I lift a brow in surprise. “Good?”
“Yup.” He nods, grabbing onto my hands and lacing our fingers together. The feeling of connection grounds me as he says, “He doesn’t deserve either one of you, and if hewas still around, I wouldn’t be here right now. Selfishly,” he says, adding a smirk to his words, “I’m glad the bastard is gone.”
I let myself smile slightly. “Yeah?”
He grins wide. “Yeah.”
We stand there for a moment, grinning like fools at each other until I hear a ping come from my purse. I pull it out, Derek looking over my shoulder at the picture of my daughter putting makeup on my dad, and we laugh at the image together.
“Okay,” Derek says, clapping his hands together. “Now that we’ve got the nitty-gritty out of the way, we know Rora is having a great time and is perfectly content and safe—what do you say we go have some fun together?”
I slip my phone into my purse and zip it closed. Reaching out, he grabs my hand, and I say. “Absolutely, let’s do it.”
Derek’s friends are an absolute riot. I’ve never had so much fun in my entire life.
April is someone who is hard to keep up with as far as drinking goes. She is the life of the party, and her husband, who seems much calmer than his counterpart, barely takes his eyes off of her for a moment.
That is something I notice strongly with this group, that each couple is completely obsessed with each other. The men barely talked unless they felt compelled and let us girls take over the conversation all through dinner, which was at a fancy, dimly lit sushi place that I now love.
I was shocked that all these men wanted sushi, but as we walked down the street to our next destination—a club I am way too old to be in—I figured out why they were okay with sushi when they stopped to get slices of pizza out a window of one of the music venues downtown.
“Ah, I see.” I nod and laugh when Viviana, April, Jane, and Molly—the only single girl besides me in the group—step away for the boys to get their pizza. “Sushi makes sense now.”
“We take care of each other,” Viviana says, and Jane rests her head on her shoulder, seeming seconds away from sleeping.
“That’s so nice.”
“Hey!” April snaps her fingers and looks at me. I watch her with wide, humorous eyes. “What do you do?”
I frown. “What do I do?”
“Yeah, for work.”
I nod my head. “Oh. I work in marketing.”
Viviana pops up then, “You do?” She says this at max volume, grabbing the attention of the men in our group.
I shoot Derek a wide grin that he reciprocates. “Yes.”
I laugh at her, and she says excitedly, “So do I! I have my own firm now, though, because working for other people is the pits.”
“I don’t disagree.”
“Do you love it?” Jane, the sweet, quiet one of the group, asks me. Her head is now fully supported on her own since Viviana keeps moving too much.
“Nope,” I answer, figuring I may as well be honest with them. There’s no reason to keep that bit of information to myself.
“Aw, really?” April asks, pouting.
“Yeah. It’s not my passion.”
“What would you say your passion is?” Jane, the CEO of the biggest energy company in the world, asks me, and because of that position, I hesitate to answer.
I think people have lost sight of the value the position “mother” holds, and sometimes, when I spill my dreams—which I’ve only done with Hattie—it feels like the wrong answer.
But I’m not a liar, nor am I ashamed of what I want to do with my life. “I want to be the best damn mother there ever was.”
I’m surprised when the girls all yell in support of what I just said. Jane smiles broadly at my answer, easing my concern for her opinion, and the boys all wander over then. All of them join their prospective partners except the single two of the group, Garrett and Molly, but I watch out of the corner of my eye as Garrett hands Molly a slice of pizza and she gives him a side eye, but takes a bite and moans appreciatively. And when her back is turned, his expression softens.
