Hummingbird Lane by Brown, Carolyn (good books to read for beginners TXT) 📕

Teddy finished his cake and gave her a sideways hug. “I’d love to stay all afternoon, but I should really be going. Walk me to the car, Sophie?”

“Of course, but don’t ever expect me to do it again,” she teased. “Y’all save me another piece of that cake. It’s better than all the fancy pastries in Paris.”

They walked arm in arm to his car, and he kissed her goodbye. “I don’t want to let you go,” he whispered.

“Me either,” she said, but deep down inside she really needed to analyze everything from the moving business to the fantastic gallery showings they had had. He took a step back, retrieved her bags from the truck, and set them on the porch.

Sophie felt like an emotional train wreck, and she couldn’t even figure out exactly why. She’d always felt like Teddy deserved more than she could give him, but it went deeper than that—deep enough that tears spilled down over her cheeks.

He kissed her wet cheeks. “You’ve never cried before. Are we all right? Something seems off with you.”

“I’m just fine.” She thought of the times when Emma had said that and yet, like her, she was anything but fine.

After one more long, lingering kiss, he got into the vehicle, and she closed the door. She waved until he disappeared around the first curve. Emma walked up behind her and slipped an arm around her waist. “Filly says they can take care of cleanup. I’m supposed to go with you and help you get unpacked. Are you going to be all right?”

“Yes, but not without tears, and I don’t even know why I feel like crying. This is our last goodbye, and I’ve never cried before. Everything is perfect, Em, but I feel like I’m smothering, like I can’t breathe. What’s wrong with me?” Sophie answered.

“I don’t know, but together we’ll figure it out,” Emma said and led her into the house.

Chapter Nineteen

Emma made sure there was not one single smidgen of cake left and then snuggled down into her bed. After a night on the sofa and one on the hard ground, she thought she would be happy to be in a nice soft bed and under her own covers, but she missed Josh. Six months ago, she would never have thought, not even for a split second, that she would toss and turn because a guy wasn’t lying next to her.

She sat up and beat her pillow, flopped back down, and covered up with a sheet. Then she heard a strange, muffled sound. Thinking that maybe Coco had gotten shut inside and wanted out, she threw back the covers and padded through the dark trailer to check both doors. No cat to be found, but the sound was still there. She tiptoed down the hall, noticed a light coming from under the bathroom door, and finally recognized the noise as crying, not a cat’s meows.

She eased the door open to find Sophie curled up on the floor, her hands over her face, crying like the end of the world had come. Emma eased down beside her and wrapped her arms around her. “Has someone died? Is Rebel all right? Did Teddy have an accident?”

“I had a fight with Teddy on the phone,” Sophie answered between heartbreaking sobs. “Teddy even ate all his cake, and this still happened.”

“What about? Is the wedding ceremony off?” Emma pulled Sophie up to a sitting position and kept her arms wrapped tightly around her.

“It was a silly fight. He wanted to take his sofa to our new house, and I told him I wanted to take mine because his was ugly,” Sophie said. “We wound up arguing, and I told him that he should have asked me before he went looking for a house and a gallery, and then he said I would have never picked anything out because I have these commitment issues, and . . . it went from there.” Sophie wiped her eyes on the tail of her nightshirt. “We had a wonderful time in Europe, but I was”—she hiccuped—“sad and anxious most of the time.” She buried her face in Emma’s shoulder. “I’m the strong one. I shouldn’t be carrying on like this, but I don’t deserve to be happy.”

“Why would you think that you don’t deserve to be happy?” Emma asked. “You’ve worked hard for years to get to where you are now, and you love Teddy and he loves you. This is a stupid fight that can be fixed.”

Sophie rolled off a fistful of toilet paper and blew her nose.

Emma took Sophie by the hand and stood up, pulling Sophie with her. “Let’s sort this out in the living room with some yogurt and two spoons.” She had to be strong for Sophie. She owed her that much, but Emma wasn’t an expert on relationship advice.

“Just let me wallow in misery for a while,” Sophie said.

“You need to pick up your brushes and get busy, not go into a depression like I did all those years,” Emma said.

“I can’t, Em. Whatever this is started on the way home in the airplane, and I can’t shake it,” Sophie said.

“Let’s eat all these cookies and watch a movie. Neither of us can sleep anyway. We don’t have a man in our beds,” Emma told her.

“You want to explain that?” Sophie asked.

“Not tonight. Maybe later,” Emma replied as she turned on the television and put the first season of Castle into the DVD player. She hoped that would cheer Sophie up a bit.

It didn’t work, but just as the sixth episode ended, Sophie fell asleep on the sofa. Emma threw a blanket over her, went to her bedroom, and pulled the spread off the bed. She tucked it under one arm and a pillow under the other. She tiptoed back to the living room and made a pallet on the floor right beside the sofa. When Sophie groaned, Emma reached a hand up and laid it on her