by Lila Monroe
I wake up to the sound of my phone vibrating on the nightstand. I groan. I’ve barely slept, but somehow, I definitely already have a hangover. “Hello?” I mumble, squinting at the display.
“Shoot,” April says, the rattle and hum of a New York City street audible in the background. “I’m sorry! I totally forgot about the time change.”
“It’s fine,” I tell her, pulling myself into a sitting position. “I was mostly awake anyway.” The truth is, I barely got any rest last night: I was too busy tossing and turning on the king-sized mattress, my limbs getting tangled up in the sheets as I replayed that kiss with Wes over and over in my head.
Remembering the heat of his body . . . the faint sexy scrape of his stubble . . .
Imagining what might have happened if I hadn’t run away.
“So, how’s it all going?” April asks brightly. “Are Selena and Ryder ready to call it quits for good?”
I sigh. “Those two are the least of my problems,” I confess. I fill her in on my latest Wes-related misadventures as I open the guesthouse door, praying that today, of all days, my fabulous breakfast tray didn’t go astray.
Nope, it’s there, like manna from heaven: a fresh pot of coffee and a basket of warm muffins.
God bless A-list service.
“And then I just bolted,” I finish before tearing into a muffin. “Like the coward I am.”
“Oh my gosh,” April squeals. “I wish you could see my face right now. I’m literally that gif of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.”
“It’s not funny!” I protest. “OK, it’s not THAT funny. But this is my life we’re talking about. How would it look if the Breakup Artist got caught sucking face with her ex right before her book comes out? Talk about not practicing what I preach.”
“It’s unconventional as far as PR strategies go, I’ll give you that,” April admits, laughing. “But you’re not famous like Selena. Nobody would care. And is concern for your professional reputation really all that’s stopping you right now?”
I give another weary sigh. “No,” I tell her finally. “I just . . . I guess there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe he’s really different, you know? I’m worried that deep down he’s still the same guy who let me think everything was hunky-dory right up until the moment he bought a one-way plane ticket clear across the country like he was entering witness protection or something. Do you remember me eating my own weight in mint Milanos?”
“Ah, the Pepperidge Farm binge of 2015,” April says seriously. “I remember it well.”
“The bodega man literally kept a separate case of them just for me in the back.”
“He took very good care of you, yes.”
“Better care than Wes did,” I mutter darkly.
“I mean, fair.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “Can I ask you something, though?” she continues. “You’re not the same person you were back then, are you? You’re way more confident, you know what you want. You don’t take the same crap you used to just to make a guy like you.”
“I guess . . .”
“Well, who’s to say the same thing hasn’t happened to Wes?” she asks. “You’ve both had time to grow up and settle into yourselves, to figure out what’s really important to you and what kind of person you want to be. He’s older. He’s wiser. And judging by the way you’re trying less-than-successfully to disguise your heavy breathing over there, he’s a way better kisser than he used to be.”
“Rude,” I grin, even as a fresh cascade of memories from last night floods through me: The slow slide of Wes’s hands on my body. The hot rasp of his tongue. It feels like all my senses are heightened since he kissed me, like he woke something up inside me that I hadn’t even realized was asleep.
Can’t I just take a Nyquil and forget it ever happened?
My phone beeps with another incoming call. “It’s Eliza,” I say, checking the screen. “I better take this. I’ll talk to you later, OK?”
“Sounds good,” April says cheerfully. “And text me immediately if there’s any more midnight shenanigans.”
“There won’t be,” I say immediately before I switch over to my editor’s call.
“Hey, Eliza,” I say brightly, heading back inside the guesthouse and trying to sound like a person who didn’t spend all night imagining her ex putting her up against a wall. “What’s up?”
“Our prospects!” she crows, sounding delighted. “I have to admit, when I offered you this book deal, I had no idea you were a marketing genius on top of everything else! My phone has been ringing off the hook since word got out that you’re working with Selena Owens.”
“Wait, how do they know?” I ask, frowning. “I was supposed to wait until after our sessions before saying anything.”
