Page 147 of Wait for Him

My hand stills on the zipper.

Well…she's not wrong. I just have a standing appointment with my own thoughts, and those bitches never cancel.

“You don't have plans with everyone else?”

Macy glances toward the hallway. “Them? No. They came together. I'm just the woman they pay to tell them they're flat.”

I laugh. “Then I'd love that, actually.”

And I mean it, which catches me a little off guard.

“Good.” She swings her bag over her shoulder. “Because I could use a drink, and drinking alone on a Tuesday feels like something people start asking questions about.”

“It's Tuesday?”

Macy stares at me as I grab my cello.

“Yeah. I definitely need a drink.”

Her laugh follows us out of the room.

***

“Noooo. Don't look at me like that, Macy. I'm fine now, I swear.”

Macy is fighting back tears, staring at me like I've just casually informed her I survived a shipwreck. The wine and my newfound freedom from giving a fuck had me running my mouth about how I ran away from my life and ended up here. Michael, my parents, Jackson, James, the breakdown, the decision to disappear without telling anyone where I was going. The whole fucking lot of it.

What started as a casual explanation of why I came to Catalina somehow turned into the abridged version of every traumatic thing that's happened to me in the last twenty years, and now she's on the verge of crying while I actively try to talk her off that particular ledge.

“I'm sorry. God, Rosalie.” She wipes underneath her eyes with slender, manicured fingers, blinking rapidly like she can force the tears back where they came from. “Can I hug you?”

“Uh... sure, I think?” I laugh and reach my arms out, but I barely get them open before she's moving.

Macy slides along the booth and wraps me up so tightly I can barely breathe. I freeze for half a second, mostly because I wasn't expecting quite this much commitment to the hug, before chuckling and hugging her back.

“Jesus, Macy.”

“Shut up. I'm having a moment.”

“Apparently.”

She giggles against my shoulder but doesn't let me go, and after a few seconds I stop feeling awkward about it and just let her hug me.

It's unexpectedly nice.

Macy barely knows me, and somehow that makes the whole thing easier. She wasn't there for any of it. She doesn't have an opinion about what I should've done differently or which decisions were mistakes. She doesn't know the version of me from before, so she isn't looking at me trying to figure out how I became this one.

She only knows the woman sitting across from her, drinking too much wine on a Tuesday night after cello class.

Eventually she pulls away, although she keeps both hands on my shoulders while she looks at me with those big hazel eyes.

“You have to be the strongest fucking woman I've ever met. And it's not the wine talking.”

“Maybe it's a little of the wine talking?”

“Maybe,” she cries, wiping at her eyes again. “But it's also true, damn it. I mean, fuck, Rosalie. You just picked up and moved away by yourself after all of that?”

“Well, you're making it sound very brave when the reality involved a lot more crying and significantly less dignity. Plus, I'm a ferry ride away. It's not like I moved across the country.”