Page 52 of All I Ask
“I’m still sorry.”
“I am too.” For everything.
“Do you think we can ever be friends again?”
We’ve lost too much, hurt each other too deeply to ever be more than…this.
Indifferent old friends who won’t be able to get through the mucky past, which is filled with quicksand. I can’t afford to step in it and get sucked under.
Chastity needs me to be strong. I can’t become this weak woman who is heartbroken over him.
“I hope so. I hope we can be a different kind of friends. Ones who are older, wiser, and honest. Do you think that’s possible? Considering our history?” I ask.
Derek shifts to the side. “History doesn’t always have to define the future.”
I ponder that for second because I don’t think that’s true. “It usually does.”
“Sure, it has before, but we’re the ones who get to decide if that’s the case for us.”
I smile softly, wishing if I believe it hard enough, it could be true. But wanting something doesn’t make it a reality.
Sometimes, shit happens and you have to make the best of it.
“What if something else has already made that choice for us?” I counter.
Derek shrugs. “Then I guess we’ll have to figure it out.”
“As friends.”
“Good friends,” he tacks on.
“Friends who will coexist in this ridiculous town and encourage our daughters to find a way to get along.”
His eyes turn back to the painting. “I hope we’reable to do more than coexist. I guess time will tell.”
Yeah, I guess it will.
Chapter Eighteen
Teagan
Present
“I don’t know how you can talk to my mom,” Chastity says to Nina as we put away my mother’s newest finds.
“Why?”
“Because she was mean, like Everly.” The name comes out as a sneer.
It’s been a week since Chastity’s brought up Everly and I’d hoped it meant Everly had moved on, but apparently not.
“Have you tried to talk to her?” I ask.
“You can’t talk or look the Devil in the eye, Mother. You’ll go straight to hell.”
Nina snorts. “It’s so hard for me to imagine that girl being anything but nice. Derek was such a good guy—still is, so I’m surprised his offspring isn’t.”
“Dr. Hartz is the best. He’s so nice and lets me do way more than the other Dr. Hartz.”
