Page 79 of The Run Home
Lydia paused to take a breath, during which I pondered if a pregnant woman killing her best friend with her bare hands would get a lesser prison sentence due to being out of her mind on pregnancy hormones.
“I know. Not easy to hear and it’s not easy for me to say, but when you’re wrong, I’m going to call you out on that shit. I would hope you’d do the same for me.”
I’d had enough of this conversation. I called to get a sympathetic ear, and all I was getting was a lecture and an amateur psychoanalysis.
“Well, I’m glad you told me how you really feel, Lydia. I gotta go.” And then I hung up, hearing her quick, “Wait!” but not caring. I really wished I’d called from that old rotary phone that was somewhere in the attic so I could hear and feel the violent bang when I hung up on her. Pressing “End” on my phone screen wasn’t that satisfying.
I stewed all day in my bad mood, talking out loud to myself and the baby, informing the inside of my house what a good move I’d made. How Boon wasn’t all in and never would be. How I’d be heartbroken worse if I’d stayed with him. I debated for several hours if there were degrees of heartbroken. Was heartbroken now better than heartbroken in a year? Or did they both suck?
I was about to concede that they both sucked when there was another knock on the door. I tried to peep out the window to see if it was Boon, but couldn’t see from that angle.
“Hello?” I called.
“Shae, honey?”
It was Gigi. Out of respect for the woman who’d been like a second mother to me growing up, and a good friend to my mom, I opened the door. Three whole inches.
“Hey,” I said quietly. Not very invitingly.
She smiled, but it looked forced. Her gaze traced over me, and I knew every detail would be relayed back to Boon the second she walked back over to her house.
“Hey.” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder, reading glasses pushing her gray hair off her pretty face. “Boon tells me you’re upset with him. I don’t want to stick my nose in it, but I need some details here. I need to know why I’m about to murder my own son for hurting you.”
A bubble of laughter escaped my mouth, but died quickly as my throat closed up. “Um, well. It’s mostly just me facing the inevitable.”
Gigi tilted her head. “And what’s that?”
I shrugged the one shoulder showing in the door crack. “That he’ll get tired of raising a crying baby and leave. It’s a lot of work.”
Gigi didn’t move a muscle, just studying me for a bit. “There’s a lot of things one could say about my youngest son, but being afraid of hard work is not one of them. Try again.”
“Excuse me?” I blinked, unsure what she was getting at.
“Boon pisses me off an average of three times a day. As his mama I understand his shortcomings and his strengths. I know him pretty well, you could say. Implying he’s afraid of the hard work it takes to raise a baby isn’t in character, and I think you know him just as well. So, you need to tell me therealreason you broke things off. Trust me, I’ll kick his ass for you, but you need to convince me. And while you’re at it, maybe you can convince yourself.”
She lifted an eyebrow, those eyes of hers pinning me in place. She wasn’t a woman to be messed with. She’d raised three headstrong boys and lived to tell the tale. Lydia’s words came back to me. The ones about what kind of mom I’d be to my ownson. Gigi was an example of a mom who didn’t take shit from anyone, and I was so far from being like her it was laughable.
I leaned my shoulder against the door and let the tears flood my eyes. “I love your son, Gigi, but he doesn’t have a track record for sticking around. I guess I just faced that reality last night when I overheard Cassie. He’s going to break my heart eventually, and I’d rather process that heartbreak before my son sees it. Okay?”
Gigi pushed the door open, firmly but gently, and pulled me into a tight hug. Immediate tears and blubbering followed. Me, not Gigi. I would have been ashamed of getting my snot on Gigi’s shirt, but she didn’t leave any space for that. She just patted my back and whispered in my ear, telling me how wonderful I was and how much she loved me. It was exactly what I needed, but she pulled back too soon, her hands on my shoulders and that tough-as-nails gleam in her eyes.
“I’m going to give you the night to cry this out. Then I’m coming over tomorrow and you and I are going to hash out every damn detail. Understand me? And then you’re going to talk to my son—not through a door.” She lifted an eyebrow, and I felt like a second grader getting sent to the principal’s office for cheating. “It’s okay to fall apart, Shae, but it’s not okay to stay there. Especially when this little one is counting on you.”
She gave me a wink and then she was gone.
I closed the door, flipped the lock, and stared into my empty house, tears still wet on my cheeks.
Why was I always friends with tough-love women? Why couldn’t I have one marshmallow friend who would tell me what I wanted to hear?
I was thinking that again two hours later when my entire HAGS friend group showed up without notice, pounding on my door and demanding entrance. They plied me with chips, brownies, and mocktails. Then all four of them began to speak oftopics I didn’t want to talk about, like the death of my parents, my innate fear of being alone, my inability to ask for help, and what a life without Boon would look like. And then they let me cry on their shoulders.
The thing about tough love was that as much as it hurt to hear, it always ended with love.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Boon
“What. The. Actual. Fuck?”If my fingers gripped my hair any harder, I was going to pull the strands out.