“Someone in her camp leaked it, I guess,” Eliza said. “But either way, it’s great for the book! We’re positioning you as a celebrity breakup guru, and there’s all kinds of media interest. I’m talking magazine features—maybe even a recurring column in Us Weekly—plus a couple of morning show appearances. Maybe even late night!”
“Wait,” I gasp. “Television? Eliza, I don’t know. I mean, I’m hardly an expert—”
“An expert is exactly what you are,” she interrupts me. “You literally wrote the book! If this keeps up, it could be our biggest release of the season—and Dick Johnson can take the Real Man’s Real-Man Guide to Being a Real Man and shove it up his hairy ass.” She sounds more upbeat than I’ve heard her in weeks. “How’s it all going out there, anyway?”
“Um, great!” I lie. “I better get back to it, actually. I’ve got a session with Ryder and Selena this morning.”
“Sounds good,” Eliza says. “I’ll circle back soon with details. But in the meantime, you should celebrate! This is going to be fabulous.”
I glance out the window then, just in time to see Wes strolling across the grounds in dress pants and a fitted button-down, looking entirely too lickable for so early in the morning. “Yup,” I say weakly. “Just fabulous.”
Selena and Ryder are MIA when I make my way up to the main house, but when I follow the warm, yeasty smell of freshly baked bread, I find Brooke in the kitchen, pulling two giant loaves out of the oven.
“They left a little while ago,” she says, slicing me a thick hunk of sourdough and slathering it with homemade jam. “I think they were headed up to the gazebo.” Then she frowns. “Do you think everything’s OK after last night?”
For one panicky second, I think she means my kiss with Wes—until I realize she’s talking about Selena’s drunken scene at the Mexican restaurant. “I guess we’ll find out,” I say with a wince.
I take my carbs to go and find the unhappy couple right where Brooke said they’d be, sitting cross-legged in a picturesque gazebo overlooking the property. Selena and Ryder are holding hands with a woman I don’t recognize: rail-thin and lithe and dressed in long, flowy robes like a cartoon fortune-teller. The three of them are surrounded by a ring of crystals, and there’s the smell of incense wafting thickly through the air.
“Open your rib cages,” the woman is urging as I approach. “Open your hearts.”
Umm, what?
Then I spy Wes standing off to the side of the gazebo. I should have guessed.
I march over to him. “Is this your doing?” I demand.
“Shh, don’t disturb them,” he murmurs with a grin. “And also, nope. I wish I’d thought of it,” he adds, “but this is all them.”
Selena cracks one eye open. “Katie!” she beams, springing to her feet and bouncing over to me. She looks dewy and fresh, like she popped a vitamin, did a face mask, and tucked herself into bed last night at eight p.m. How?! I guess Hollywood starlets don’t get hangovers, or possibly she just has an IV technician on call for an early-morning saline drip. “This is Candelabra, my spiritual guide. She’s going to help Ryder and I exorcise the ghosts of our relationship!”
She’s going to what now?
“Sounds great,” I lie,
smiling encouragingly, though the truth is, I’m starting to wonder if I’m ever going to manage to get any real, uninterrupted time in with these two. “Why don’t I wait for you guys back at the house and we can have our session when you’re finished here?”
“No, no, stay!” Selena urges. “I think it could be really helpful for the work we’re doing together.”
I shake my head. “Oh, I don’t really think—”
“Aw, come on, Katie,” Wes says teasingly. “What are you, a cynic? Do you not believe in Candelabra’s life’s work?”
I shoot him a glare. “No, it isn’t that. I’d love to stay, it’s just—”
“Actually, Wes, you should get in on this, too!” Selena says, clapping her hands in even as Wes winces like an animal caught in a trap. “Candelabra, is there any Clarity Tea left for these two?”
“There’s Clarity Tea for all of us,” Candelabra says seriously, pouring a murky looking mixture from a Tupperware pitcher into a pair of Dixie cups. She holds them out to me and Wes expectantly.
“She brings it from home,” Ryder reports. “It’s kinda funky.”
