The Belle and the Beard by Kate Canterbary (carter reed TXT) 📗

whether I was skilled in policy or voter enfranchisement or even fundraising, every operation's big bugaboo. It didn't matter because I could make an on-air accident look like a strategic fire set from inside the house.

As they talked, I kept my wax-lipped smile in place and nodded at the correct moments, and I stopped feeling sorry for my former self. I stopped aching for all the things I'd lost in the last few months and I allowed cold, sinking numbness to fill that space. I listened though I felt like I was observing this conversation from the bottom of a deep pool, the shadows of figures at the surface moving over me, moving on without me.

I was here, such a great distance from the surface, and I was alone and empty because I told myself this was better. This was what I wanted.

28

Linden

There were a few routes I could drive without thinking. It was some form of muscle memory where I knew where I was going and could get there on autopilot, without much recollection of the trip. It always bothered my brother when I said anything to that effect since he found driving with anything short of undivided attention to be the height of recklessness.

I didn't set my autopilot to his Boston apartment because he asked too many damn questions and he always expected concrete answers to those questions, though I did point myself in the direction of New Bedford. The only place it made sense to go was home to my parents.

Before I did that, I stopped at a sports bar where I nursed one and a half beers and a burger I didn't taste. A football game claimed the majority of the patrons' interest and energy, and on most occasions, that much noise would've bothered me. I didn't care about it now. I just wanted to drop into all that noise and distraction, and forget that I'd given Jasper everything I thought she'd needed but none of it mattered because she was leaving.

It was stupid of me to get attached. It was stupid to think we could be—well, that we could be anything. It was stupid of me to try. There was never any chance of this arrangement lasting. And it was an arrangement, by no means a real relationship. We'd only known each other a handful of months and we didn't even like each other very much.

I don't hate you.

Fuck. Just…fuck.

But Jasper had been stuck here. Trapped, really. Now she had a way out and only a fool would pass that up. Jasper was a lot of contradictory things but she was no fool.

When the game was over and the burger felt like concrete in my stomach, I drove to my parents' house. I'd constructed a half-truth about an early appointment in Dartmouth and wanting to avoid morning traffic on 495, and my mother had texted back an emoji-heavy response that promised fresh sheets in my childhood bedroom.

I made a point of arriving there too late for anything more than a quick hello, good to see you, good night, and promptly closed myself in the room I used to share with Ash. It was a guest room now, stripped of its boyish blues and browns, and refined in a way it'd never been when we were kids.

I spent the night alternating between staring at the ceiling, checking my phone, and sleeping in fitful, disappointing bursts. There was a pinch in my chest every time I opened the messaging app and found nothing new from Jasper. I was capable of texting her, though that seemed like the wrong course of action. She was clear about what she wanted and I had no business standing in her way.

I couldn't offer her much, but more than that, she'd have to give up everything she thought she wanted to stay here with me. And I knew it made me the exact mansplainer dickhead she accused me of being by suggesting she didn't actually want any of the things she went after, but it was the truth.

She didn't want that job out in California, she wanted the redemption it represented.

She didn't want to work on another campaign—or whatever the hell it was—she wanted to be sought-after.

She didn't want to devote her entire existence to another politician, she wanted a place and a family and—

Well, that didn't matter.

None of it mattered.

That morning, I was up and out before my parents. My appointment in nearby Dartmouth wasn't until the afternoon but I kept myself busy checking on trees at two South Coast area golf courses until then. I went a little overboard with my note-taking (completely illegible nonsense) and scaled a few more trees than the conditions called for (none of them needed a moment's attention) but I couldn't obsess over Jasper and her decisions while twenty feet off the ground and holding on with one hand and a toehold.

I obsessed enough with both feet on the ground.

When it came to trees I'd never examined before, I liked to sit with them for a time. It helped me understand how they'd grown and the ways in which the wind moved through them. Usually, I had no trouble focusing on this task. Being among trees was the most natural thing in the world to me and it didn't require any deep level of awareness but today, dammit, today I could not see anything but Jasper.

Every time we went into the woods together flashed before me like a memory book. Every time I backed her up against a tree. Every time she looked at me with those round, vulnerable eyes and told the truth about things that scared her. Every time I swore she'd figure it all out.

And she did. She figured it out. She figured herself right out of my life.

I managed to get through the consultation despite my complete inability to function, and got the hell out of Dartmouth. I returned to my parents' house because Jasper might be