“Mama, can I get my tongue pierced?” Sadie asks, and I choke on the sip of hot coffee in my mouth.
“Sorry, Lilah,” Ivy says between chuckles. “She saw my decoration when we were eating ice cream last night and asked about it this morning.” She flicksthe diamond-looking barbell on her tongue between her teeth, and an unexpected shiver runs down my spine. I was there with Ivy at The Inkwell on her eighteenth birthday when she had the piercing done. Ivy took the needle like a champ; I passed out from the sight alone. The bling isn’t a surprise; she just doesn’t typically go around wagging her tongue around. I sometimes forget about the jewelry in Ivy’s mouth, and Sadie has certainly never noticed it before.
Now that it’s been brought to my attention, I can’t seem to stop noticing my friend’s tongue piercing, nor can I stop my brain from veering down the path that wonders about all the things Ivy might be able to do with the adornment on her tongue.
Clearing my throat, I turn my concentration back to my daughter.
“Absolutely not, Lollipop. Ask me again when you turn eighteen. Actually, no. Ask me again when you turn thirty.”
Sadie sighs, then wiggles her eyebrows.
“What about my ears, Mama? Can I get my ears pierced? Please? I’m going to be in third grade soon, and I’ll be the only girl in class without pierced ears. Please, please, please?” My kid sticks out her lower lip, pouting and clasping her hands in mock prayer under her chin. In her soccer camp attire—blackmesh shorts and a maroon jersey with the number ‘13’ on the back and her ponytail tied with a matching maroon ribbon—my baby looks like a tiny teenager but somehow just as itty bitty and brand new as she was the first time I held her. I look at Ivy, and she throws her hands up in surrender.
“I can’t say yes or no, but I can say that if your mama says it’s okay to get your ears pierced, I’d be more than happy to do the honors. We can go down to The Inkwell and get it done the right way with high-quality jewelry and good needles. No cheap-o mall ear gun for our Sadie Girl.”
Part of me wants to say no, to keep my baby girl a baby for as long as I possibly can, but Ivy’s willingness to step in has me leaning towards the other direction. I love my parents, but they were pretty strict about certain things. I was never allowed to dye my hair or experiment with body jewelry. They still don’t know that Ivy pierced my belly button in high school.
I always told myself I’d be lenient with the stuff that allows Sadie to express herself—clothes, hair, and I suppose, piercings. I didn’t think this milestone would come so soon, but I can’t avoid it forever.
And if Ivy thinks it’s a good idea, who am I to say no?
“Alright, Sadie. I’ll tell you what. If you score twogoals at soccer camp this week and I don’t get any bad notes from your counselors, we’ll go to The Inkwell on Saturday and let Ivy pierce your ears. Deal?” It should be a pretty simple thing for my kid to achieve, considering she has the legs of Mia Hamm and rarely gets bad remarks on her attitude from teachers.
“Deal! Mama, oh my god! I’m going to score so many goals, and I’ll be the perfect angel at camp. I won’t be a sore loser or threaten to kick the boys or talk when I’m not supposed to or anything! This is so cool!”
Sadie runs off, jabbering about how she can’t wait to tell her friends at camp about our deal and that they’ll have to give her ample opportunities to score, and I don’t bother to remind her to rinse her bowl and put it in the dishwasher. Sometimes things in life are too exciting to set aside for menial tasks.
And Sadie doesn’t need to know that I plan on upholding my end of the bargain no matter how many times she kicks the ball into the net this week. As long as she behaves, we’ll be making a trip to The Inkwell on Saturday.
“That’s a pretty badass kid we’ve got, Lilah.”
And as Ivy moves around the kitchen, her hand grazing over my lower belly after she’s deposited thebreakfast dishes into the dishwasher, my mind lingers on that word. We.
Is it possible that all this time I’ve been aching for a partner, someone to lighten my load and share some joys and burdens of life with, and all along, my partner has been right in front of me? How different would my life be if I weren’t once such a coward?
How different could it be now if I tried tobedifferent?
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Yeah, we really do.”
“Ivy,why are you driving so damn slow?”
“I’m trying to keep the car quiet. If I go under five miles per hour, it won’t make any noise.”
“Vee, it’s a Rav4, not a Prius. It won’t be silent no matter how slowly you drive. And it’s the middle of the day, and we’re driving down the street that I have lived on for years. We don’t need to be discreet.”
I huff out a breath as Ivy continues to drive down the road at a snail’s pace, likely drawing more attention to us than if she’d just act like a normal person. After dropping Sadie off at soccer camp and then swinging by the market to deliver a batch of my strawberry jam, we set forth to commenceOperation Goodbye Earl. With our supplies hidden in the depthsof my Louis Vuitton tote—a Christmas present from my soon-to-be sister-in-law that she calls my ‘Hot Mom Bag’—Ivy pulls my SUV into the driveway of the home I shared with Earl. I don’t bother asking why she bothered with her stealth driving if she was just going to park in view of the entire neighborhood, anyway.
“Alright, what do we say if anyone asks what we’re doing here?” Ivy asks as I slide my key into the front door, relieved that it still works. I thought Earl might be petty enough to change the locks, but his laziness has always outweighed his general crappiness and mediocrity.
“No one is going to knock and ask what I’m doing in my own house.”
“Lilah, please. Fox Hole is peak small-town nosiness. There’s nothing to do here but get all in each other’s business. You think no one is looking out their window, looking for something to discuss at The Dugout tonight? The town might be on our side when push comes to shove, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to talk. And if we want to remain untraceable, we have to be nonchalant. Now tell me what we say if someone asks what we’re doing here.”
I breathe out a long sigh. She’s not wrong. My separation from Earl will be the talk of the town for months. Peoplejuststopped talking about mybrother following his fiancée to San Francisco and he moved months ago. Hell, they talked about the first time Stephen and Dottie Lynn broke up for the better part of a decade.
“We say that I’m just here to pick up my summer clothes that I left behind.”
“That’s my good girl,” Ivy says, patting my cheek as she strolls past me and through the threshold of my former home. I, however, stand there like an idiot with my hand still on my keys, shell-shocked at my body’s response to Ivy’s simple praise. My stomach twists into a knot, the strings pulled tighter as my friend strides away from me, completely unaware of the effect she has on me.
