Page 97 of Lovesick
“Tune into the local news once in a while, Grace,” Stella said in exasperation. “She drove her car off a cliff, and he saved her as she was falling.”
“Then her home burned to cinders,” Leslie added.
“But those were two separate incidents,” Stella clarified.
“It’s like a romance novel,” Grace muttered.
With a sigh, I related the events in full. Such drama-loving women were the perfect audience. They gasped, snorted, and sighed in all the right places. Until I told the whole story, I didn’t realize how badly I’d needed to say it all. When I finished, the lasagna sat cold on our plates. All of them stared at me owlishly, blinking with stunned expressions.
“Well,” Stella murmured. “That isquitethe couple of weeks you’ve had.”
“I just can’t turn into Mama,” I mumbled, then looked past them at the cold, dark remains of the Frolicking Moose outside. “She had it all wrong.”
Grace slammed a hand on the table. “Disagree.”
The rattling silverware made me jump. Startled, I looked at her in surprise. “What?”
“Youhave it all wrong.”
“How? I’m trying to save him and myself.”
“You’re trying to be safe,” Grace countered as she picked her knitting needles back up and softly clicked them together. “You’re trying to avoid the hard stuff. The lows are the things that make the highs so worth it, Lizbeth. You’re afraid of something else, and you’re blaming it on your mama.”
Unable to comprehend that, I frowned. What else could be more frightening than being like Mama?
“Romance books are fun, but the stakes are a lot lower when it’s someone else’s life.” Stella fiddled with a pearl necklace, her brow puckering. “I don’t blame some of your disillusionment, as sad as it is.”
“The books only cover a short period of time, too,” Leslie pointed out gently. Her gaze slammed right into mine. “They don’t show the long-term, difficult times. The boring times. The routine times. Your mama had it wrong in that she chased the giddiness of young love. But she missed the stability of sharing a life. There’s something very romantic in that.”
“You put too much on romance, Lizzy,” Stella said as she covered my hand with hers. “You always have, ever since you started this club at sixteen. The way romance happens in books isn’t always the way it happens in real life.”
“I’m learning that,” I whispered.
“Sounds like your mama never gave love a chance,” Grace said. “She chased romance. Maybe she was afraid of something too.”
I bit my thumbnail. What could have scared Mama? Aside from Jim in his drunken rages, or a life on the streets like she’d had after divorcing Bethany’s father.
“It’s the dark side of love,” Grace said. “There’s pain and loss. Sometimes there’s a slow dwindling of the thing that once meant so much. When there’s more to lose, it’s scary. But without the ups and downs? You’re not the same.”
“Yes, but it’s the downs that scare me,” I said. “It’s the downs when Mama was at her worst. The downs when Dad...”
My voice trailed off, thick in my throat.When Dad was out of control and we took the blame.Memories hovered just this side of consciousness now, and I had a feelingtheywere what I feared the most.
Stella squeezed my cold hand with a loving smile. “You aren’t your mama, Lizbeth. And JJ isn’t your dad.”
Tears filled my eyes. “I know.”
“But do you really?” she asked.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked in a harsh rasp. All of them stared at me. “I broke it off with JJ but only feel pain. I can’t think about anything else. I’m not sure I did the right thing. Why didn’t you tell me that it hurt this much? That it was different than in the books?”
“Why ruin it for you early?” Stella murmured. “You were bound to find out one day.”
“Such optimism,” Grace said. “You have always been a reminder of what we had, and what we could have again, if we were brave enough to try.”
“Well,” I whispered, hands in my lap, “now I know. And it’s absolutely devastating.”
Leslie leaned over and wrapped a warm arm around me. “You’re right. It is. But it’s not the end, even if it feels like it.”
