Page 25 of Other Side Of Never
“What am I doing?”I murmured to no one.Resting my cheek on my bent knees, I curled my freshly pink-painted toes into the soft cushion beneath me.
Even as a kid, I never did well with too much time to think.And overthink.True to course, my brain latched onto the few minutes I had free before meeting Kian and Isaiah at the beach.
Sage Ridge wasn’t supposed to be anything more than a brief detour, a rest stop, a couple of weeks at most to catch up with my aunt and catch my breath before striking out on my own as far away from Gary as possible.
To rebuild the life I had before him.
But now I’d been here long enough to make friends and get a job.My roots were creeping along the earth at my feet, searching for a place to rest.
If I wasn’t careful, I’d lose myself in someone else’s dream.
People talk about following their dreams all the time, but few make their way past the fears and obstacles life throws out and grab hold of it.
I was one of the lucky few.
I loved my chocolate shop, Cocoa Loco.More so because I had to fight for it on my own.While friends and family alike encouraged me to pursue my chocolate-making hobby, when I decided to turn it into a business there were more than a few raised eyebrows.
But I did it.
I had it.
Until Gary ripped it away from me the way he did everything else.
The urgency to put space between us that lit my step in the beginning, that yearning to start over somewhere fresh and new where Gary couldn’t reach me, had calmed.
Sage Ridge offered me a safe place to begin healing.And I was healing.
When I first arrived, my only goal had been peace, something that seemed wholly unattainable.The bar was admittedly low, but peace seems awfully high when you don’t have it.
It was no longer enough, but I wasn’t ready for all that entailed.Especially if it included moving on.
My sweet tooth rivaled my aunt’s, and being a chocolatier was my passion.But Sage Ridge was far too small to support two sweet shops, and Anita wasn’t retiring anytime soon.
And yet, I was content working at Susie Q’s.
Perhaps I was too old now for dreams.
Perhaps peace and community were the best I could hope for at this stage of my life.Or maybe I would have to choose between a life filled with family and friends or chasing down my dream?
I’d lost so much when I married Gary, including my friends.And though he complained incessantly about Cocoa Loco, it was the one thing I refused to give up.
Now, I had a life with friends who felt a whole lot more like family than his ever did.Nothing or nobody could make me walk away from them.
But if I stayed, would it mean losing a huge part of myself?
How much of me intertwined with my dream?
And what would I be willing to lose in order to fulfil it?
I had no answers, only questions looping around and around.
Dragging my computer onto my lap, I pulled up the same website I’d used so many years before when I first started looking for a place to open Cocoa Loco.
I scrolled through the offerings until something caught my attention.Sitting forward, my focus sharpening, I read.
Two and a half hours from here in a town twice the size of tiny Sage Ridge, it sounded perfect.I could message the sellers?Request the financials?
Family and friends?Or dream?Round and round and round.
