AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sorry,” she says and goes for another chip, picking up a single one again and dusting off her fingers after she eats it. The whole ritual is quirky and kind of cute.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
She pauses. “My mom is, um, in a new relationship.”
“Oh, nice!”
Jade squints, scrunching her nose up, and I realize I’ve said the wrong thing.
“I mean— Oh, that’s . . . not, um . . .” I try to backpedal, but I’ve lost my footing entirely.
“No, it’s fine,” Jade says, picking up her wrap and putting it back down again without taking a bite. “She just . . . she’s so fucking immature about relationships. She always thinks the guy she’s with is The One, and then, when he smashes her heart, I have to pick up the pieces. Hence my lack of respect. Like, for fuck’s sake, woman, lust is not the same thing as love. You don’t just fall in love with someone a minute after you fucking meet them.” She rolls her eyes again before taking a sip of her Diet Coke.
I stuff a forkful of salad into my mouth. I don’t want to say the wrong thing again, and I don’t want her to shut down the conversation. This is what I was hoping for when I said we could build chemistry “my way”—talking about our families, our hopes and dreams, all the good stuff that makes a friendship.
“I don’t even know if I believe in love, to be honest,” she says.
“Why not? Because of your mom?” I ask and take another bite.
“I guess. I’ve never seen love do anything but hurt people.”
I finish my bite slowly enough to process her words. We’re twenty-one years old and she’s already given up on love? How does she expect to have a long-term relationship? Does she even want to?
“And marriage? Do you believe in that?”
She shrugs, and my eyebrows climb up into my hairline. I’ve never met anyone who just didn’t believe in marriage.
Marriage is the one thing I’ve looked forward to my whole life. Maybe it’s that hopeless romantic in me, but I look forward to having a partner. Someone to share a home with and cook meals with and come home to. Watching my dad love my mom and seeing how happy it made her made me excited to make someone that happy too. It’s been my dream to find a love like theirs. The kind of love that can withstand anything. I was always hopeful I’d find it in college, but it’s my senior year and I’m still single, so it may not be in the cards for me here.
It’s so important to me that I’m not even sure the Red Barn Playhouse job is a good fit for me. My hometown is small, and the chances of me meeting someone who’s my age and single have got to be so statistically low that dating would be an uphill battle.
As for Jade, it’s not like I thought she and I would fall in love or get married, but it feels strange to acknowledge that the possibility doesn’t exist. Anytime you meet someone, that could be the moment that changes your lives forever. Friendships can turn into something more at any time. The possibility is always there. Unless it’s not.
And it’s clear from what Jade just said that the possibility isn’t there.
“Okay, to be fair . . . I believe in marriage for other people. Jessie and Mac, for instance. I believe in love for them. I have no doubt they’ll get married. I don’t know if I believe in marriage for me, though.”
“Kids?”
She shakes her head so violently I’m afraid she might hurt herself. To her credit, I’m not sure how I feel about kids either, but I’m still very much on the fence. She seems certain.
No kids. No marriage. No love. Just a life of . . . what, sex with strangers?
It’s a future I can’t wrap my head around, and one I certainly wouldn’t choose for myself. I shudder at the thought of it.
“You?” she asks.
“DO YOU BELIEVE IN?—”
“Yes, yes,” I say, cutting off her Cher impression You can never trust a theater kid to know when to stop singing. “I do believe in love. And I believe in marriage and definitely want to be married one day.”
She scrunches her nose. “Gross.”
“Hey, I didn’t say gross to you!”
“That was your choice,” she says with a shrug and a smirk.
I narrow my eyes at her. “And kids . . . I don’t know. Could be difficult with my career.”
