Paige had never really been able to picture any of the guys she’d gone out with fitting into her friend group so easily. Usually the guys she went out with were radically different from her friends. And that was probably why they’d never worked out; she thought she should date someone different and interesting but what she really wanted was a friend. She’d heard couples say that about each other, that they’d each married their best friend. That’s what Paige wanted. Not some whirlwind romance. Not some impressive guy with an oddball hobby. She wanted to fall in love with a friend.
Which is what had happened. And she’d pushed him away.
“You okay?” asked Evan, who was sitting next to Paige. “You’re a little quiet this evening.”
“I’m okay. Sorry. Mind wandered off.”
“Split a plate of mac and cheese bites with me?”
“Sure.”
Evan leaned over and whispered in Paige’s ear, “It’s okay to miss him.”
“Did I do the right thing?” she asked.
Evan pressed his lips together. “Honestly? I don’t know. Does it feel like the right thing?”
“No. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
“Is it too late to fix it?”
Paige shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“If you kids are passing notes, you have to share with the class,” said Lindsay.
“We were just discussing appetizers,” said Evan. “Ever since Pop expanded their menu, I have struggled with what to order, but maybe we should get the mac and cheese bitesandthe cheeseburger sliders.”
Paige almost groaned when Evan’s talk of appetizers reminded her of Josh and his appetite. Would everything remind her of Josh?
“Ladies’ room,” Paige said, grabbing her handbag and running to the back of the bar.
She locked herself in a stall and let herself cry. She couldn’t remember crying about a boy since she’d been a teenager, but she cried now because she’d started to fall in love with Josh and couldn’t have him. Because even if she could find some way to reconcile what she wanted with her friends, even if Lauren gave them the green light, the longer she persisted in not talking to Josh, the less likely it was he’d come back. That was the lesson Lauren had been trying to give her when she’d talked about Josh’s ex Megan. Megan hadn’t been committed to making things work with Josh, but Josh deserved someone who was.
And she was afraid. She should let herself be happy, but instead, she’d let her doubts rule the day, and now here she was, alone in a bathroom stall with black marker graffiti on the door saying,Liz + Jared, as if to rub it in that less pathetic people had once been here.
Relationships ended. She’d been operating on the assumption that her relationship with Josh would end at some point, no matter if they fell in love, and it was the fallout from the end of that relationship that she couldn’t face because she knew that if they fell in love and he left her, she would be wrecked.Thatwas the real risk. They would be happy together…until they weren’t. Every relationship ended.
Until one didn’t.
The safer option had always been to end it before they got too involved and retreat back to her comfort zone, but that zone wasn’t so comfortable anymore now that Josh wasn’t in it. There was no going back, not to how things had been before she met Josh.
It was too soon to know if she and Josh could be together for the long haul. And finding out was a risk. And she was a coward.
She let herself feel everything as she stood in the stall and cried. Her thoughts were all over the place and contradicted each other and didn’t completely make sense, but that’s how this whole situation was. She cried until she’d worked through all of it, then she sighed and exited the stall. She grabbed a tissue and wiped her eyes, then she fixed her makeup and hoped her eyes didn’t look so bloodshot that her friends would notice. Once she felt like she looked normal and not like someone who had just sobbed in a bathroom stall, she rejoined her friends, who appeared to be laughing at one of Evan’s stories.
She loved these people, and she’d sacrificed Josh so that she could keep loving them, but she wondered now if she’d given up too easily.
“Oh, Paige,” said Lauren, “did I tell you? We have a customer who is interested in adopting Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” said Paige. “Also sad. I’ve grown kind of attached to those cats.”
“It’s not a done deal, but do you know that couple that comes in on Thursday evenings sometimes? They’re both kind of frumpy and wear big hipster glasses. They always sit in the middle of the cat room.”
Paige couldn’t picture who Lauren was talking about, but she said, “Sure.”
“They want both cats.”
“It’s fitting,” said Evan. “I read an excellent bit of fanfic last year in which Darcy fell in love with Bingley instead of Lizzy Bennet.”