“Looks . . . interesting.” I take a cautious sip of the Clarity Tea, which tastes like kombucha mixed with human vomit, and take a seat beside Wes on the floor of the gazebo. “Um, thank you?”
Candelabra ignores me.
“I want you all to take a deep breath, close your eyes, and feel the energy of the past washing over you,” she orders. “Now. Do you feel it?”
“I feel it,” Ryder says seriously. “I feel it!”
“Now, let’s all surrender to the wave!”
We spend the next few minutes making utter fools of ourselves at Candelabra’s behest: hooting like monkeys and dancing around. Selena calls out to the spirits of her foremothers to cleanse her polluted aura. Ryder roleplays being reborn through the birth canal of doubt. Part of me is convinced this is all some massive prank, that there’s a camera hidden somewhere and soon, a TV producer is going to yell, Cut!, but the longer we keep at it, the clearer it is that Candelabra is deadly serious. She’s drunk her own Kool-Aid—or, at the very least, her own Clarity Tea.
“Now, we invite in the positive rays of renewal!”
I catch Wes’s eye. He’s this close to cracking up, too. “I feel cleansed,” I whisper.
“I feel something, all right,” Wes mutters back, his voice low in my ear. “What do you think she put in that tea?”
Candelabra claps her hands before I can answer. “All right,” she announces, handing out golf pencils and tiny pads of paper emblazoned with her swooping purple logo, like possibly we’re at a corporate retreat for mid-level sales managers. “Now that we’re all feeling open and vulnerable, I’d like you to take a moment to write a letter from your deepest, most vulnerable heart to the one who’s hurt you the most.” She waggles the pads at Wes and I, but I shake my head.
“Oh, we don’t need them, thanks,” I tell her. “We’ll just watch this round.”
Candelabra frowns. “Nonsense,” she says. “I can see the haunting specter of the past hanging between you.”
I’m pretty sure that’s just the haze of patchouli coming off the incense, but I don’t say that out loud. “Sure,” Wes agrees, shooting me a look I can’t read, exactly. “Why not?”
Ugh. “Why not,” I echo, gritting my teeth through a smile. After all, it’s not like I haven’t done this exact exercise with my clients before. I’m assuming we’ll burn them or something when we’re all finished, then congratulate ourselves on letting the past go. And I do feel rather open and vulnerable, actually—thanks, Clarity tea—so I scribble down a few lines and wait for the others to finish.
“Very good,” Candelabra says finally, ringing a small bell to call us back to attention. “Now, let’s hear them. Katie, why don’t you begin, tell us what you’ve written?”
My head snaps up. “Wait, what?” Clarity tea or no clarity tea, all at once I am excruciatingly, devastatingly sober. “I thought these were private.”
Candelabra looks bewildered. “How are you supposed to let go of the karmic weight that’s holding you down if you keep them private?” she asks. “Proceed.”
I gulp.
Oh, crapwaffle.
I look down at my paper, which is all about Wes.
Aaaalllll about him. And us. And me.
“You can do it,” Selena beams at me encouragingly. “This is a safe space!”
What the hell. I open my mouth and blurt it all out: about how much I cared about him, how I’d really thought we had something special. How hurt I was that he didn’t respect me enough to break things off face to face. “You made me feel like I wasn’t good enough, like I didn’t even matter enough to say goodbye,” I finish, my hands shaking. “After you broke my heart, I promised myself I’d never let anyone make me feel that way again.”
I stop. And take a deep breath. And wish the ground would open and swallow me up. “That’s it,” I mumble quickly. “I’m done.”
The circle is silent, except for the sound of Selena sniffling away. I stare straight ahead, refusing to even look at Wes. I can’t believe I just babbled all my feelings out like that after spending so long acting like I didn’t care.
Ryder is the first to speak. “Wait,” he says, looking back and forth between Wes and me. “You guys used to bone?”
“Katie,” Wes begins, and when I finally meet his eyes across the circle, he looks shameful and guilty as hell.
“It’s fine,” I say hurriedly, scrambling to my feet. Jesus, nothing they’re paying me could make up for this humiliation. “Really, it’s over. Ancient history.”
