Rosie chuckled and wafted her hand at the screen. “I haven’t told her, if that’s what you’re asking. She probably knows in the sense that she knows all women who spend any time around her fall in love with her.” She pointed at Lori. “And you can’t tell Gabe. Promise me you won’t spill your guts to your new best friend.”
Lori started coughing hard. “Damn COVID,” she said when she’d finally stopped.
“Promise me.”
Lori sipped a glass of water. “I promise you Gabe isn’t my new best friend,” she said and winked. “I could never replace you. Gabe hates shopping, for starters, and I need your impeccable fashion sense in my life, always.”
Rosie arched her eyebrow and leaned in toward the screen until her nose touched it. “Promiseme you won’t tell Gabe I’m in love with her best friend.”
“I promise.” Lori rolled her eyes. “But why aren’t you telling her?”
“Duh.” Rosie lightly tapped her forehead with her knuckles. “Our situationship is supposed to be super simple. There’s certainly no room for complications like lovey-dovey feelings. Shay has a very specific view of how intimate relationships work, and she’s convinced herself that they’re more trouble than they’re worth. She’s got a lot of family stuff going on, and maybe, if she ever sorts through all that and its inherent baggage, she’ll come to realize thathaving a partner is more balanced than she thinks it is. Right now, she just sees them as a black hole for her time and emotions, and she’s got enough of that with her family.”
“Goodness.” Lori made a funny face. “Sounds like she needs you to be her therapist, not her bed buddy.”
“She could probably use some therapy, but couldn’t we all?” Rosie rolled her neck and sighed. “And I like being her bed buddy best, so I’m just going to ride the train until it crashes. I don’t want to miss a single moment of being with her. My heart is going to break anyway; what’s the point in rushing that along?”
“If that’s what you want, I’ll support you.” Lori held up her wine glass, and it went fuzzy as she tapped it close to the screen. “And when your heart’s breaking, I’ll be ready with a few bottles of this to drown the pain, just like you were when Katherine broke mine.”
Rosie almost choked on her drink. When she’d stopped spluttering, she widened her eyes and looked at Lori with her best serious face. “You just said her name.”
Lori laughed. “Katherine.”
“Oh my God, don’t say it again, or she’ll materialize right behind you. Since when did she stop beingthe lawyer?”
“Since we sold the Brewster. I closed the chapter and let it all go.” Lori bounced in her chair a little. “It feels good. She doesn’t hold any power over me anymore, so it doesn’t matter if I use her name or her job title. It means nothing.”
Rosie smiled and sighed deeply. “It’s so good to see you happy again. I thought that woman might’ve broken you for good.”
“No way.” Lori’s expression went all dreamy. “I had to heal so I could be with Gabe.”
Rosie pretended to gag. “Where’s the real Lori? This one’s way too soppy to be my best friend. You’ll be talking about fate and destiny next.”
Lori stuck out her tongue. “No, I won’t. But I do believe the right people come onto your path at the right time. And I was ready to move on when Gabe came into my life.”
“But why did she have to put Shay on my path when I’d just given up trying to find Princess Charming? Or is she just here to tease me?”
Lori pressed her lips together and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t have the answer to that. But it could be that you’re onherpath to help her figure out her family stuff. And when all that is done, maybe she’ll be ready to be your Princess Charming.”
“That’s some romantic bull crap.” Rosie snorted. “The only way I can get a girlfriend is by being their therapist first to help them pick through and process their baggage. Great.”
Lori shrugged. “Maybe the reason you became a therapist was to find yourself a woman,” she said and laughed.
Rosie swatted at the screen, but Lori’s words brought her thoughts back to her mom, and her smile dropped. “You know why I got into therapy. Then I got disillusioned with it and left it behind. But while I was in Tijuana with Shay, we did a lot of talking?—”
“That’swhy you’ve fallen in love,” Lori said. “All the talking. You were fine when you were just having oodles of hot sex.”
Rosie wouldn’t deny it. “Of course it’s all the talking. The amazing sex has just compounded my feelings.” She grinned. “Shay isfantasticin bed. And on desks. And in showers. And?—”
“If we’d been having this conversation three months ago, I might’ve been jealous, but I’ve got my own sex machine now, so I’m not… Although, I probably wouldn’t have been jealous, because I didn’t know what I was missing until Gabe.” Lori motioned with her finger. “Carry on.”
“I was saying that all the talking made me remember how much I loved being a therapist. Now that Mom’s gone, I feel like…” Rosie leaned back in the chair, grabbed her wine glass, and took a long drink. She couldn’t finish that sentence, couldn’t be that selfish.
“Hey, please don’t do that,” Lori said when Rosie didn’t continue. “You don’t ever need to censor yourself with me.”
Rosie bit her bottom lip, unsure if she could say the words out loud for the first time. Doing that would make them all the morereal. “I feel like I’ve got a clean slate, and everything I do can be for me. It can be because I want to do it, not because I feel like I have to do it, or because Mom needs me to do it. Does that make sense?”
Lori gave her a small smile. “All of it makes sense. I’ve always thought you were a great therapist, Rosie. I mean, I’m sure you’re great at being a marketeer too—you’ve certainly got Gabe and the gang excited about those tools—but I feel like therapy’s a calling more than a career, you know? So are you saying that you want to go back to being a therapist again?”
