Jason barks out a laugh. “That’s all Mila, believe it or not.”
Chris and I chuckle, because he’s not wrong. Mila had been quite the athlete back in high school. There were even a few times Skylar dragged me along to watch her tennis matches. She’d had a powerful swing and stamina most people would envy, and I always wondered why she never went pro. She was an incredibly skilled player.
“Where is the little bugger by the way?” Chris asks, grabbing a slice of meat-lovers pizza from the box and sinking into the armchair beside Jason.
“She’s asleep in our room,” he replies, switching the TV on and flicking it to the channel broadcasting the game, “until I have to wake her in a couple of hours for a feed.”
“Man, I still can’t believe you’re a dad of two now, and that you’re about to get married again,” Chris mumbles with a mouth full of food. “One minute we were in your office talking about your new babysitter, and the next, you’re building a whole life with her. How does that even happen?”
“Man, you make it sound like I was grooming her. I’m not a fucking creep. And you know it didn’t just happen overnight.”
“No, of course not,” I chime in. “For Mila, it started with a little crush at thirteen.”
It’s no secret that my ex-sister-in-law had always been smitten with my best friend. The moment I introduced them to one another thirteen years ago, she’d had hearts in her eyes for him ever since. Skylar and I always noticed, even when she thought no one did. The way she stumbled over her words whenever he asked her a question, or the way her gaze followed him wherever he went—it was always obvious to anyone who knew her well.
“Yeah, if you hadn’t ratted her out, I would’ve never known about it,” Jason tells me.
“And now, she finally has her man,” Chris quips. “Does Elena know you’re getting married?”
“It’s only been a week since the proposal, but I did let her parents know. I’m sure the news will reach her soon enough.”
“How do you think she’ll take it?” I ask, curiously.
“Probably not well, but I think she has bigger issues to worry about.”
Several months after Elena was charged with sexually assaulting her students at the university she worked at, she was handed a ten-year sentence. By the time she’s released, Jake will be almost eighteen, and she will have missed most of Jake’s youth.
It’s heartbreaking to imagine him growing up without his mother. But Mila stepping in as a mother figure has brought an added layer of stability and normalcy that he might otherwise never have known.
“And what about you?” I tilt my head towards Chris. “Heard you and Gemma are shacking up now. Thought you didn’t do‘couple stuff’.” I add, using air quotes for emphasis.
“So, did I. But I guess when you find someone you genuinely click with, plans just change.”
“Who would’ve thought?” Jason cuts in. “Chris Hughes—the ultimate playboy—finally settling down with a girl. It better work out,” he warns, teasingly, “otherwise I’ve lost a damn good bartender for nothing.”
Gemma had been Jason’s employee, and part of Chris’s bar crew until she quit six months ago, after she and Chris officially became a couple. Wanting to keep their relationship separate from the workplace, and with Chris being her supervisor at the time, they chose not to let it complicate their professional lives. They keep their relationship mostly private, neither of them quite used to the idea of a committed partnership yet—but it’s clear they’re still going strong, hence the moving in together part.
Funnily enough, all three of us have had some kind of history with Gemma Wright. She’d casually dated Jason not too long before he and Mila were ever a thing. As for me, I met her first, at a local gym one night while working out with Lucia. I still remember how jealous, and furious Lucia had been when she saw Gemma talking to me, as if she had any right to be angry when she herself was sleeping with her best friend’s husband.
The memory of how cruelly I treated my ex-wife still haunts me, even now. And though she’s happy, and married to the love of her life, I’m still grappling with how to forgive myself for what I did in the past. Just when I think I’ve moved on, accepted it, let it go, the slightest reminder of her pulls me back to the time when my life began to crumble around me.
The day she married Heath was the hardest of all. I had never known pain like that—the sharp, hollow ache of realising she truly belonged to someone else. It felt final. Before, it had never felt completely over; memories lingered, vivid and raw, as if I were living them all over again. But now… now that she carries another man’s name, it feels like the definitive closing of a chapter—for Skylar, and for me.
Still, life must go on. And inevitably, so must I.
I’ll admit, it’s been tough as hell, but I’m stronger now than I was before, and better equipped to keep myself from slipping back into the self-destructive cycle that once had me trapped.
For the past thirteen months, I poured all my pain, all my grief, into my projects—creating pieces that, accordingto Jason, are some of the best he’s ever seen. That bit of encouragement from my best friend was all I needed to finally start selling them online. And to say they’ve been selling like hotcakes is a vast understatement. I’ve sold out more than a few times now, to the point where I’m even starting to consider a career change.
Jason slightly increases the volume on the TV just as the commentator announces the start of the game. We ease back into our seats, letting ourselves get comfortable for the night ahead.
For the next hour and a half, we devour pizza loaded with cheese and all kinds of protein, whisper-yelling at the screen, all the while hoping we don’t wake up the baby.
Chapter 19
Hope
The kitchen cabinet door creaks and screeches the instant it opens, and I wince—not just at the noise, but at the realisation that even after a year living in this house, I’ve barely made a dent in the renovations I promised myself I’d finish.
