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Cole: You’re (deleted)
Cole: You’re not (deleted)
Cole: You’re not alone.
Mira: I don’t feel alone (deleted)
Mira: Thanks, Cole.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
MIRA
Stepping out of her office,Jen settled her hands on her hips. “What’s your deal?” she asked, eyes squinty. “I haven’t seen you smile like that in”—her lips, ironically, turned down—“I don’t know, forever?”
Flipping her phone over, hiding Cole’s last text telling her how Ruby had just spit up all over his shirt, Mira said, “I’m not smiling any more than I usually smile.”
“Okay, this is not meant as an insult, but you’re not really a smiler. And youneversmile like that.” She pointed at Mira’s face, then at her phone. “Did you find a fun new game or something?”
Mira cleared her throat. “Um, yeah. I—”
“Babe, that was a joke,” Jen cut in with a laugh. “You’ve been typing and smiling out here for Linda’s entire session. Who are you texting? Did you meet someone?”
While Jen sat beside her on the waiting room couch, Mira admitted, “It’s Cole.”
“Wedding date Cole? Johnny Knoxville Cole?”
Mira nodded. “We’ve been texting for a week. Like, nonstop.”
“Seriously?” Jen’s eyes went wide. “What are you and the hot drummer texting about?”
Mira hadn’t talked to anyone about whatever was happening between her and Cole. After a week of keeping it all to herself, she was champagne bubbling under pressure, and Jen just popped her cork. “Everything,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Like,everything. All I want to do is text him. All day. All night. It’s all I think about. I’m obsessed.”
“I am loving this for you,” Jen said with a wide, toothy grin. “But you’re only texting? Not actually speaking?”
It wasn’t for lack of wanting to. She’d hovered her finger over the call button no less than three times in the last few days, but she hadn’t been able to make herself push it. “Not yet. I don’t know, it seems like…a step.”
“A step you’re not sure you want to take with someone who lives so far away?”
“Right.” She glanced down at her phone still face down in her lap. “Texting him this much already feels like I’m lighting the fuse that will eventually blow up my entire life. But calling him…I don’t know. It’s like tossing the match out and grabbing a blow torch instead.”
Jen’s head tilted. She’d straightened her hair today, and a silky red strand slid over her shoulder. “Why?”
Mira shrugged. “Because it couldn’t work with him. I’m here. He’s there. And not just a little bit here and there either. We’re set. We both have situations we can’t leave, even if we wanted to. I’ve got Mom and Ian. He’s got his daughter and granddaughter and his studio. He loves the city. I love the mountains. I have a bakery to run. He’s got strangers giving him frozen beef.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Plus,” Mira went on without explanation, “you know how I am. I don’t do casual. I don’t know how. I’d just get in over my head and get my heart broken again. You saw how long it took me to get over Paul. I don’t want to go through that again.”
“I get that,” Jen said, tucking that stray strand behind her ear. “But maybe at our age, long-distance isn’t so bad. You have each other, but you still have your own lives too. And it’s not like he lives in another country. Seattle’s only a day’s drive away.”
“A long day,” Mira pointed out.
“But with him there and you here, there’s nobody to get mad when one of you has to work late or spend all night at the barn taking care of a sick horse. Nobody to make you feel guilty because you’ve got too much shit to do to hang out and watch Netflix all day. Nobody stealing all the hot water because they insist on taking hour-long showers. Nobody to get embarrassingly wasted at your daughter’s high school graduation.”
Mira nudged Jen’s shoulder, knowing she was talking about her estranged husband. “Have you talked to him recently?”
“Not for weeks. But I’ve heard he’s been wearing a Scott-shaped indentation into one of the barstools at Randy’s.”
