Jack was right about the tourists.
At nine o’clock on the dot, they start arriving in droves and Heather bids me a hasty goodbye, encouraging me to stay a while longer on my own or come again. I promise I will, and then make my way through the hordes of humans like a salmon swimming upstream.
I try to get one of the cabbies doing a drop-off to take me back to my apartment downtown, but they are all rushing off to pick-up pre-arranged fares all over Sitka. After trying for half an hour, I conceded defeat and set off for my apartment on foot.
About twenty minutes into the walk I feel blisters developing on both of my heels and between the toes intersected by the thong on my right foot. Short of saying it’s agony, I’m increasingly uncomfortable as I continue my trek along the roadside. My only solace is the sometimes-unobstructed view of the bay to my left, though no whales surface to pick up my waning spirits. Instead, the sky opens up and out of nowhere, I’m walking in the middle of a monsoon, which douses the last of my positive energy.
I haven’t cried much about Bryce’s swift and humiliating departure from my life. I’m not a crier by nature, one, and two, I’ve never really seen the point of crying. My sister has always claimed it was cathartic to “have a good cry,” but I think it’s just a waste of salt and water. It doesn’t change anything. In the end, you’re just left with burning eyes and a heavier heart.
So it surprises me that the rain is not the only thing wetting my cheeks. Tears rivulet down my face, hotter and faster than the cooling rain. I hiccup and choke on my sobs, leaning against a metal barrier on the side of the road, clothes soaked and feet bleeding.
&nb
sp; I really thought that Bryce and I were “forever” material—the sort of couple for whom the passion had burned out, but for whom companionship and comfort would be enough to build a decent life together. We’d have a couple of kids, get a house in the suburbs of Seattle, and even though we’d never win an award for being the most amorous couple of all time, we’d be…content.
Suddenly dumping me for twenty-something Ruby wasn’t something I saw coming. But after the shock wore off, I kept waiting for it to hurt, for losing Bryce to hurt, and it didn’t. Losing my life’s plan? Ouch. Losing someone to marry and have kids with? Disappointing. The prospect of starting all over with someone new? Terrifying.
But losing Bryce K.Morton, the person? It didn’t hurt, didn’t devastate me the way it should have...which forced me to acknowledge what I’d probably known all along deep down: that Bryce wasn’t the one, that the last five years were wasted time, and that I had contented myself with “good enough” because I didn’t have the fucking courage to start over with someone new, someone better, someone who would—
“Miss? Excuse me, miss?”
My head jerks up and I gasp in surprise to find a car pulled up next to me, the driver’s window open, and his face not three feet from me.
I straighten up, trying to step away, but the backs of my knees hit the guardrail I was just leaning on.
“I’m fine,” I say, still sniffling through my stupid, fucking useless tears. “I don’t need any help. I’m okay. You can—”
“You don’t look okay,” he says.
“I am. I was just at the b-bears, and now…um, I’m w-walking hoooooooome…”
I start crying again.
What the fuck? Why am I crying?
Because Bryce dumped me? Or because I wasted five years of my life on the possibility of a mediocre outcome because I was too chickenshit to find something better? Does something better even exist? Or is every rom-com I ever watched or read just a big, fat lie?
“Where’s home?” he asks.
“S-Seattle.”
“You’re walking to Seattle?” he asks. “Long way.”
“I’m not…I’m not walking to Seattle!” I say, starting to feel annoyed. I didn’t ask this person to stop. I don’t need help. I just need…fuck, I don’t even know what I need, but I don’t need to be bothered right now.
“Well, where are you walking to?”
I wipe my snotty nose on the sleeve of my jacket, leaving a glistening trail of boogers, and then cross my arms over my chest. “None of your business. Please just…leave me alone.”
I sniffle pathetically and start walking again.
To my intense annoyance, he drives slowly beside me. We continue like this for about thirty seconds with my tears still flowing—they have a life of their own at this point, and there’s nothing I can do about it—and my hackles rising with every painful, squishy step.
“What? What do you want?” I finally yell, stopping to face him. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”
He brakes beside me. “You’re clearly in distress. I can’t leave you out here alone.”
“Why not?” I demand. “Are you the distress police?”