The Worst Wedding Date
: Chapter 37

Smell that?

That’s the smell of playing hooky on fresh powder under a brilliant winter-blue Colorado sky.

Sabrina couldn’t come. She’s busy trying to figure out how to get Bean & Nugget back. Emma went on her honeymoon solo. Or so Claire relayed to us. Em hasn’t actually talked to any of us since the wedding that wasn’t.

My parents are less horrified than I thought they’d be at the idea of me taking another day off work right after getting back from Hawaii.

So I convinced a neighbor to come with me, and I’m pretending I’m paying attention to her friendly chatter while we ride the lift up the slopes.

Theo’s a dick.

My heart hurts.

And I am not going back.

Back to work, yes. Today or tomorrow. I still love my job, no matter what questions I’ll face when I set foot in the office again.

But back into the safe little box of joyless, day-in, day-out, same old same old repetition when I get home at night?

No.

Fuck Theo.

I’m going skiing.

It’s been a few years, but my ski boots still fit. My helmet still fits. My ski pants still fit.

My absolute doozy of a hangover from my last night in Hawaii is almost gone.

And I’m fucking going skiing.

And, pardon my French, fuck the bunny hill.

I’ve been skiing most of my life.

I don’t need the bunny hill.

I need speed.

I need fun.

I need to prove that I’m not a stick in the mud. My reaction to falling hard for someone who neglected to tell me that he’s a porn star—and he’s right, a big one at that, no pun intended, damn him—is a normal reaction for even the most adventurous women in the world.

Fuck Theo.

Fuck Theo and that fucking video of his that Sabrina made me watch while we were at the bar.

She showed me his penis on his GrippaPeen channel.

His glorious, beautiful penis, standing fully erect against the backdrop of the ink on his hard stomach while he knitted one of those hearts that were all over the resort just above it, his voice filling my ears. People will tell you that you suck sometimes. Those people aren’t the people who matter. Those people don’t give a shit about you. They care that they feel better next to you. Fuck those people. Cut them out. You deserve people who love you unconditionally and forgive you unconditionally. And when you replace those people, do the same for them. If you don’t love them, if you don’t want what they think is best for them, if you can’t forgive them, then maybe you’re not the friend they need either.

I shake my head while wind chills my face on the lift up the mountain.

It was like he was talking directly to himself.

Emma gets to make her own mistakes. You can’t coerce her to not marry Chandler just because you don’t like him right now.

He didn’t want her to get married.

But he still paid for the wedding. He set the whole thing up. He fixed all the problems at the resort that didn’t even check us out on the last morning because it finally ran out of staff and shut down.

Because it was what she wanted.

He trusted her enough to let her live her life on her terms, and he made sure it wouldn’t be an outside force that pushed her into making a decision she’d question the rest of her life.

I don’t know if I could ever do that for someone.

I don’t know how many people in my life would see what a gift that was from him to her.

But I know it’s what I’ve never felt like I had from my own parents.

The gift of being able to make my own mistakes, no matter how big or small.

I always felt like I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes at all.

And I know it’s complicated.

I know it’s because the people who love us don’t want us to get hurt.

But how do we learn? How do we grow? How do we live if we can’t fuck up on occasion?

I almost wipe out getting off the ski lift—definitely distraction because I’m thinking about Theo, not me being inept—but I recover and take the turn to head to the top of the run with my neighbor.

Feels good to be using my body again.

Flexing my muscles. Being cold at the start of the run, the skis and boots and poles familiar old friends.

Feeling.

Living.

Fuck the people who judge you for your body, he said in another one of the videos I watched through Sabrina’s log-in late last night when I couldn’t fall asleep. And yes, I donated what would’ve been the monthly fee to a cat shelter to get over the guilt that came with knowing I was breaking the rules and getting content that I didn’t pay for. Fuck Theo.

Fuck Theo and his your body is a powerful motherfucking treasure. It’s your story. It’s the children you’ve carried. It’s the grief you’ve managed. It’s the bones you’ve broken and the scars on your skin and the life you’ve lived. It’s strong. It serves you while you’re serving everyone around you who demands so much without remembering that you’re a human being, and your body deserves for you to love it as much as it loves you.

For a guy who refused to eat for fear he wouldn’t look good on camera, he knows what to say to women with physical insecurities.

Fuck Theo again.

He doesn’t get more room in my head.

Not today.

Today, it’s about racing down this mountain slope, about feeling alive again.

Cold air rushing my face.

My skis pointing where I tell them to point.

My legs flexing the way I tell them to flex.

My body flying faster and faster and faster down this mountain.

You can soar. You can fucking soar. Anyone who tells you that you can’t is either afraid or they’re looking out for someone who’s not you. I grew up in a world that told me I was supposed to be afraid. That there was danger on every corner. But I never saw it. I never saw it, and I didn’t want to see it. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to race. I wanted to fly. I wanted fun. I wanted adventure. I wanted something more than just surviving. Still looking for it. I hope you are too. I hope you’re flying high in your motherfucking dreams and that when people tell you no, you do it anyway. Might be shit. Or it might be the best fucking thing you’ve ever done for yourself. All kinds of fancy philosophers will put it more elegantly. Fuck elegant. Who has time to worry how it looks when it’s time for us to fly?

I hate him so much.

I hate him.

All of that wisdom.

All of that wisdom born from years of experience. Years of feeling like a fuckup. Years of doing life his way anyway.

That’s why they love him.

They signed up to see that glorious penis under a man knitting hearts, and they stay because he gets it.

He knows insecurities.

He knows fear.

He knows disappointment. Being a disappointment.

And he knows it gets better.

He knows you can make it better.

But not with me.

Never with me.

I’m not enough for him. He won’t let me learn to be enough for him.

Fuck Theo.

Just fuck him.

Fuck him all to—“Aaaaaahhhh!”

Hell.

Fuck all of it all to hell.

Fuck Theo.

Fuck this mountain.

Fuck the person who should not be on this mountain who just cut in front of me from out of nowhere, arms flailing, completely out of control.

Fuck falling.

Fuck my ski not coming off like it’s supposed to.

And fuck the pain radiating out of my leg, which is most definitely not supposed to bend that way.