Page 83 of Sounds Like Love

I was silent.

“I don’t understand you sometimes,” she said, her voice sounding on edge and irritated. “You’re on top of the world. You are accomplishing your dreams—everyoneof them. You have everything you wanted! You got out, you’ve lived somewhere else, you foundpurpose—and you’re still not happy.”

I felt my spine go rigid. “How can I be happy when I can’t write, I can’t think, I can’t—I can’t do anything. And then I come home, and everything is falling apart around me.”

“God,” she went on, looking at the ceiling, “you just don’tseeit.”

“Then please, enlighten me, Gigi.”

“Of course life will look like it’s falling down around you when you’re never here! You left—youleft, and I’m not faulting you. But of course life goes on here and of course you’re not going to beinit anymore because you’re gone! Things can’t stay the way they always were. Do you know how exhausting that would be for everyone still here?”

I felt shame creep up my spine. “I just wish that I’d stayed.”

“Do you really? Because Ididstay, and what I wouldn’t give to be you. To feel, for asecond, like my life matters to the world. That I’ll be missed by more than just a few old women who depend on me to read out their bingo numbers, or depend on me to barback at a run-down music hall, or—”

“When did Mitch propose to you?” I interrupted, feeling the barb of that last bit.

She sucked in a breath, like she’d been slapped. Then she looked away,her lips pressed tightly together. I inferred the answer from her silence.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my brother come out of the bedroom and spy us sitting at the table. Speak of the devil. Buckley slid off the couch and went over to greet him with a lick to his arm. “Good morning, ladies,” he said, kissing Gigi on the cheek and grabbing the dog leash from the coat hook. Then he left out the front for Buckley’s morning constitutional.

After the door closed, I advised, “If you don’t want to marry my brother, don’t leave him hanging.”

“It’s complicated,” Gigi replied stonily.

“I’m sure,” I said, finishing my coffee. “I should go.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think if you want to stay, you should stay, Joni. But I think you’re conveniently forgetting that if you stay, you’ll lose a whole lot, too.”

“I already am,” I replied. And I was beginning to wonder if it was worth it. Going back to LA, doubling down. Continuing to fight for the thing I’d already sacrificed so much for. Even if it didn’t make me happy anymore. Even if it made me hate the very thing I used to love.

Or if I should …

If I should give up.

By the time Mitch came back in with the dog, I had changed back into last night’s clothes. I pecked him goodbye on the cheek, and left before I said something else I’d regret.

Chapter30Some Nights (I’m Scared You’ll Forget Me Again)

I UNLOCKED THEfront door and put the keys in the catchall tray on the sideboard as I walked in. Sam and Frodo met me at the door, wagging their tails happily as they explored all the new smells on my shoes. On the entire walk home, I went through my fight with Gigi again and again, things I should have said, things I shouldn’t have.

She’d kept Mitch’s proposal from me, butwhy? I had a feeling he had already proposed when Mom first told me he’d asked for the ring. After she’d been so pointed about my own freedom, about having multiple guys interested—I put two and two together. I just wished I hadn’t been right.

But what about Mom? She was so excited when she told me that Mitch had asked for the ring …

I pursed my lips, slipping out of my Birkenstocks by the door. As I rounded into the kitchen, the distinct pungent smell of burnt plastic hit my nose.

Then Dad, softly muttering, “It’s okay. It’s okay, my heart. Lemme help.”

“I said I can do it, Hank.” Mom’s voice was uncharacteristically sharp. “I just forgot.”

In the kitchen, the oven was open, and there was burnt red goop all inside that looked … mysteriously like a Folgers jar. My parents were studying the damage, and then Mom took a spatula and tried to scrape at the melted plastic and roasted coffee, but it was stuck fast.

“It’s an easy fix,” Dad went on gently. “We’ll just get a new rack. Replace the heating element—”

“We don’t have that kind of money,” Mom replied frankly, and when Dad tried to pry out the rack, she snapped. “Just leave it! I’ll do it. I’ll figure it out.”

“Wyn—”

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