She Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 2)

Chapter 19: The Separation

Jason

Once again, I find myself restlessly waiting around for Ronnie to respond to me, which doesn't happen for the rest of that day, not that night, and not even the next day. This waiting in limbo has become such a frustratingly familiar feeling that I've grown quite sick of, but I don't know how to fix it if she's refusing to reach out.

I go back to see Clarice that weekend to see if she’s had any better luck with my mate, but she shakes her head, sighing heavily.

“She hasn’t responded to my texts or calls either, if it’s any consolation for you,” she tells me.

Then she hands me a box cutter and gestures to the stack of boxes near one of the shelves in her shop. I can take a hint.

It does help some to know that Ronnie has gone silent for everyone, not just me, but it also worries me. I don’t know what’s going through her head that’s making her want to pull away from everyone she cares about. I checked, and Aly hasn’t heard from her either.

As we work, I tell Clarice more about how Ronnie was acting that morning before I took her home and mention that she said in one of her texts that the problem was she didn’t have everything she needed to be comfortable.

“But I can’t figure out what was missing. I tried to make sure she didn’t have to sleep on the coarse sheets, and she said she liked the shirts I let her use as blankets. I gave her the bed to herself. I did everything I could think of, and I tried to be so careful with her.”

“Well, just off the top of my head I wonder, did she have clean clothes and her toiletries available so she could shower? A toothbrush? Did she bring her purse and her disinfectant wipes so she could clean the toilet before she used it?” Clarice begins answering my query, listing things I never even thought of so rapidly I can barely keep up.

“Spontaneous is not really her style,” she goes on explaining. “Something like a sleepover, that needs to be planned ahead of time so she can be sure to bring everything she needs.”

As soon as she says all that, it immediately makes sense. I trust her opinion because not only does she seem to know Ronnie pretty well, but all of that seems like exactly the sort of small details that would be immensely important to Ronnie. Even for me, I prefer a fresh change of clothes and a shower in the morning, and staying somewhere without access to those things will make me mildly uncomfortable. I can only imagine how much worse it is for her.

“I’m such an i***t. I should have thought of all that before I decided to keep her for the night,” I voice my thoughts.

“It’s not your fault, Jason. You went above and beyond and well out of your way to try to make her comfortable, but you can only do so much when she isn’t helping you help her by telling you what she needs. Sure, the sleepover was spontaneous, but you would have known it wasn’t the best option if she had told you any of that beforehand. She holds everything inside of her, hoarding information about herself as if it’s her most precious treasure.”

“It certainly feels like a precious treasure. Every little scrap she shares with me, I treasure it. I crave it.”

“Of course you do, and you should,” she reassures me with a gentle hand on my shoulder. “That’s your mate.”

“How do you get her to open up to you?” I ask her, tossing aside the box I’ve emptied and moving on to the next one. “I’m assuming you have, since you know so much about her. How do I do that?”

“I have a secret,” Clarice explains mysteriously. And when all she receives in response is my confused, questioning expression, she adds, “I don’t let people in either. It’s too dangerous. People around here, they don’t know me. Not the real me anyway. So who I am is my secret, my weakness, and I shared it with her.”

Still not helping. I don’t see how that answers my question or helps me at all.

“She sees me as a kindred spirit,” she goes on. “She’s more forthcoming with me because she feels like I understand her. She relates to me, and I to her. And I think she feels a bit like we’re co-conspirators because now she shares in my secret. She comes here to learn magic and witchcraft and to study the supernatural. And I keep that secret for her, the way she keeps mine. She’s in my inner circle, and I think that helps her feel more comfortable including me in hers. But even so, I don’t know her as well as I think you think I do.”

“So how do I get her in my inner circle so she’ll let me in hers?”

“I couldn’t say. I don’t know your secrets, or even if you have any. But if there’s any lesson in what I’m saying, I suppose it’s that when she gives you the chance to speak with her again, don’t hold back. Whatever you think you should keep from her, don’t. Give her all of you, and show her all of your life and what you intend to offer her, or don’t bother even trying to get close to her.”

I leave there feeling both enlightened and more confused than ever. But I suppose in a way, it’s a good thing that Ronnie ends up giving me plenty of time to think it all over and try to figure out all the puzzles in what Clarice said.

She never does text me back. In fact, four days later when the indicators next to the series of texts I sent her finally turn green, signaling that she has finally read them, the next one I send never goes through. It turns red. I’ve been blocked again, and I don’t know what to do with that.

She read my texts. She knows I wasn’t ignoring her like she thought, so what is she still upset about? Why no follow-up explanation to at least acknowledge that she understands what happened? Is this really the end, or does she just need some time and space to figure out where to go from here?

