“Come on, Shannon. Think about it from her perspective. I’m just trying to protect her.”
Shannon sighed and sat across from me in a matching chair. “When were you planning on telling me? Or were you?”
“Of course! Do you have any clue how hard this has been for me? How much I’ve wanted to tell you? How much I need you to help me figure my shit out? I’m losing my fucking mind right now. I didn’t ask for this, and I’m in love with her, and I don’t know what to do with that.”
“Are we talking ‘I really like you and the sex is awesome,’ or ‘I really like you and want to get a Maltepoo that we raise together and put on a joint Christmas card’ or ‘I really like you, and want you and only you forever, and here’s a sparkly ring’ or something else?”
I didn’t want to stop at a shared address. I needed Andy, and I was planning on needing her for a long time but of all the things I expected for myself, marriage was a few notches above learning Portuguese, and I knew Andy was in a similar boat. In those dark, quiet moments when we held each other, skin to skin, and all pretenses came down, we bared it all. We were the poster children for fucked up childhoods.
Andy’s parents never married. Her father’s traditional Persian parents didn’t approve of her casually Jewish, wandering artist mother, and they refused to acknowledge Andy as their grandchild, even when her father was murdered. They barred Andy and her mother from the funeral, and to this day, Andy didn’t know where her father was buried.
Her mother married Bob, an accountant, shortly after Andy left for college, and they had two girls who Andy referred to as the Bobbsey Twins. Andy visited on holidays, but the Bobbsey Family didn’t include her, not genuinely, and staying away was safer than being an outsider.
I watched my parents adore each other for the first ten years of my life, and then I watched my father destroy every shred of that happiness in the cruelest, most vengeful ways for the subsequent twenty-two years.
I glanced at Shannon’s impatient stare, her crossed legs bouncing furiously beneath the table.
Fuck the history. Fuck the dysfunction.
It was all bullshit. None of it held any power over us, and if we survived months of secrecy while in the trenches with my siblings, we could survive anything.
I stared into Shannon’s green eyes, and knew my answer. “Forever.”
“Holy shit,” Shannon gasped.
Chapter Eighteen
ANDY
Scrolling through pagesof cut crystal glasses, candlesticks holders, and cheese boards left me disheartened. It was possible I might not find a worthy gift for Lauren. They didn’t have a wedding registry to guide my search, and she spent our entire pedicure last week detailing the excessive and unneeded cookware and towels and vases descending upon their loft—of course, she never mentioned what she did want.
Beyond the occasional club hopping with Jess and Marley, Lauren was my only real girlfriend in Boston, and over the past few months, she became an irreplaceable part of my life. We shared more than a few bottles of wine discussing our growly, bitey boys, and always met for hot yoga and lunch at the farmers’ market on Saturdays. The hunt for wedding goods—a hair band, cute guest book alternatives, lacy lingerie—kept us busy.
I even started a secret Pinterest board to archive my wedding ideas. I had no idea when I turned into one of those girls who had recurring thoughts about weddings.
Not that I was planning a wedding. Or thinking about getting engaged. Or even sure where things stood with me and Patrick, or what I wanted for us as my apprenticeship popped the landing gear on its final descent.
For now, it was simply a place where I noted lovely things that caught my eye, and absolutely nothing more.
The idea that women could spend time together without devolving into insecure squabbling was foreign to me, and Lauren taught me that strong female friendships were critical to my mental health—especially considering I was semi-living in full-blown sin with my secret boyfriend who was also my boss.
She taught me the power of a few carefully selected pieces of lingerie, too.
Shannon bowed out after one foray into hot yoga, arguing that no amount of calories burned was worth covering her body in an angry, raspberry-red flush for hours. Such was life for a redhead. She maintained her presence for our regular pedicure dates though my footing with her always felt a little off. Don’t get me wrong—she was open and hilarious and wonderfully uninhibited, but her allegiance was very clearly with Patrick, and I’d be old and gray before that changed.
Patrick spent the morning shut up in Shannon’s office, and the better part of the afternoon back and forth between our office and there, and his continuous stream of under-the-breath babble had me concerned. He was on edge, and being weird about it. I wanted to know where my Patrick went.
And that’s exactly what he was: mine. At least for the time being. The future was vague…at best.
Plan A was—and always had been—sticking around Walsh Associates. We ambled around discussions of an implied future—whether it be a shared interest in an Oktoberfest tasting menu event or taking on projects that wouldn’t break ground until August—as if there was no question I was staying. Patrick sweetened that deal, but he also added a layer of complexity that made banking on Plan A tenuous.
Things were good—I had a freaking Pinterest board for our hypothetical wedding, after all—but the minute they stopped being good, I stood to lose everything.
Instead of tackling the realities of Plan A, I resorted to a well-developed Plan B that involved sending out dozens of résumés and portfolio samples to sustainable preservation firms throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic. With the exception of a measly handful, they were dreadful operations that misinterpreted the most basic principles of sustainability, preservation, or both. I was more interested in chewing glass than relocating, though it was possible that Plan A’s cozy perfection dimmed the appeal of everything else.
It all felt deceptive given the walls between Patrick and me were long demolished and the rubble swept aside. Hiding behind late yoga classes as my prime motivation for staying at my apartment rarely sounded believable, but it was the best cover available for phone and Skype interviews—that, and I was still paying rent on an apartment I graced with my presence once or twice per week.
It was misleading, and I hated myself a little more after each interview, but Plan B was non-negotiable. Protecting myself was always the first priority.
