Page 11 of It's Always Been You
“Don’t let the bastard win,” I mutter, yanking the cabinet back open and doing every damn step of my routine, evenslathering on the painfully expensive facial oil I rarely use. I may still be teetering on the line between sadness and despair and thirty seconds away from a total mental breakdown, but I’ll be damned if my skin looks like it.
Especially because Gabe looked so fucking good. The years have been kind to that man. It’s not like I didn’t know what he looked like. You can barely read the news these days without being treated to a picture of him going full-tech CEO. But the pictures don’t catch the way his eyes sparkled when they met mine. Or the longing in his gaze. Or the tiny dimple in his cheek that seems only to appear when he smiles at me.
It’s been a decade since I’ve seen that dimple. None of the pictures of him over the years captured it. Not that I looked. That definitely doesn’t seem like something I would do.
Fine. It’s absolutely something I would do. And I did it. A lot. I was pining, okay?
Dressed in my favorite rainbow flannel pants and old University of Pittsburgh Law School hoodie, I shove my feet into the sparkly Crocs I use as slippers and walk downstairs. I head to the kitchen to raid my emergency candy stash but stop short in the living room, where my eyes immediately fill with tears again. Because Hallie, Julie, and Molly are sprawled on my massive sectional, pizza boxes, a huge takeout container of french fries, and a pitcher of what looks like margaritas on the coffee table.
When they see me, all three of them get up immediately. No one says a word; they just wrap their arms around me and let me cry all over them again. This is probably more than I deserve, considering they pretty much just found out there’s a huge part of my life I’ve never shared with them. I’m mostly an open book, but not about Gabe or anything connected to him. Never that. I’ve slipped a handful of times over the years. Alluded to it in small ways. But the way I react when they push me on it has always had them steering clear.
Those days are over.
“Fuck,” I say, unwinding myself from my friends and wiping under my eyes. “I just did a whole fucking skincare routine with the two-hundred-dollar oil. That was an expensive cry. How many tears does the human body even have? I figured I used them all up in the shower.”
“The limit does not exist,” Hallie deadpans.
The laugh is exactly what I need.
Emma puts her arm around me and guides me to the couch. Hallie covers me with my favorite blanket. Julie hands me a plate with a piece of pizza and a heap of fries on it and a margarita in a glass I don’t recognize. I honestly don’t know how anyone does life without girlfriends. I thought I wanted to be alone, but I was wrong. What I needed was to be taken care of a little, and I’m lucky enough to have the kind of friends who know me well enough to know that.
“From your house?” I ask Emma, gesturing with the glass.
“Yeah, you bet. Jeremy made the margaritas. He insisted that when you’re feeling your worst, you need a well-made margarita, and you need it in the right glass. Apparently, we’ve been making them wrong and drinking them out of the wrong glasses this whole time.”
I laugh a little. “Who knew?
“It’s okay that we’re here, right?” Hallie asks gently. “Emma said it would be, and well, Emma knows everything.”
“I’m so glad everyone in my life knows and appreciates that now,” Emma says with a grin.
“Well, your track record is pretty solid.” Julie grabs her own pizza and settles back on the couch. She ticks the reasons off on her fingers. “Knowing that something was going on with Hallie and Ben. Being able to tell even over the phone that I was okay with Asher keeping all our road trip stops a secret. Helping turn Jeremy from a guy who didn’t trust any of us to stick around intothe man next door currently baking brownies with an eight year old and belting out Taylor Swift. I’d say you’ve earned your title.”
Emma smirks at us. “I’m about to earn it again.”
She turns to me, laying a hand on mine. “I know you said you didn’t want to talk about it, but I think you probably do. If I’m wrong, then we can just sit here and eat this pizza and more french fries than is probably reasonable, get a little drunk on tequila, and we’ll all go home. But I’m not wrong, am I?”
“Why are we eating pizza anyway?” I ask. “Weren’t there leftover tacos from the party?”
Julie shakes her head, giving me a pitying look. “You can’t reheat tacos without them getting all gross, and cold tacos are drunk food. Or maybe, occasionally, hangover food. You needed comfort food tonight, and your comfort food only comes in one variety.”
Hallie reaches over and hands me a couple of small containers. “We brought dips too. We know how you feel about the french fry dip variety.”
I take a long, slow breath, trying to get my emotions under control. “I really don’t deserve you guys,” I say, my voice wavering more than I would like it to.
“Don’t be insane,” Hallie says. “This is what we do. I know there’s a part of your life that you’ve always kept walled off from us, and it has to do with Gabe. We’ve always respected that, and we respect it now. It’s your life, and no one is entitled to your secrets or your feelings. We just want you to know that we’re here for you. If you want to tell us to get out, we’ll go, and we’ll leave the fries, or we can stay and talk about nothing. Whatever you need, we’re here.”
“So.” Emma’s voice is all business. “Am I wrong?”
I drop my head back, staring up at the ceiling, preparing myself to spill my guts to my friends. Then I look each of them in the eye, and all I see is love and support.
“No. You’re not wrong.”
“Good.” Julie nods her head and lines up dip containers on the coffee table like a beer flight. “If my instincts are right, you want to capital T Talk. So, you can start by telling us why the famous billionaire founder of one of the biggest tech companies in the world was standing in our office door today looking at you like a lost puppy dog and also like he wanted to devour you whole.”
I snicker at the accuracy of Julie’s assessment of the way Gabe was looking at me. It’s the comic relief I need to fully settle into the couch. This conversation is happening. I might as well have a reasonable amount of fun with it. And since the idea of seeing him again fills me with an unholy amount of dread, it will be good to have my friends on my side when I do.
“I mean, she’s not wrong, Mol,” Emma says. “Being able to accurately portray both of those emotions at once is a gift.”