I hurry away from the gazebo, feeling like an idiot. What was I thinking? I could have faked a letter about something else from my past! The girl who kicked over my leaf pile in fourth grade. The dude who left a mean note on my car about my poor parking skills. But nope, I had to go and pour my heart out, like a total idiot.
Anyone would think I wanted Wes to know how I felt.
Luckily, the gardens are big enough to get lost in, and after hiking my way through an ornamental maze, I’m pretty sure nobody’s coming after me. I come to a stop beside a huge old tree and catch my breath, still prickling with embarrassment.
What must he think of me now?
I wince. So much for cool and breezy. The man broke my heart, but still, it’s like every instinct in my body wants to pretend like it didn’t happen. That I was fine. Cool. Unaffected by his shitty non-breakup.
But isn’t that what got things screwed up in the first place—me, acting like I didn’t have feelings, or hopes, or expectations?
Wes said as much the other night, didn’t he? If only I’d known it at the time.
I look up, despairing, and then pause. There’s a treehouse, almost hidden in the branches, out of sight. Back when I was a kid, we had one in our yard. It was my favorite place to hide out, and something about the memory makes me hoist myself up the ladder and climb inside.
I have to laugh. This is so not like the treehouse I had. The roof is high enough for me to stand upright, and there’s a comfy-looking daybed in the corner and cute rugs layering the floor. Still, it makes for the perfect place to hide away and stew over my humiliation, but just when I’m trying to figure if I can pack up and head back to New York, I hear the sound of someone climbing the ladder.
“Is there room for one more up here?” Wes’s head pops up through the trapdoor.
I gulp.
“Sure.” I try to sound breezy. “I don’t know what happened,” I add quickly as he climbs inside. He’s got water bottles and snacks, and he passes me one. “How about that Clarity Tea, huh? I mean, that’s what I get for taking a drink from someone I don’t know,” I babble. “Stranger danger, et cetera.”
“I think we all underestimated the power of Candelabra,” Wes says with a grin. “She had Ryder barking like a dog when you left.”
That makes me smile. “Still,” I say, “sorry for . . .” I w
ave my hand vaguely. “All of that. My little performance back there.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Wes says, sounding sincere. “I deserved to hear that. For the record, I really am sorry. And if it makes you feel any better, last year I got my ass handed to me by a girl in LA who did basically the same thing to me.”
“Ghosted you?” I look up, curious.
Wes gives a rueful smile. “It was brutal. It took me like three weeks to figure out, too. I totally believed her when she said she was busy with work and her gerbil was sick.”
I consider that for a moment. “It does make me feel a little bit better, actually. What was she like?” I can’t help asking.
You know, for professional reasons.
“She was great,” Wes says. “Smart, funny, and just one of those great, warm people.”
“Oh. Sounds awesome,” I manage, ignoring the shot of jealousy in my chest.
“Looking back, I don’t think we were right for each other,” he adds. “I mean, clearly, if she wanted to get away from me that bad. But at the time, it messed me up . . . and it made me realize how selfish I’d been, pulling the same stunt on you. I was an asshole,” he says plainly. “A complete and utter jerk.”
“Well, as long as we agree on something,” I quip, but I do feel better, knowing he understands.
I reach for a cookie at the same time as him. Our hands brush.
I look up. His eyes are on mine, searching.
Sexy.
I swallow hard. Suddenly, this spacious treehouse feels about three feet wide. He’s sprawled beside me on the floor, close enough to touch.
Close enough to kiss.
This time, Wes is the one who reaches for me. Slowly, giving me all the time in the world to tell him no or pull away.
But I don’t.
He cups the back of my head and pulls me in for a kiss. It’s not like the other night, desperate and frenzied; this is slow and sweet, careful and considered. It feels like a kiss I’ve been waiting for without even realizing.
It feels like a kiss Wes has been waiting for, too.
“I don’t expect you to trust me right away,” he says when he pulls away, resting his forehead against mine. His voice is almost a whisper. “But I’d love to try to make it up to you, if I can.”
