Page 73 of Snow in Texas

“No,” Ava said at once. “He’s as crappy a liar as Mercy, trust me. If he acts like he’s accepted it, then he has.”

“That’s something, at least.”

“Jen?”

“Uh-huh?”

“It’s going to be okay, you know.”

She released an uncertain laugh; just needed the tension-release of the effort. “You sound awfully sure about that.”

“I am. And I think you are too, you just aren’t used to feeling that way,” Ava said with a smile in her voice.

~*~

Ava

Promising to hold tight to the secret, wishing her long-distance friend the best of luck, Ava disconnected and sat on her bed a moment, staring at her phone in her hand. Her nails were unpolished, chipped and in need of filing. She was wearing a baggy old sweatshirt with the sleeves pulled up, and even though she’d done her hair that morning, Cal had tugged on it and it doubtless was a mess of snarls by now. She was cross-legged in the center of the king bed she shared with her husband, the rise and fall of his voice an indistinct murmuring down the hall, punctuated by Remy’s excited squeals.

Too late, she thought about what she should have told Jenny.

“Shit,” she muttered, and jumped to her feet, fetched her laptop off her dresser.

In flurry of tapping keys, she relayed the sort of story best committed to paper, rather than voiced aloud, and fired it off to Jenny as an email.

Satisfied, she slipped back down the hall to the living room.

Mercy lay on his back, hair a black silk fan around his head on the rug, Remy held up above him in both large, strong hands. Remy loved it, laughing in the high, breathless voice of a very young child who believes his daddy can make him fly.

Mercy’s head turned toward her as she entered. “What was that about?”

“Girl stuff,” she said mysteriously, resuming her spot in the chair beside Cal’s playpen.

“With Candyman’s sister?” He’d heard her answer the call. “That’s some long-distance girl stuff.”

“It is,” she agreed.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” he asked with a knowing grin.

She reached with one socked toe and ran it across a stray lock of his hair, watching it shimmer in the sunlight. “You’re a very smart man, did you know that?”

He laughed.

~*~

Jenny

She was climbing out of the shower when her phone pinged with an email alert. Bundled up in her robe, she sat down on the edge of the bed to read it.

It was from Ava.

Jen,

There was something I forgot to tell you. Something important that I wanted you to know, and that’s probably better read than listened to.

I’m sure you know about my foray into the real world, my time off at college. Up until that point, I’d never known what it was like not to love Felix. I guess I was – and am still – strange. Other girls my age were just starting to smell love on the air, and I’d been breathing it for so long already… I tried to tell myself, during that time, after he’d hurt me so badly, that I didn’t love him. And that I would be better off trying to anchor myself to something normal and acceptable.

I was wrong for so many reasons, obviously. But mostly I was wrong because I was afraid. I was trying to be normal because I was afraid that staying me was going to get me irrevocably hurt. Love wasn’t supposed to be so big and scary. It wasn’t supposed to break me in half.

---