Page 68 of False Confidence

“I didn’t mean to lie to you. I was going to tell you, I just… I don’t know why I didn’t. You know, you were busy heading to meet your other friends, and it didn’t seem like the right time?—”

“Are you pissed off that I was hanging out with Nadia?” Maggie asked carefully, with no judgment in her tone.

“No,” Jazz replied, a little defensively. Maggie raised a brow. “It’s not that you’re hanging out with other people, it’s Nadia. She’s great, she’s perfect, she’s got it all together. She’s the polar opposite of me, and I love that for her, but she seems so much older and grown up than us.” By us, Jazz meant me.

“She’s actually a year younger than me,” Maggie said, and Jazz groaned. Of course she was. “And yes, she totally has her life together but Jazz, we are grownups now. We have big girl jobs and bills to pay, and I have a husband.”

“I know, but you’re not even thirty,” Jazz protested. “And I’m barely thirty.” Technically, she was closer to her thirty-first birthday than her thirtieth, but that was neither here nor there.

“Thirty is grown up. I really think you’d like Nadia if you got to know her. She’s a lot of fun. But,” she added quickly, as Jazz opened her mouth to protest, “I’m not going to force you to be friends with her. And I’m also not going to stop hanging out with you because I spend time with her sometimes. We mostly do work related shit anyway.”

“I get it, Maggie, it’s fine. You’re allowed to have other friends. I just get stuck in my head sometimes.”

“I know, but I don’t want you to think anyone is ever going to come before you. Even Cal knows that if you call, I drop everything. You’re my number one. Always.”

It wasn’t that Jazz didn’t believe Maggie; it was that she couldn’t. Maggie had told her time and time again that she loved her and accepted her exactly as she was—hell, she’d shown her time and time again—but Jazz couldn’t wrap her head around it. Not now that it felt like Maggie had skipped ten steps ahead in life and she was still drowning in quicksand.

She couldn’t say that, though.

“Same,” she said, instead. “You’re my number one always too.”

“Too right I am.” Maggie brushed the breadcrumbs from her pants onto the car floor. “Speaking of Cal, Liam came to see me last night.”

“And presumably spoke about our sex life—which is super weird, for the record.” It was the first night she and Liam had spent apart in a few days. In the interest of trying not to appear too clingy, she’d lied and told him she and Sierra were hanging out at her place after work. Well, it had been a lie initially, at least. Convincing Sierra to hang out had taken nothing more than the promise of Thai food and hazelnut truffles from her favorite pot shop downtown. It had been nice, actually, to spend time with her outside of work. It had been the first time they’d hung out since Maggie’s bachelorette party, and Jazz had forgotten how much she liked spending time with her.

Sierra had fallen asleep on her couch, while Jazz had tossed and turned in a cold bed, unable to sleep.

“We weren’t talking about your sex life.” Maggie rolled her eyes. “The orgasm thing just came up.”

“Shit, does Cal know now?”

“No, but I wanted to talk to you about that. Liam told me you were worried that Cal, Eliza, and Danisha would have a problem with the two of you being together. What’s up with that?”

“What’s up with that is that Liam has a big mouth,” Jazz said through gritted teeth. If Liam wasn’t so cute, and she hadn’t missed him so much overnight, she might be more pissed off about it. “But as I explained to Liam, he’s an only child and their entire world. I’m personified chaos. That’s not exactly what most people want for their kids—ow.” She rubbed her arm where Maggie had whacked her with a little package of pretzels. “What was that for?”

“For giving my husband so little credit. What the fuck, Jazz? Cal loves you. Not just because you’re my best friend, but because you’re you. Eliza and Danisha too. Liam’s parents are not our parents—and yes, I recognize that’s a weird thing to say, considering I’m married to his dad.”

Jazz covered her face with her hands and groaned. “This situation is all so fucking messy.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Maggie tugged her hands away. “What do you want here? Taking everyone else out of the equation except you and Liam. Do you want to be with him? Like really with him?”

“I have no idea. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was supposed to just be sex.” She dropped her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, her temples pounding. “But it’s not. Just sex, I mean. Maybe it was at first, or maybe it never was. I don’t fucking know.”

“It’s never just sex.”

Jazz loosed a humorless chuckle, opening her eyes and turning to face Maggie. “I got a tattoo for him.”

To Maggie’s credit, she hardly blinked. “Okay. That definitely has some implications, but you do also have tattoos for a bunch of people.”

“I’m not sure you and my siblings count as a bunch of people.” The bouquet on her ribs was made up of roses for Rose, carnations for Xan, and morning glories for Maggie. She’d been playing around with the idea of adding Cal, Eliza, Danisha, and Liam’s birth flowers too.

“It was supposed to be comforting. What did you get for him?”

“Snoopy reading a romance book on my hip. He was obsessed with Snoopy as a kid.”

“Of course he was. That is pretty adorable.” Jazz sighed her agreement. “You could just… be with him? Marry him, pop out a couple of the world’s cutest babies, grow old together,” Maggie joked. Or at least, Jazz hoped she was joking.

That sounded simultaneously perfect and terrifying. How the hell was she supposed to decide if she wanted that? And then commit to it? She couldn’t even stick to one fucking hobby. Maggie didn’t get it. Sure, she’d run away when confronted with her feelings for Cal, but even at her lowest, she always had it together. And once she had him back, she’d done everything right: she’d gone to therapy, walked away from her family, started a badass business.

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