-

-

Ronnie

My mom is forcing me to go to therapy again. That’s a part of my life that I thought was behind me, but here it is popping up again when I definitely do not need another thing on my plate.

She claims that me ending contact with Jason has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me. My fears, my insecurities, my hundred-foot-thick walls I throw up and add barbed wire to whenever someone tries to get to know me. She thinks I’m afraid to let him in, and that’s why I jumped at the first opportunity to evict him from my life.

It’s not that I don’t see her point, or that I entirely disagree. It’s just that I wish she would recognize and acknowledge her own role in this. If there is something wrong with me, it’s as much her fault as mine. My whole life, every time I found someone I connected with, she did what she could to chase them off or scare them away. She was overbearingly overprotective. But now, she is suddenly trying to push me directly at Jason and claiming there’s something wrong with me preventing me from getting close to him.

I like Jason. He’s a good guy. We have a lot in common. I enjoy spending time with him. But there’s a big problem.

I’ve been a wreck ever since he showed up to my graduation, and I’m tired of it. I want my peaceful life back. I need my routine and my safe space. I don’t need to constantly be thinking and worrying about someone else and how he’s feeling. I don’t want to feel crushed by guilt and obligation anymore. I don’t want my days to be consumed by my phone, and I never again want to feel the things I felt the day that all my anxiety and insecurities attacked me while he wasn’t responding to me.

I know I’m the one that was wrong there. I got his texts a few days later when I finally turned my phone back on, but those few days taught me a lot. I learned that I’d let myself get entirely too wrapped up in another person. My moods and emotions shouldn’t be so dependent on someone else. I didn’t like how devastated I felt thinking that he had given up on me and left me in the dust, and that was just from a couple weeks of talking and hanging out one time. Imagine how much worse it will get if I go through with this whole mating thing.

I’d rather lose him on my own terms than to the uncertainty of the universe. Life is chaos. Anything could happen at any moment. The more people I let into my life, the more I leave myself at the mercy of randomness and chance. The more people I know, the more I have the potential to lose. By keeping everyone at arm’s length, I’m saving myself from a lot of pain in the end.

My mom likes to argue that on the flip side, I’m also depriving myself of a lot of joy, but I think it’s a reasonable trade-off. I don’t need joy. I need peace.

I keep thinking back to how Jason told me that it bothers him that he doesn’t have any of the control in our interactions, and I think that’s what it comes down to for me too. I need to feel like I have some control over my life. I like things the way I like them, and I don’t like when something comes along and messes everything up. Lately, he’s been that thing.

He may have been completely innocent the day that I freaked out about him not answering me, but when it comes down to it, it’s not his silence that was the problem anyway. It was that it mattered so much to me. It’s that he showed up in my life uninvited and made a mess of everything.

I haven’t spoken to or texted him since I told him how I felt and said goodbye. I debated about sending a follow-up message to explain more of what I've been thinking and feeling after I had some time to calm down, but I doubt it will do anything more than muck it all up again. Even though I had the wrong idea of what was actually going on that day, those were and still are my real feelings.

I knew it was a bad idea to get involved with him. I kept ignoring my better judgment and telling myself that it was okay to let loose and have a little fun. I was enjoying him, but enjoying him is not a good enough reason to destroy everything, and I needed to end things. He seems to have accepted that, and I'm not about to start stirring things up again with unnecessary word vomit that won't change anything anyway.

Now that I’m no longer talking to him, I’ve settled back into my normal life. Gone are my nights of insomnia and my restless days of feeling not quite right, subliminally sensing that I didn’t quite belong in my own life anymore. I’m fine now. I just need him to leave me alone.

I do feel bad for him. I know this hurts him. But at least now he knows without a doubt where I stand. I didn’t give him that before. The first time I stopped talking to him, I just suddenly stopped responding. No explanation, no decisive message that told him we were through. But I gave him that this time. It might hurt for a while, but he can move on now.

I’d like to do the same, but my mom’s insistence that I see a therapist is the exact opposite of that. Therapy is going to rub my face in all the things I’d rather not think or talk about. I won’t be able to move on until she gets this out of her system, so I hope I can convince her to drop it after I go to a couple sessions. I’m not doing it after I go back to school. I won’t have time or energy for something like that.

-

-

Jason

For the next week, I somehow manage to make it through more shifts at work by focusing on helping Buddy, pushing myself to the max to make quick work of cleaning up the mess he has accumulated in the back of his restaurant, and spending the busy mealtime rushes out front bussing tables helps keep me occupied and distracted too. For now.

But what kills me is how I also have to watch the woman who looks so much like my mate buzzing around the place every day. Vivian is probably the best server Buddy has, and she’s there a lot of the time. When she’s not waiting tables, she’s behind the bar serving drinks, and every time I see her I have to fight back the urge to grovel at her feet and beg for her help with getting through to her daughter.

