Page 92 of Happy After All

“I don’t know, Amelia. Sometimes I feel like I still don’t really know you.” She shakes her head, and her earrings jingle. “But you’re usually right.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve tried hard to be a good friend. Though I’ve been trying to do it while I ... I got hurt badly before I moved here. I was still kind of a mess. This place, you, have been so important to me.” I feel tears pushing against the backs of my eyes. Pressure building. “You’ve been the friend that I needed. I’m sorry if I haven’t always given back as much as I’ve gotten.”

“Amelia, you share everything you have. Except your own feelings. You’ve given me your time, your advice. You’ve been wonderful to Emma.”

I think, not for the first time, that it’s probably helpful that Emma wasn’t a baby when I moved here.

I’m uncomfortable with babies.

“I’m going to try,” I say. “I’m going to try to be more normal. And not ... I just wanted to leave everything behind.”

“I get that too,” she says. “That’s actually one of the hardest things about Ben. He saw the person I was with Emma’s dad. I’m so careful. I always have been. I wasn’t with him, and I’m embarrassed. I think I don’t ... I don’t fully understand why he should care about that woman. That woman who let things get so bad with her ex. Who didn’t like herself enough to walk away when it was so obvious she needed to.”

“Stop,” I say. “Okay. I think we both need to stop blaming ourselves for bullshit that stupid men put us through.”

Nathan makes me feel beautiful again. His hands on my body ... It gives me an appreciation for myself that has been gone for a very long time.

“You know that Christopher cheated on me. I’ve been carrying around this feeling that I wasn’t enough. I’m just done with it. He doesn’t get to decide how I feel about myself. He doesn’t get to keep being in my life when he is so resolutely out of it. It is so hard when you love somebody in good faith and they twist it because they’ll never hurt the same way you do.”

She nods. “He never loved anybody but himself.”

“So he doesn’t get to decide how much you’re loved now. If that’s with Ben, then great. If it’s just you and Emma, then great. If we turn into old spinsters in this motel, then great. But he doesn’t get to decide what you accept. He doesn’t get to decide your worth. Neither does ... Neither does Chris.”

“So, does that mean you’re thinking of trying for something more with Nathan?”

I shake my head. “I’m not the deciding factor there. There’s a lot going on with that one.”

“Yeah. Well. He definitely seems like a lot.”

She pushes away from the counter. “I have a grocery order coming that I need to grab. Thank you. For taking the time for my nonsense in the middle of yours.”

“There’s room for both of us to have nonsense at the same time,” I say.

I really believe that. Suddenly, my life feels so much more connected. So much more integrated.

I brought my pain with me, and it hasn’t destroyed me.

I’ve given Elise a new piece of myself, and I’m shocked to find I don’t feel reduced. Instead, I feel more whole.

I feel happier.

For the first time since everything started to crumble at that meeting, I feel like things might be okay.

Chapter Twenty-One

Spice—what online communities call sex to get around censors.

I’m planning nightly dive-in movie spectaculars with a different Christmas film every night. I was excited about this before Nathan and I started our fling. Mostly because I don’t really want to cut into my time with him. But I can’t swerve on my plans. I promised everyone this would happen, and we chose the movies for it last year.

I don’t expect that Nathan will come out for it, even though our entire relationship has changed in the last week and a half.

His relationship with the rest of the world hasn’t.

It’s complicated because at some point he’s going to step out as Jacob Coulter, but he isn’t being Jacob now. It feels right that this morning Sylvia called to say the newly announced event has sold out already.

Each and every chair sold.

All that heaviness, and success right in the middle of it.

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