Page 4 of Slow Burn
I loved Boston, the age, the culture, the thick accents and rowdy crowds that flooded Southie. It felt like a lifetime ago that Boston felt like my endgame, though. Growing up, it had been nothing else. Graduate with a degree, join Bergman & Billings and build Boston around me as I live my dream. Maybe my dream, and how I wanted to build it—or really where I wanted to build it—had just changed.
“Life is good.” I say it softly and, it’s a tiny part of me but it’s there, hurts when she doesn’t question the lie in my voice. Again, her hand passes over her belly and I shove down a flash of pain.
I reach out too, more to ease that pain and ground myself than anything else. Lola smiles, beams really, as both our hands smooth over her softly rounded belly. It seems to soothe us both. Six months came and went just a few days ago.
More than halfway there, now. I panic at the idea of still being here when her daughter comes. I don’t know if I can do it, no matter how much I love Lola. No matter how much I already love that little baby. It feels too much like déjà vu, the idea of going through that again, even if second hand this time.
Lola catches my eye. Those vibrant violet eyes of hers go so soft, I feel the entire room soften around us. Her left hand, with the cute tattoo on her ring finger, presses over mine. Lola leans forward as best her swollen belly allows. Touching her forehead to mine, Lola breaks me down a little as she whispers her next words.
“Let it go, Brynn. Let the choice you made then go, now. It was the right one for you. The right one for her. Let go of the lies I bought just because you needed to sell them. You don’t need them to stay, lady friend. Just stay. Doesn’t matter why you don’t want to go back. Doesn’t change the truth; you canjust stay.” I notice the polka dots on her dress are not polka dots at all the moment I realize what they are.
Head bent, both hands at her stomach, I am crying. I truly break then. I don’t know how it happens but we end up on the floor, backs against the brick walls, Lola cradling me like her child. I don’t even remember the last time someone hugged me. Years, maybe? I rope my arms around her as I, for a moment, do as she suggested. I let it go.
No questions are asked. No deep soul-baring talk is had. Instead, I cry for a while because it feels good to let it out. We sit like that until the sun begins to dip behind the clouds and pink and orange lights up the loft of the old fire station. I know I need to give her my reasons, and I will. Just not today.
Because before long, her belly is moving noticeably. Someone is hungry and it’s not just Lola. I climb to a crouch and we share a look. I know the questions will come and I will have to provide answers. Right now, I just need to provide sustenance, and that is easy enough to do. I get Lola to her feet and we’re on the L before either of us speak again.
“Bang Chop. I am craving dumplings like nobody’s business, sister. Cooper chicks can deal, the baby gets what the baby wants.” Lola insists, even though we both know Gigi and Charli will happily join us anywhere she requests.
There’s little those girls won’t do for Lola, and she doesn’t need the excuse of being pregnant. It’s a fact that endeared me to the Cooper girls immediately. My liking them had to do with them, though, really. Charli was as sweet as she was smart and Gigi’s witty sarcasm was as refreshing as her fierce loyalty to her people.
At first, I had been admittedly jealous that my best friend was one of her people. Until without even trying, I had become one of her people, too. That’s just how the Coopers were, it seemed. Those girls and their husbands, Cage and Finn, welcomed you in and loved you hard and without end. I was still learning how to accept that.
The love I knew, it came in responsive acts. Like payments. I was well behaved at an important social gathering? My parents gifted me a pony. I aced a test? Mother bought me a new wardrobe. I made the dean’s list at Preston Prep? Father bought me a car.
“I wish, just once, Mother would just have lunch with me. Ask me what boys I like. What I like to do with my friends. Maybe what I want to do for college.”Lola and I used to commiserate about our parents; mine loved me but had no idea how to show it. Hers didn't know what love was, but sure knew how to make it look like they did.
These people, the Coopers and the Byrnes, they love so big and so bright, you can't mistake it. You can't miss it. Charli and Gigi are loud and bold with it, constantly stating how special you are to them. That frequency, that loud boldness could seem disingenuous. It doesn't, simply because it’s absolutely genuine.
When I look up from my nearly empty plate, three pairs of eyes watch me. I know they know something; they sense the flushed skin, the darting glance, the heated words mean something. Something more than I am telling. Because just like I know the little, unimportant stuff about them now, they know the same about me.
Lola knows I get flushed when I'm nervous. Charli and Gigi have seen my freckles pop out the few times they all got me tipsy. Or that I love spicy food, so I order it for Gigi just so I can finish it.
They all know that I love them, even though I can't say it. But they don't know what I think about a sexy firefighter who held me under the stars then came home to his wife. But, they don't ask because I'm not ready to answer.
Mostly because I don't have the answers; not really. I'm making this up as I go. For now, I will accept any excuse Lola offers that allows me to stay here in Chicago. I can pretend for a little while longer that Boston doesn't matter. I can let myself be with Lola and the Cooper girls and their hot firefighter husbands.
I can even fool myself, for at least a little while longer, that one of those firefighters doesn't make me five-alarm hot. I tell myself that I can do it, all of it, no matter how impossible I know it really is.
I am so good at lying to myself, I almost have myself believing that when the time comes to deal with Boston, I can do it alone.
