“Love sounds exhausting,” I muttered.
“It is,” she said. “But so is being alone.” A soft laugh slipped out of her. “I can’t tell you what to do, but I’ll back you no matter which way you choose. And if you decide to leave him?” She bumped my knee with hers. “I’ll help you raise the damn thing myself.”
I hesitated, then said timidly, “Did I really make you feel dumb for wanting to get married and start a family?”
Her eyes flicked up to meet mine. “Not intentionally. Which is why it never bothered me. You were always so determined not to become your mom. Every choice you made was this anarchy to prove you were nothing like her. And I think some part of you—” she paused, watching my face “—was secretly hoping Khalifa would mess up, because then she wouldn’t get the satisfaction of knowing you fell in love with a man she chose.”
I stared at the coffee table, tracing the perimeter with a fingertip.
Sarah’s tone gentled. “You can stop now, Lilly. You’re allowed to stop fighting her. Being happy with Khalifa doesn’t mean she won. It meansyoudid because she doesn’t get to control your life anymore.”
The thing was, I’d been doing it without even realizing—fighting her, subconsciously, like muscle memory, like a reflex my body never bothered to unlearn. I’d thought marriage would free me from it, that if I moved out, put walls and doors and miles between us, that instinctive,debilitatingdefiance would finally switch off. That I’d wake up one day and simply be...my own.
And now, suddenly, I was in my thirties, married and pregnant, and it seemed like it had all happened overnight, so fast I hadn’t noticed when the wanting was supposed to disappear, when I was meant to feel finished, to stop yanking against the invisible tug-of-war that continued to hold. The pull was still there, not a switch to be flipped by a change of address, but something woven into me, threaded through my laugh lines and silver strands and stretch marks, baked into the way I spoke too loudly, loved too deeply, felt everything all at once.
I’d told myself for years that I needed distance from my mother to distance myself from that little girl, the one who constantly needed to prove herself at every turn. But my mom wasn’t the one clinging on for dear life.Iwas. Because who was I without her there to push against?
But as Sarah’s words settled into my bones, I wondered what would happen if I stopped. If I didn’t keep bracing for a fight that no longer needed to be won.
I glanced at her. “Intentional or not, I’m still sorry. You are the opposite of an airhead, Sarah. You always knew what you wanted, and you were never ashamed of that.”
Her lips parted like she might argue, but I kept going. “You knew you wanted the big wedding and the husband and the kids, and you were brave enough to want all of that out loud, while I...” I gave a shaky laugh. “I spent years pretending I was above it, like wanting it made me weak.”
“You weren’t pretending. You were protecting yourself.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I’m tired of living like everything has to be an act of resistance. I’m only now figuring out how to want things without feeling like I’m betraying myself.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing a damn good job of figuring it out.”
I chuckled. “You always did love being right.”
“Of course,” she said, smirking. “It’s my most annoying quality.”
“I’ve been coming here,” I admitted. “But I’ve just been sitting in my car, too chicken to get out. I’ve never had a friend fight with someone I didn’t want to lose.” I glanced at her, a little sheepish. “I’m honestly surprised you never caught me.”
“I probably would have,” she said, stretching her legs out in front of her, “if I wasn’t parked outsideyourbuilding, also too chicken to get out of my car.”
I laughed loudly. “God, we’re pathetic.”
“Deeply,” she agreed.
It shouldn’t have felt like relief, realizing we’d both been equally ridiculous. But it did. I held out my pinkie like no time had passed at all. “Truce?”
She rolled her eyes immediately. “We’re adults, Lillian.”
“Truce?” I repeated.
With a sigh that didn’t fool either of us, she hooked her pinkie with mine, tapping it lightly. “Truce.”
There were no hugs orI love you’s, even though it sat right there between us, obvious and unspoken. Instead, she stood, tossed me the remote, and headed for the kitchen. “Pick something tacky,” she called over her shoulder. “I want zero brain cells involved.”
She came back with two tubs of ice cream—mint chocolate chip for me, cookie dough for her—and that was it. We skipped past the big, dramatic reconciliations, and just lounged on the couch watching terrible reality TV while demolishing frozen sugar.
And somewhere between the third commercial break and Sarah yelling at a contestant for making objectively bad romantic choices, it hit me that even if Khalifa and I didn’t end up together, even if everything fell apart in ways I couldn’t control—as long as I had my best friend, I’d be fine.
Chapter Forty-Three
FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, I lived inside a carefully curated bubble of delusion.
