Page 55 of Hers for the Weekend

“What if I like her too much?” she asked, not meaning to speak out loud.

Miriam whooped and pointed at Tara. “I told you you were going to get turned ass over teakettle by love when you least expected it!” she crowed.

Tara glared at her. She would have glared at Cole, who was shaking with laughter underneath her, but she couldn’t twist her head far enough.

“I’m changing the subject,” she said, trying to keep the laughter out of her voice. She secretly loved how much her friends wanted to meddle. “Tell me what’s happening with your names? Are you keeping Blum, after everything?”

When they were engaged, Miriam had been ecstatic about legally becoming Anything-But-Blum, even if she needed to keep her maiden name for her art business.

Miriam shook her head. “No. I can’t keep his name, no matter how much time I’ve spent making it my own. Noelle doesn’t feel particularly attached to hers, although she loves her parents’ memories. There’s something a little too on the nose about being a Christmas tree farmer named Noelle Northwood, after all. Plus, we both want a shared name.”

“So, what are you going to do, become Carrigans? Go extremely millennial and combine Rosenstein and Northwood?”

“We thought about Rosewood, actually!” Miriam agreed. “Which is very lovely.”

“But?” Tara asked, hearing the unspoken word.

“But it’s not Jewish enough!” Miriam exclaimed. “Too many of my ancestors had to give up their names in the diaspora, and I’m lucky enough to have this long family tradition stretching back generations. Even Cass never legally changed her name. She was born and died a Rosenstein.”

Tara smiled. This was another thing that Noelle could give Miriam that she could not have—she wouldn’t have been able to give up the Chadwick name, without giving up the power and influence that came with it. The power to do good, with a terrible legacy.

“So, you’ll be Miriam and Noelle Rosenstein, then. Is your family thrilled?”

“You should have heard them!” Miriam’s eyes sparkled, actually sparkled as if happiness were surrounding her like pixie dust. “The cheers were absurd when we told them. Noelle is going to keep North as a middle name. And I…”

“Are going to finally, really be Mimi Roz,” Tara finished for her.

Miriam nodded, so much weight in the action.

Mimi Roz had been the name Miriam had used for the paintings she’d done right after college. Her father had burned most of them, but a few had survived, and the sale of some of those remaining pieces had been what helped save the farm a year ago. The deepest part of Miriam, her truest artistic self that Tara had never truly known, was attached to that name.

“I’m going to take Sawyer’s name,” Cole said, though he’d been quiet up to this point—probably because he knew all this. “We’re not getting married, we don’t believe in it, I’m just going to change my name because I hate my family. I’ll be Cole Bright. I like it.”

Tara and Miriam looked at each other and started to laugh again. Then they caught up on each other’s lives. She’d noticed before how different Miriam seemed. It was part of why she’d been okay with the breakup (or, mostly okay), because even a year ago, Miriam had been obviously so much happier here. After a year of growing freely into herself, though, she was like a whole different woman. Someone mischievous, hilarious, strong-willed.

Tara had always thought of Miriam as sassy and sad, but she wasn’t particularly sad anymore, except around the edges where the loss of Cass still haunted her, and her personality had blossomed to fill that space and beyond. Tara was, honestly, thrilled for her, even emotional at the sight of it. And, speaking of terrible confessions, jealous. Not that Miriam was marrying someone else or had fallen in love, but that Miriam had found herself.

Eventually, Holly stuck her head out onto the porch. “There you three are! Hannah says we all have to sleep, because there are so many more wedding activities tomorrow.”

Miriam groaned. “I should have eloped! Hannah is using my wedding to make up for the fact that she had zero wedding hoopla, either time she and Blue got married.”

“I assumed she was using the fact that you have millions of social media followers to market Carrigan’s as a wedding venue,” Tara said.

Huffing, Miriam pushed up from the swing and crossed her arms. “I have, max, half a million followers. They’re just very… intense.”

Miriam’s followers, self-named the Bloomers, were intense, for sure. Tara had gotten a few hateful messages from them after the breakup, which she’d forwarded to Miriam, who she assumed had gone scorched earth on them because no one had bothered her at all in months. Except that every once in a while, someone would stop her at Emma’s for a selfie.

Miriam leaned down and took Tara’s hand to pull her up.

Holly made a gimme gimme gesture. “Come on, I have plans for you, and they don’t involve being out in the middle of the night in the freezing cold with your ex-girlfriend.”

Miriam flashed her a smile. “Go with the hot redhead who’s trying to seduce you.”

Cole squeezed her, extra hard, for just a moment, his head against her back, before he let her go.

Tara paused on her way inside.

“You made it possible, you know,” she told Miriam, gesturing to Cole. “For him to fall in love with Sawyer. You gave him the safety and solidity to face the scariest thing in his life, actually trusting in romantic love, because he knew he’d always have somewhere to land.”

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