Page 92 of Cava with My Colleague

“Of choosing him and it not working. Of staying and getting bored, or him getting sick of my chaos. Of committing and then losing it all anyway.” I look up at them. When I was eight, I almost lost everything. My hair, my health, any sense of control over my own body. It took away the expectations my family had for me, and in a way, their love too. “Nothing is permanent. Everything can be taken away.”

The table is quiet. They know this story—they didn’t know me back then, but we’ve all shared the deepest, most painful parts of ourselves over wine and late-night conversations.

But I’ve never connected it quite like this before.

“So you make everything temporary on purpose,” Sara says. “So you can’t lose it.”

“Maybe.”

“Jade.” Tessa reaches across the table, takes my hand. “You’re stronger than you’ve ever been. You’re one of the most self-sufficient people I know. But choosing Carlos doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to lose him. It just means you’re brave enough to try.”

“But what if it doesn’t work out?”

“Then you’ll never wonder if it would have,” Emma says kindly.

I think about Carlos asking me to stay in Seville. About the look on his face when I told him I had to go to Monaco. About the way he said “I do care” like he was afraid to say it could be more.

“I don’t know what to do,” I say.

“Yes you do,” Sara says. “You’re just scared to do it.”

“I’m allowed to be scared.”

“Of course you are. But Jade—” She squeezes my hand. “You’ve been keeping yourself safe for so long. Maybe it’s time to let yourself be happy instead.”

We spend the afternoon on a private beach inside a protected little cove, right off the promenade near our hotel. Emma and Tessa go swimming while Sara and I stay on the lounge chairs, watching them splash each other like teenagers. Emma’s wearing a two-piece, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear. When I complimented it, she said Santo had bought it for her. It was hard to tell in the Mediterranean sunshine, but I think she was blushing.

“How’s Chris?” I ask Sara. Our lounge chairs are owned by the restaurant behind us, the reservation another gift from Santo.

“Good. Great, actually.” Sara smiles. “He’s going to the recording studio a lot, playing for this band or that band. And I guarantee you he’s already had fish and chips from that shop around the corner three times since I left.” She laughs. Sara mostly eats vegan, and she and Chris have started cooking together, the kind of wholesome, healthy meals Sara’s known for.

Tessa and Emma come out of the water, laughing together, and join us. There’s still a bit of ice in their glasses, and they gulp the cool drinks down with satisfaction.

We talk about everything and nothing for hours until we get hungry, then we move to the sandy dining tables for dinner. We order too much food and too much wine and spend hours laughing about the past year.

Tessa tells us about spending time with Luc in Paris and how his grandmother keeps trying to teach her to make cassoulet. Emma shares horror stories from her MBA program and whispers about how Santo makes her breakfast every morning without being asked. Sara tells us about Chris writing songs for her, playing them in their living room at two in the morning.

“I can’t believe we’re all coupled up,” Emma says, slightly drunk on mojitos. “Remember when we were all single and bitter in Austin?”

“I was never bitter,” Tessa protests.

“You absolutely were. You were the most bitter of all of us, after you and James broke up.”

“Yeah, well he was an asshole who didn’t know how to communicate or you know . . . stay faithful to anyone.”

“But Luc knows how to communicate.”

Tessa’s smile goes soft. “He does. He really does.”

I feel it then—the shift that’s happened while we were scattered across Europe. We’re not the same women who left Austin a year ago. We’ve grown. Changed. Found parts of ourselves we didn’t know were missing.

And maybe I’ve changed too. Maybe I’m not the woman who needs to keep everything temporary anymore.

Maybe I could be the woman who stays.

“I think I want to ask Rebecca for a permanent position,” I hear myself say.

Three heads swivel toward me.