She gives me a lot of sympathetic smiles and is just as warm and friendly as she was the day I was standing in her living room, but that is almost worse than her shutting me out just like Ronnie has. I don’t know why. It just is.

Finally, after four weeks pass by without any word from Ronnie, I can’t take it anymore. I’ve avoided bringing up anything to do with her at work, but it’s become clear that Vivian is my only remaining connection to my mate, and I need to talk to her. I need to know what’s going on.

She seems to see it written across my face as I approach her during one of the rare lulls in business. She’s sitting for once, taking a break and enjoying a late lunch at the counter. She nods at me and points to the seat next to her.

“There’s not a whole lot I can tell you about what’s actually going on with her, but I can tell you what she thinks is going on,” she says to me before I've even asked her anything yet.

“I just want to know why she stopped talking to me and how I can convince her to change her mind. One conversation, that’s all I’m asking for.”

“Is it though?” she wonders, giving me a knowing look and a subtle smile. “I think it’s what you actually want that’s got her running scared, but she says it’s because you disturb her peace. She likes a neat, orderly, predictable life. Same routine every day, everything in its place, everyone not already in her bubble kept outside of it at all costs. Talking to you, spending time with you, it’s not in her plan. She can’t schedule her feelings, and it drives her absolutely nuts. She can’t control how often she thinks of you or how much you affect her, and that apparently ruins her whole life.”

That silences me for a few moments as I think it over.

“She seemed to be enjoying me,” I point out. “Smiling, laughing. She told me that the day we went shopping together was the best day she’d had in a long time. How am I supposed to reconcile all that with what you’re telling me? How can making her happy be a bad thing?”

“Honestly, Jason, I asked her the same thing because from where I was sitting, she did seem happy during that brief time when she was starting to let you in. I saw it. I think you're good for her, but she doesn't want good. She wants safe and predictable. She told me, ‘I don’t need joy. I need peace.’ Direct quote.”

“I can do predictable, though. All she has to do is tell me what she needs, and I will do everything in my power to give it to her. If she wants to schedule time with me, I can do that. If she needs every cleanser in the world before she can feel comfortable using my bathroom, I will buy them all. But she didn’t even tell me that was a problem for her. I had no idea.”

“And that’s how I know you’re the guy for her. That’s the most romantic thing I think I’ve ever heard, because she doesn’t need or want flowers and jewelry and sweet nothings. The things you just said, that’s how to show her you care. I only wish I could convince her to see you because I want her to hear that from your mouth, not mine.”

“So do I,” I laugh, not because it’s funny, but because it’s so damn frustrating. “Falling for your daughter is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. She’s such a special person, and I care about her beyond what I could ever put into words, but I really, really wish there was some way that I could know whether I’m wasting my life away trying to get close to her. I wish she would just tell it to me straight. Does she want me or not? Because all this waiting and not knowing is killing me.”

Vivian puts her hand over mine and pats it a couple times, seeming to be lost in thought for a few seconds.

Sighing heavily, she tells me, “I’m trying to talk her into giving therapy a try again. There’s a whole lot about her I’m sure she hasn’t told you, though you probably suspect it, but I think she needs a little extra help dealing with it all and coping with all the transitions and change going on in her life right now. Maybe even some pharmaceutical interventions, I don’t know. But maybe for right now, the best thing you can do is wait and see if she feels differently when things settle down and even out for her a bit.”

“Are you saying I should go back home?”

I ask it, but I want her to say no. I'm not ready to leave yet. Not like this.

“That’s entirely up to you, but yes, I am wondering if it might not be the best thing for both of you right now.” I can't help but wince as she shoots me another sympathetic glance and continues, “But don’t give up on her, Jason. That girl you fell for, she’s still in there. She’ll be back. She just needs some time and space to find her way again.”

I sit and quietly, glumly, mull it over briefly. I don’t disagree with her notion that things have gotten a bit out of hand for Ronnie. I have the texts to prove it. How quickly she jumped from wanting to patch things over after our awkward morning to assuming that I was ignoring her and vindictively trying to teach her a lesson, and then on to assuming that she was too much for me to handle and wanting to end things, it still makes my head spin and my heart hurt, but more than that, it worries me. I don’t disagree that there’s probably room there for professional help, but I don’t like the idea of going home and leaving things like this either.

“If I'm going home, I need to hear it from her first,” I say finally. “The way we got to this place, it started with me being too preoccupied to answer her texts right away, and I think she thought I had given up on her. I don’t want her to think that again when it’s not true. I’m not going anywhere unless she tells me it’s what she wants.”

“I’ll let her know,” Vivian agrees after considering me for a moment. “No promises, though.”

“Of course, but I do mean it. I stay until she tells me to go. Make sure she knows that.”