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Cora smiles and hands me my drink as we clink our glasses. “That’s what I want.”
“To be incarcerated?”
Cora chuckles. “No. The dancing.”
“Me too.”
I think I resonated with that student because that’s something I remember from when my mom was still around. Music filled our home when she was still alive. She played piano and sang boisterously. She was a burst of summer sunshine personified. With golden hair she brought from her Polish family—which she passed down to only Jonah and Ivy for some reason—and an infectious laugh, she could light up any room. And she did.
When she died though, that light extinguished in our family, so I did my best to take over—to fill our home with joy and love again. To be there for everyone else. I didn’t realize my dad used me like a crutch until I was in grad school where I learned what a parentified child was and immediately recognized I fit that bill.
It was crushing discovering my childhood was robbed from me because I took over as the mother my siblings needed. As the parent my dad could not be.
Thankfully, I had Ana and Christina Webber fighting for me. Showing up. Inviting me to be a child as they loved on me. As they arranged to watch my siblings while Raf and I would spend an afternoon building a fort. Or taking the whole Jimenez/Johanssen/Webber clan to the shore for the day.
They saw me and gave me the childhood that could have so easily evaporated.
Am I still dealing with siblings that treat me like their mother? Yes. But I’m working on it and setting boundaries with them.
Cora knows all about this, so all it takes is one look for her to know what I’m thinking. Isaiah’s calling because he needs to know how to make bolognese? Dane is texting me about how Jonah isn’t listening to him when he’s trying to be a good team captain? All it takes is one eye roll from my bestie (with breasties) and I know she knows what I’m going through.
God, I’m grateful for her. More than anything, I’m grateful for her humor.
A notification buzzes from my phone in my butt pocket, and I peek to see it’s a new playlist Rafael has created for us called The Pregnancy Era.
“What are you smiling about?” Cora asks as she sips her mocktail.
“It’s nothing,” I hum, but pick up the phone and show her the screen.
Cora shakes her head slowly. “You two and your playlists.”
“It’s our friendship language,” I explain.
“Yeah,” Cora says, giving me a side eye. “It’s a totally normal thing to do with someone you definitely don’t have feelings for.”
“Cora,” I warn. “If you bring up that one tiny lapse in judgment freshman year—”
She cuts me off. “Of course I’m bringing it up!”
“I regret telling you about that night.”
“No, you don’t,” she smirks and gestures for us to move to the front sitting room.
She’s got me there. As one of my closest friends, she deserves to know everything—almost everything. She doesn’t need to know about that tendril of emotion I have for Raf—the one that shall not be named. If I can’t bring myself to name it, then I won’t share it.
What kind of counselor am I? Hiding from my own feelings like this? Why is it that everything else I can talk about, explore, dig into—but this?
This is nothing, don’t worry about it, I tell myself.
“Alright, I’ll leave it alone for now,” Cora sighs, as we cozy-up on her couch like it’s a sleepover and we’re going to gossip late into the night. “You know what I really want?”
“Hmm?”
“Dick twenty-four seven.”
I nearly spit my drink back into my glass. “You already have two dicks. By the way, where are your husbands?”
“They’re on a date,” she smiles. “But seriously, I’m so fucking horny, Ang. I need it every day. Preferably twice. Sometimes Marco and Jay have to take shifts.”
