Page 81 of Falling for You Again

“I can’t drink. I have to drive.” I followed Emmett and Vincent’s delivery truck here in the shop’s old U-Haul truck.

“Not for you, for me.” She turns back to me. “But I insist you do not let me drink alone. You’ll stay here as long as you need to. Come, come.” She takes my hand and pulls me over to the sofa. “Sit.”

I look at the cushions’ pristine oatmeal weave. “I can’t.” My coveralls are dirty and stained.

“You can. I have two dogs,” she says, reading my hesitation. At the mention of her dogs, she heads for the patio door. “Sofas are meant to be sat on. Now, please tell me everything.” She lets in the dogs who run circles around the new table, sniffing madly, their toenails clicking wildly. After the table passes inspection, Sophia and Loren rush over to me and happily greet me with friendly sniffs and licks, which will only make Blueberry hiss and spit at me when I get home. But I relish the affection they lavish on me. They leap onto the couch and curl up beside me while Isadora pours us each two fingers of Macallan. She gives me a cut-crystal glass, clicks hers to mine, and settles on the couch beside me, opposite her dogs. Sophia, or maybe it’s Loren, notices. She wiggles her way onto Isadora’s lap. Isadora pets the dog’s smooth head and sips her whiskey. She circles her hand at me. “Talk,cara. Let it all out.”

And I do. I tell her everything that’s happened since she ordered her table and more, from being a runaway bride to my first marriage to Aaron, from Uncle Bear arranging the shop’s acquisition without involving me to my family ghosting me, leaving me to shut down the shop on my own in retribution for me marrying Aaron to manipulate the Savant House into retracting their acquisition offer. I explain that starting next week, I’ll work with Emi, Shae, and Tam at Stone & Bloom because now that I remember I no longer have a shop, I don’t have the desire to craft anything more creative than precut cabinet boxes.

When I finish, Isadora, who didn’t interrupt once as I poured my heart out, purses her lips. Then her head tilts back and she cackles. And cackles and cackles until both her dogs nervously glance from her to me as I shift uncomfortably on the couch. She claps her hands loudly,her applause slowly easing with her laughter until she sighs heavily and grins.

“What’s so funny?” I ask, feeling like I should be offended but I don’t have the energy in me.

“I’ve been married four times,cara, one of them to a gorgeous man more than twice my age who descended from Italian royalty, whom I met while bathing topless in Monaco when I was eighteen, and none of my marriages—not a single one—tops your story. You make all mine seem so dull.”

“And that’s funny?”

“It’s delightful. Men are capricious creatures, and some of us women are better off on our own. It took me four husbands to realize I loved myself better than they ever could, and that I am a better person on my own than with any one of them. You also don’t need to be married to be committed to each other, so don’t believe that since you’re now twice divorced, it proves marriage isn’t for someone like you, as your uncle not so eloquently put it. Or that you aren’t marriage material, as your ex-fiancé believes. Good thing you didn’t end up with him. Any man who says that to a woman doesn’t deserve that woman. Nothing your uncle has told you proves that you can’t be in a committed relationship, that you can’t love and have your work, and even work together. Sometimes I think the kids these days who forgo marriage and live together as partners have it right. The whole act of legally binding yourself to another person complicates relationships, and life is already complicated enough. But please,cara, for the love of God, tell me why you left Aaron when you are so obviously in love with him.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Questa è una stronzata. Excuses, excuses. This isn’t a status update on social media. This is your life.”

I sigh and stare down at the whiskey in the cut-crystal glass cupped in my hands. Maybe it’s because Isadora is more of a stranger than a friend, making it somewhat easier to talk with her without the fear of being judged, that I finally share out loud what’s really bothering me.What I’ve been mulling over since Emi first mentioned it. “I don’t want to feel unimportant to him,” I admit.

“Because he has a baby on the way?”

“Aaron needs to focus on his new family. I’ll only be a distraction. We were never meant to be long term anyway. It was just supposed to be a marriage of convenience. I was the one who said no sex.”

Isadora leans forward. “How well did that one work out for you?”

I roll my eyes and she laughs.

“But he loves you and he said he wanted your marriage of convenience to be something more,” she argues. “He even told you he doesn’t want to marry that Fallon woman.”

“You sound like Emi.”

“Emi is smart.”

“And I’m not?” I ask with a mirthful smirk, mildly affronted.

“Of course you are. But sometimes when you’re in love, it’s hard to see clearly. It’s also hard not to be afraid of losing that love once you have it. That’s perfectly normal. But let’s get back to this fear of feeling unimportant. Where is this coming from?”

“I’m sure it stems from my own relationship with my parents.” I tell her about my childhood, and despite the drugs and alcohol, how I’d been the center of my parents’ world. Then I share how things changed upon their return, my anger toward them and their disinterest in me, and the gaping chasm that’s now between us.

“Be honest,” Isadora says when I finish. “If you had been the center of your parents’ world, the drugs and alcohol wouldn’t have been in the picture. They wouldn’t be a part of those idyllic childhood memories you’ve latched on to.”

“The drugs and alcohol aren’t in those memories. It was only us digging up clams on the beach, playing princess in the park, and reading books among the stacks in the library. They weren’t intoxicated when we chased fireflies. They were sober. They were themselves.”

“Are you sure? Is it possible your mind chose to ignore it? Is it possible your memories are nothing more than fantasies?”

My frown deepens as I sink further into my head, my memories splintering as cracks begin to form. And then I see it, the truth hiding under the sparkling happiness and glittering love. Mom slipping a pill onto her tongue in the library when she didn’t think I was looking. Dad giving me his back to drain a flask at the park. The two of them sharing a joint at the beach, passing the smoldering flint above my head. And I sink further into my sadness. I was never important enough to them to care about what they were truly doing to me, the risks they were taking with me around. No wonder Uncle Bear took custody of me.

“I want to share something with you, but I don’t think you’ll want to hear it,” she says gently. “You’ll think I’m overstepping.”

“No, say it. I want to hear it.” As much as the truth hurts, I admire Isadora for actually caring. Her interest in me is more than my parents have shown me.

“All right. I think your desire to be close with your family is rooted in an emotional need for connection and acceptance.”

---