top. All the little details he poured into it to please me, like the deep shelves and buying me a new set of tarot cards he said he found on my Amazon Wishlist to be sure they’d fit. Becca even came on camera to help him with a portion of it, putting the first coat of the gray paint from the rectory on it—“Diana’s Moon,” Jason called it—and helping him distress it.

I missed him more and more as the video went along. Then finally, he hung the finished shelf on a wall—with tarot cards on it—in the main living area of the church. Where God and everybody could see it.

Becca stood beside him with a gift bag in hand. “I have a friend in Arkansas who collects hunks of quartz off her land.” She reached in and pulled out a gorgeous fat cluster of clear quartz big enough to hold with two hands. “She gave me this a while back, and I’ve been trying to find a good home for it. Would Rose like it?”

“Ahh, thanks Becca, it’s perfect.” He took it carefully from her and sat it on the shelf. “I think she’ll love it.”

Watching Jason and his sister talking so casually about me, hearing Jason call his house my home too…I’d been so certain that what happened between us was the end of it. And so certain that I wouldn’t have a permanent place in his life that I grabbed onto his issues with his mom and pushed our relationship away with both hands.

I walked out on him when he needed me. The truth was, we needed each other.

Mom squeezed my hand. “Does being with Jason make you happy?”

I nodded through softer tears. “Blissful.”

“So…maybe it’s time to follow your bliss?”

I huffed a soft laugh at her choice of words. “Yeah. I think it is.”

“Then go get ready. I’ll drive you to the rehearsal dinner.”

I nodded. “Okay. But I have to wrap something first.”

Jason

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