And at least Tony hadn’t cheated… exactly. So much of their relationship made sense now, though. She set the last box downon the floor just inside the door. The pile of her things was all that she had left. It was an abysmal sight.
Jade, her older sister, turned and smiled gently. “You’re allowed to be upset, Hope. You’re too nice. You let them keep the apartment and all the stuff in it… after finding out your fiancé was in love with another man. You’re a better person than I am.”
Hope shrugged. “Who am I to stand in the way of true love? It’s not like it was an issue that I could fix.” Yeah. She was blessed with a vagina between her legs instead of a penis. Not exactly a ‘reconcilable difference’. She snorted to herself.
“If he had cheated on you with a woman, would that have made a difference?” Jade asked.
Hope didn’t have an answer for that. “He didn’t cheat. At least, he says they didn’t until after we’d split.”
“But an emotional affair is just as bad, Hope, if not worse,” Jade muttered, pulling a bottle of white wine out of the refrigerator and unscrewing the top—because they were classy bitches—and poured it into two mismatched wine goblets. She handed one to Hope, who took it and took a long swallow. What a day.
“I don’t want to talk about Tony and Matthieu,” she said and rolled her shoulders to alleviate the tension in them. After packing her car up that morning, driving the nine hours to get to her hometown in northern Michigan, and then unloading her vehicle… she was beat. Her body hurt. “I do, however, want to talk about that absolutely adorable guy that helped us unload my car…”
“Asher?” Jade laughed, taking a drink of her own wine.
“Wait, that wasAsher?As in, Asher Phillips? Like, your bestie’s little brother?That Asher?” Hope asked, her voice raising several octaves in shock. Jade nodded. She fanned herself and grinned over at her older sister. “Oooh boy. He grew up so good.”
Jade snatched a plastic spatula out of the ramekin on the counter and threw it at her. “Shut up! He’s still a baby!”
Hope used her fingers to count backwards, thinking, then grinned. “He’s what, twenty-three, twenty-four now?”
“He’sa kid, Hope,” Jade chastised and rolled her eyes.
“That was no kid, my dearest sister,” Hope laughed, waggling her eyebrows at her. “And he totally has the hots for you.”
“Oh god, stop!” Jade moaned and clapped her hands over her ears, singing a loudlalalalalato drown Hope out. “You used to babysit him!”
Hope shrugged and grinned again. “I did not babysit him, I tutored him. And I’m not saying I want to go for him. But you totally should.”
“This conversation is over,” Jade laughed, giving a small shudder. “No. Absolutely not. He’s so young, Hope. And I’m… old.”
“You’re thirty-one, that’s hardly old, Jade,” Hope muttered, leaning against the countertop on her forearms. “Shit, there had to be at least a dozen years between myself and Grant,” she said, her throat seizing and his name coming out as more of a croak. Shit. She had done so well not thinking about him. Or Van.Fuck.
Rubbing her chest absentmindedly to ward off the ache that had begun to gnaw at her breastbone, she swallowed and changed the subject quickly, asking, “He just happened to stop by?”
“His parents still live down the street from here, he pops through every so often,” Jade said, thankfully ignoring the mention of her wild weekend in Chicago. It sometimes felt like a dream. Had she dreamed the whole thing?“Want to watch a movie and binge on popcorn and wine?”
“Only if you have a bag of sour gummy worms hidden somewhere in one of these cabinets.” Jade laughed, pointing toward one over the refrigerator. Hope bounced over to thecupboard and opened it, sighing, “Aha!” Plucking the bag of candy out, she opened it and popped a red and blue worm into her mouth with a smile.
They migrated to the small living room and settled into opposite ends of Jade’s thrift store find couch; it was ugly as sin but comfortable to boot. Every window had multiple thriving houseplants in macrame plant hangers in front of them, and almost every inch of space above the kitchen cabinets had more greenery. Long hanging Pothos, trailing English Ivy that had taken up one side and climbed across to the window over the sink, leggy Spider Plants, and one absolutely ginormous, bushy fern that occupied one window all by itself. In one corner of the living room, a tall, staggered shelf unit housed another dozen potted plants.Her sister needed to get laid, she thought with a roll of her eyes.
Bruno climbed up onto the cushions between them and lay down with a huff, resting his wide, mostly white head in Jade’s lap. Hope draped a fluffy blanket over her legs as Jade queued upRoadhouse. There was just something about Sam Elliot and his silver foxiness…
“So, did you ever find them?” her sister asked a while later, while Patrick Swayze was beating the stuffing out of some baddie in the dance hall.
Hope sighed, shaking her head. She wasn’t sure she was ready to talk about that, either. “No. It’s probably best that way.”
“You could try to search for them on google? Or try Facebook?” her sister suggested, taking a drink of her wine.
“All I have are two first names,” Hope said and shrugged. “I don’t know where they’re from, what kind of restaurant they own… With my luck, they’re both married, and I had a crazy one-night stand with two very unavailable men who live on polar opposite sides of the country than me…”
“Technically it was a two-night stand…” Jade corrected, winking, and Hope rolled her eyes.
“Shut up,” Hope laughed and threw a gummy worm at her sister, who caught it and popped it into her mouth. Bruno’s eyebrows lifted, his eyes shifting to watch, but he didn’t lift his head. Hope scratched his fluffy butt where it was pressed against her legs. “I’m still mad at myself for telling you.”
“Why? I would die if you’d kept this from me! I haven’t gotten any in so long there’s probably cobwebs down there,” Jade laughed. Hope groaned; she was right. Her sister needed to get laid, bad. “I have to live vicariously through you.”
Hope swallowed the lump in her throat. She’d tried everything to forget them. But still she dreamed of them. Every night. And every morning she would wake up alone.
