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“Just sit down, honey. Pour yourself some wine.”
Wine.
Probably the worst kind of self-care I need right now, but I pour a tall glass anyway. When I set the bottle down, I see the white band on my finger tan where the engagement ring used to be.
I look away before I start hating the bareness, the absence, thefailure.
“Now,” Nana says, putting the bowl in front of me and laying down a homemade baguette basted with garlic butter, “do you think you’re up to telling me what happened?”
It’s more of a statement than a question—a demand for the truth, really—but I don’t want to answer her yet. I use my spoon to push the chunks of meat around.
“I owe you that much, don’t I? And I’m sorry for barging in on you like this.”
“Don’t you dare apologize. You know you can stay as long as you’d like, as long as you need to,” she says brightly.
“I know, but…” I don’t want toneedto. “I know it was pretty sudden.”
“Yes, these things always are.” She smiles with so much understanding it breaks my heart again.
“Not always.” The wine tastes light and fruity as I take a sip. “You saw it coming with Liam a long time before it happened, Nana.”
“Sure, and it should have happened long before it did,” she says darkly. “But this isn’t Liam.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
And I’m glad about that.
Even though losing Dexter feels like losing a future I barely knew I wanted. A future I could have had if things were just different.
“This is good.” I gesture to the stew with my spoon. “Barbacoa and chickpea?”
“And lobster.” Nana never does anything by the rules—especially when it comes to food. “I know how much you like seafood.”
My heart sinks.
“Not so much lately,” I mutter, thinking about that night I miraculously pulled off a lobster dinner in Dex’s kitchen.
Gran looks at me thoughtfully, her mouth twisted to one side. Back when she was younger, she used to smoke. You can still see whispers of that habit around her lips, the skin lined and shrinking whenever her mouth moves.
“Junie, I know he wasn’t the perfect soulmate,” she says after a moment. Her fingers toy restlessly with the stem of her wineglass, though she doesn’t take a drink. “I know things weren’t as simple as they seemed.”
“Wait, what?” I look up so fast my neck cricks.
“You weren’t seeing a man secretly for half a year, Junie. I would’ve known. You worked and you slept and you didn’t do much else. Poor thing, you didn’t have the energy.”
“Okay, Nana…”
Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “All I’m saying is, I knew something else was up between you two besides a museum meet-cute and a snap engagement. It’s never that easy, even in romance novels.”
“It was a farce,” I admit. “It wasn’t real, Nana. It was all fake.”
“Fake? But that’s where you’re wrong.” She leans across the table and takes my hand. Her knuckles are knobby from a lifetime of cooking, the veins too large and her skin too loose.
It’s a testament to what time and hard work can do, how it can shape a person. Having her hand in mine reminds me of the gap between generations.
A gap I think Dex also shares and understands.
We never spoke about it properly.
