AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Taking care of Mira took so much of my mental energy that I could hardly stop to process what it meant to my life most days. It was hardenough to find good, trustworthy friends in your thirties and beyond, but even more so when you could hardly keep your head above water.
I liked Rosa’s friends. They were funny and sweet and had no inhibitions. It was refreshing to be around women who weren’t trying to impress anyone and had a lifetime of insight to share.
Maybe it wouldn’t make sense to a lot of people that I’d inserted myself into a group of Golden Girls, but I found myself liking this new friend circle an awful lot.
Liam was training and would be gone for a few hours, so Rosa had declared an emergency meeting. Their shiny cars pulled into the driveway less than five minutes after he left.
With Mira fast asleep upstairs and a bowl of ice cream for each of them, they were a rapt audience. When I got to the part where Liam said he thought I was Hermione come to life, Phyllis sank back into the couch with a happy sigh.
“This is good, Zoe.Damn it, this is some good stuff.”
I laughed. “He said he got over it years ago. He was just ... being honest.”
Rosa snorted. “Okay.”
“You don’t believe him?” I asked.
Martha swallowed a heaping spoonful of ice cream. “I believe him. He’d never tell you if he still had a crush on you.”
Rosa arched an eyebrow. “Or that’s what he’d want you to think.”
Phyllis’s spoon scraped the side of her bowl when she scooped up her last bite of mint chocolate chip. “He didn’t put that much forethought into it. He wanted her to know he doesn’t hate her, and I think that’s admirable.”
Martha tapped her chin thoughtfully. “What if you thank him by hopping into the shower with him?”
“No,” the rest of us said in unison.
She held up her hands. “All right, all right. Calm down. She said the shower gel made her crazy. It’s a unique way she can break the ice.” Then she tilted her chin down, peering at me over her glasses. “Besides,one day you wake up and you can’t maneuver shower sex anymore, and you never know when that day is. The tiles are unforgiving on your joints, and unless you’ve got all those really ugly hand bars installed, you’ll never be able to withstand the position.”
I blinked. “This isn’t helpful,” I whispered.
She laughed, patting me on the shoulder.
“Having sex with Liam, even if he were amenable, is the worst possible thing she could do,” Phyllis interjected. “If they make it about something as trivial as attraction, they’re doomed before they get started.”
My eyes dropped to the bowl in my lap. Everyone fell quiet.
“It was hard for me to view Liam differently when it was just about Mira,” I said slowly. It wasn’t just about Mira anymore. And maybe it hadn’t been for a while. Nothing about this was black and white, neatly confined to boxes that made sense. Absently, I rubbed at my forehead as those boxes melted into each other, as black and white mixed into varying shades of gray. “He’s not ... he’s not this horrible, cold person that I always assumed him to be.”
The women surrounding me listened. They were really good at that. Probably because they’d had decades of experience with building good friendships. Talking is fine, but sometimes the thing you need most from the people in your life is for them not to talk. Not to push. Not to pry.
The best thing a real friend can do for you is give you a safe space to speak your truth.
“I’m glad he told me,” I continued. “Maybe he could’ve approached it differently, but it’s good that I know.”
His words tumbled unbidden through my head again, even though I’d already replayed them a hundred times. That first night was crystal clear now, the memory dragged up to the forefront of my mind.
For so long, I’d remembered only his parting shot, felt the wound of it like it was fresh, like the impact of it still stung my skin.
When I pushed beyond it, dredged up those first few moments, therewassomething very different about the Liam who’d walked into the kitchen when I was nose-deep in a book.
He wasn’t flirty, and he wasn’t forward.
He was kind, though. He shook my hand, and we made small talk. Pleasant, easy questions. I think I even made him smile. Just a little.
But his eyes . . .
I swallowed past a lump in my throat.
