Page 18 of Pierced Pages
“Then you can visit Rylee’s.”
“Fine,” Lila said, followed by a bit more scrolling. “Then I want those for my birthday.”
Danielle walked over to the bar, which wasn’t a far walk. Their apartment was small, but it was enough for just the two of them.
Lila was pointing at an ad featuring silver hoop earrings with an intricate pattern etched into them. Without looking it up, Danielle knew they were way out of her budget, even for a birthday gift.
“Lila, I don’t know…”
“Not those,” she said. “But like those.”
That she could maybe do.
“We’ll see,” Danielle said. “They are pretty.”
“Jamie has some like that. I saw them today when we were doing the partner thing.”
Danielle barely heard her daughter. She was lost in the memory of a previous conversation about earrings.
She’d barely thought about Morgan at all this week. Last week had been another story. But now she was in Danielle’s head again. Whispering at the edges of her thoughts.
“Hey, Lila. Question.”
Lila stopped scrolling and tilted her head at her mom. “What?”
“What do you think about me getting a second set of earrings?”
Lila’s face scrunched as she processed the question. “Okay?”
“I mean, would it look silly on me? Like, am I too old or something?”
“No.” Lila giggled. “It would look pretty.”
Danielle smiled at her daughter. She could be prickly at times, but there was still a sweetness to her that Danielle hoped never grew jaded.
Lila crumpled her bag and hopped off the stool. She tossed the bag in the trash can and grabbed her phone. “Going watch videos with Rylee.”
“Half an hour,” Danielle said to Lila’s back as she walked down the hall. “I want you at the table in half an hour for homework.”
Lila’s bedroom door closed behind her, leaving Danielle alone and in silence in the kitchen.
The skillet was heated now, so she threw in the ground meat and began breaking it up while it browned. Every once in a while, she stole a glance at her phone lying on the counter a few feet away.
This was silly.
She wanted the thing. Lila told her the thing wasn’t a big deal. And Morgan had told her she’d be happy to help her get the thing.
So what was holding her back?
She refocused her attention on the meat, since she knew exactly what was holding her back. Seeing Morgan again would be a bad idea. She was just beginning to get her out of her head after one encounter. What would happen after a second? Especially a second encounter in a physically closer situation?
No. That would only complicate things that didn’t need complication. Because the truth was still that nothing could come of this. Even if Morgan had been interested—and she’d been clear that she wasn’t—Danielle didn’t have room in her life for a relationship. She had teaching and Lila’s soccer practices and spaghetti-making and all the other things on her spinning plate. That hadn’t changed in a week and a half.
How had a set of earrings become so confusing?
Easy. Because it was never about the earrings.
When she was younger, Danielle’s life had been filled with chaos and adventure. Mostly the little things. Like never taking the same route to school, never ordering the same thing from any fast food menu, or never hanging out in the same place most nights a week. A lot of that just came with the territory of being a college student. And even then, she craved more structure and normalcy even through the endless nights of parties and cramming for exams.
