Page 61 of It's Always Sonny

I don’t answer. I can’t answer. An image pops into my head, a nightmarish vision of them all looking at each other, judging me, and it’s so powerful that my head flies up.

My friends are all looking at me. Not each other. No silent disgust like the looks that would pass between my parents. They’re concerned.

They love me.

“I feel so stupid,” I whisper.

“You shouldn’t.” Ash says.

“I can’t stop myself. How do I just not feel something I feel?”

“Feel it all you want. We all feel lots of things that aren’t true,” Lou says. “I feel like cinnamon rolls are the answer to all of life’s problems until I have a stomachache. But you gotta acknowledge the lie at the same time.”

I smile and rest my head on my forearm. We’re packed in so close, I should be claustrophobic, but I’m not. I feel like I’m wrapped in a blanket on a cold day.

“Sonny’s family adores you,” Ash says. “I’ve watched them with you. They’re all clamoring to get you on their team.”

“Yeah, because I’m good at everything.”

Sonny’s shoulder shakes in what I assume is a laugh.

My lungs are exhausted from all my crying, and I can’t help but feel mortified that my friends saw me like this.

But they’re here.

They cared enough to be here at all. I didn’t scare them away or disgust them when they saw me at my worst. They haven’t run just because I’m snotty and sobbing.

Not everyone is like my parents. Not everyone threatens to cut you off for not being perfect.

My friends are here. With me. Like Anthony holding Felix, putting up with him, loving him for his wildness, not in spite of it, they’re here.

More importantly, Sonny is here.

Why is he here?

“I hate crying in front of people,” I say.

“And we hate crying alone,” Ash says.

“Speak for yourself,” Jane says. “I love crying alone. For months on end. When all my friends have abandoned me to rebrand a farm all by myself.”

“You will never let that go, will you?” I say with a wet chuckle. “We came eventually!”

“And if we’d been here,” Lou says, “would you and Tripp really have had the chance to fall in love?”

“Well, we are meddlers,” Millie says. “We could have made it happen.”

“No, you’re a meddler,” Jane says.

Millie gasps. She loves overdramatic gasping. “Need I remind you of how I started nannying for Duke in the first place?”

“Or how you didn’t tell me the ex I’ve never gotten over would be running my family’s reunion?” Sonny asks, wearing his feelings as comfortably as a pair of well-worn shoes.

The ex I’ve never gotten over.

What?

Then what has today been about?

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