The Fourteen Day Soul Detox by Rita Stradling

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good reason, I’m just saying that you’re doing it.”
She rubbed her hand over her belly and looked away from me. “When
my mom died, it felt like the worst thing that could ever happen in
my life, but it wasn’t. It was Logan’s death that truly
destroyed me. I wake up thinking about him. I still cry myself to
sleep. Sometimes I even still call him and leave a message on his
answering machine, hoping like hell that you don’t still check
those messages.”
    “I don’t,” I
whispered.
    She wiped a tear from her cheek.
“Losing Logan felt like more than I could bear.” She
turned her gaze on me. “But you know what? I can still have a
healthy relationship with my wife. And you don’t see me slowly
destroying my body. And I definitely don’t make monthly
payments into some huge inflated lien on Logan’s coffee shop.
Because you know what, even when you pay that off, he’ll still
be gone. You’re not immortalizing him; you’re
immortalizing the shit situation he left you in.”
    “There’s nothing left,”
I said to her, tears again coursing down my face. “We don’t
have the house. I don’t have a single thing of ours.”
    “You have Sarah,” she said,
eyebrows raised.
    “You don’t get it,” I
said.
    “Oh, I get it,” she said.
“Do you need his permission to move on? Because, you know what?
Logan and I shared a womb. Most people said we shared a personality
too, and I can tell you, it’s okay to move on. If I got myself
killed in some screwed up way that left Beza and Aiden in a ton of
debt, I would want her to sell my fucking bones if she had to, to get
out of that debt.”
    I shook my head.
    “I know he screwed up, I know he
went off the deep end and you guys probably would have split no
matter what, but even so, I know he loved you and Sarah more than
anything. All he would want now is for you two to be happy. He’d
want you to move on.”
    Pressing my palms into my eyes, I
whispered, “I have to sell the shop, don’t I?”
    I felt Susan’s hand on my back,
rubbing up and down. “Yes,” she said. “And a lot
more, I think you need a whole life detox.”
    “How do I do that?” I said,
half laughing, half sobbing.
    “We’ll start small,”
she said. “First, we’ll just write down the things to fix
your health. Then we’ll figure out the rest.”
    “I have to quit Cameron, don’t
I?” I whispered.
    “Or be with him for real,”
Susan said.
    “I can’t do that,” I
said.
    “You’re in love with him.
He’s in love with you and your daughter; I can’t fathom
why you two can’t be together.” When I didn’t
respond, she made a huffing sound. “No… really, Jamie?
You have to get over that.”
    I looked up from my hands. “I
can’t. Don’t you think I’ve tried? Don’t you
think that I’ve thought these exact same thoughts a hundred
times? I’m never going to get over it.”
    “Then yeah, you have to let him
go,” Jamie said, shaking her head and looking away.
    “That’s going to be hard,”
I said, swallowing.
    “So, if say, you were with a guy
and you were in love with him and loved his kid, and you spent all of
your free time trying to be with both of them. Then you went and
played mommy three times a week, watching his kid. But all this time,
the guy knows there’s no future for your relationship, but he
refuses to pull the plug because it would be too hard to let you go.”
    “Sounds like an asshole,” I
said, blowing out a breath.
    “Honey, you’re an asshole.”
    I let my face fall into my hands.
“You’re right.”
    Susan put her pen to the paper. “My
fourteen day soul detox,” she said, while writing.
    “You’re giving me a
deadline?”
    She met my gaze and pursed her lips.
“Yes. Alright, let’s start with your body. You need to
gain fifteen pounds.”
    “Fifteen pounds in fourteen days?
That’s impossible,” I said.
    “Women going back to the creation
of the holiday season would beg to differ. You just need to…
cut back on