Laura covers my hand with hers and squeezes. She has always been a good friend. It’s sad I won’t know her for longer.I honestly don’t know if I can go back there, not now. I might be packing up my things tonight.
My first thought is to miss Deanna and the boys. I’ve grown close enough to them that I care more about them than just clients.
But the anger I’ve been nursing these last many years wants to throw that all aside. I can’t bring myself to care. Fuck him. Fuck the people who hurt me without another thought.
“Wait,” she says, glancing up at me with a strange look. “That would mean he’s the ex in all those stories you told me about? Whirlwind romance, mystical tit-jobs, donut proposal, and shotgun wedding?”
I didn’t realize the tears were starting to creep down my cheeks until I shudder out a laugh.
“Oh my god. I thought he would have known better than that. Donut proposal, really? He should have gotten you a real ring! We know the funds are there. Ugh, and I’m gonna give him so much shit for the mystical tit-jobs thing.”
Unwillingly, I smile a little at that. I can’t believe I doubted that talking to her was the right thing, even for a second.
She looks at me then, sizing me up briefly and wrinkling her nose. “Ew, girl. You gave my cousin tit-jobs, and I know for a fact he never deserved them.”
I can’t help but giggle in response. Even if she’s just trying to cheer me up, I needed to hear that kind of thing from someone who actually knows him.
Talking to Laura always feels like a masterclass in active listening, her expression attentive and her body languagewrapped up in total focus— eyes wide, gnashing into her acrylic nails. I probably wouldn’t have opened up to her so much, and kept going, if she hadn’t been hanging on my every word, urging me to say more every time I nearly finish a story.
It does for me a lot of what I thought therapy would do, except that no therapist has enthusiastically nodded, saying, “What a piece of shit!” to my ranting. My last one could learn a lot from her.
After an hour, I still feel like my chest has been cracked open, but at least all the debris has been cleared out. The wound is clean, and it still stings and burns and aches, but maybe one day it’ll heal.
My milkshake is empty and there’s just a smear of ranch left of the fries. My stomach is gurgling with an intolerant storm.
Laura’s nearly gnawed the acrylic tip off her ring finger in the last ten minutes. “And you don’t know why they never wanted to meet you?”
I shake my head. And then pause. “Do you?”
She shrugs a little, her attention in the glass of ice cubes she swirls a straw around in.
“I believe there were some, uh, specific qualities they were looking for,” she says. For my benefit, she doesn’t repeat them.
“It’s probably because then I was working my way through college and here he is from some WASP-ass family and a stupid, big house and, y’know what, they probably paid for his student loans. I bet he never actually had student loans,” I ramble, a little drunk on emotion.
“I don’t think you can be Catholicandwhite-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant,” Laura puts in quietly, and I can’t resist the eyeroll that takes me.
“WASC, then. Whatever.”
I vaguely remember there being some concern about me not being Catholic enough for his dad, but that didn’t seem like enough of a thing to disown family over. At least, not in this day and age.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out. Maybe things could have been different if they hadn’t put you through that,” Laura offers, and I sober instantly.
“Yeah, well. I’m not. I’m happier without him.”
She opens her mouth to respond, but there’s a thud outside against the diner’s back wall; I can see how a picture frame shakes with it. Laura looks a little alarmed and goes to the back to see what it was.
I finish off the last, too-warm dregs of my milkshake. Laura returns, shrugs it off, and totals the check. I dig through my coat pockets for cash. When I check my phone, there’s a few missed calls.
My gut twists, in a non-food sensitive way. For a second, I’m not sure who I want a call from less—Shawn or my mom.
But it’s Deanna’s phone number. I hadn’t expected it to be her. Guilt and ten other conflicting feelings sit uneasily with the milkshake and fries.
I look at my empty plate and glass and sigh. I should probably figure out what I’m going to do soon. I sure as hell can’t stay in this diner forever.
“I should go,” I tell Laura after a bit. “I have to deal with the fallout.”
“You don’t need to go back yet. I mean, if you need to be around people, you can stay at my apartment, I’ve got a couch—”
