Page 85 of Just For Her

She turned down the TV when she sat down at her kitchen table to eat. Tove had to not think about the meals she had shared with Kayla here, both in the morning and late in the evening.The meals that bookend going to bed.For a while, which had been Tove’s favorite part of the day, even when she went to sleep alone.

Now it opened her up to intrusive thoughts.

She didn’t have the heart to tell Nemo to get off the table or for Chance to stop begging for a scrap of morsel by her feet. What was the point? Someone in that house should be happy. If it couldn’t be Tove… why not the cats?

Tove had barely cut into her pot pie when someone knocked on her door.

She peered through the curtains before answering. She didn’t know who she expected at that time of night, but it certainly wasn’t Thomas… or his wife, who stood with one hand over her slightly protruding stomach.

“Heeeey.” Thomas stood between Tove and Polly, who glanced over his shoulder for a look at Tove’s state. “Guess who! It’s your favorite cousin. Oh, and his missus.”

“What’s up?” Tove asked before clearing the frog from her throat.

“Can we come in? Polly wants to talk to you.”

Polly huffed right behind her husband. “This was your idea!”

Tove unlatched the screen door and allowed them in. The cats scattered to the four winds. Polly immediately commented on the scent of the pot pie and told Thomas she wanted to pick one up on the way home. He replied that the number of calories in one pie went way above the doctor’s recommendation. His wife informed him that she didn’t give a shit.

“Oof.” Polly plopped in the middle of the couch, shoving two pillows behind her back. “Sorry for barging in on you like this, but Thomas told me everything that’s going on in your personal life, including the conversation you had with him the other day, and well…”

Tove glared at her cousin.

“What?” he asked, defensive. “Married couples talk about that shit, Tove.”

“Uh-huh. What has he been telling you?” she asked Polly.

“About your situation with Kayla.”

“There is no situation. We broke up right after the family reunion back in June.”“Sure, I gathered as much. Sounds like she’s still in town, though. Tommy says she bought the gift shop near your office.”

Tove’s head whipped toward Thomas. “How did you hear about that?”

“My mom had that stint as a Realtor, you know. A lot of her non-Fredriksson friends are still in the industry and get every scoop on who is buying what property or business around Bend. She found out this morning, and I overheard her talking to Nils when we stopped by the house for dinner. He confirmed that Kayla was still working at the brewery. I already knew, but I guess not enough of the family goes there to have seen her and report back. Anyway, Polly dug the whole story out of me. I may have suggested I knew why you guys broke up.”

“She was a sugar baby, right?” Polly asked.

Tove sank into her kitchen table chair and ignored her pie. “I didn’t know.”

“Bit rough to find out the hard way, but from one former sugar baby to someone caught in the crosshairs… you’re not playing a baby unless the other person knows. That’s the whole point. That’s the arrangement. The guy – or girl, in your case – knows what they’re getting into. If you never had that kind of arrangement with Kayla… well, quite frankly, she wasn’t being a baby. You weren’t her mama. You were her girlfriend.”

“Thank you for that astute breakdown.”

“Hey, she knows what she’s talking about,” Thomas cut in. “When Polly and I started dating, I knew what she was doing. I didn’t care. She was dumb enough to marry me, right?”

“Forgive me,” Tove said, “but I guess I have a higher standard for my girlfriends. She lied about being queer.”

“Maybe she thought she was lying at first, but I doubt she was toward the end.” Polly readjusted the pillows behind her. “That sort of thing would be super hard for me to fake. You’d have figured me out in a week.”

“So?” Tove scoffed. “I feel like the whole town is conspiring to make me take her back.”

“Do you love her?” Thomas asked.

Tove was caught off guard by that question. Enough so that her fork clattered against her plate, flecking gravy across her hand. “What does it matter?”

“I bet she loves you if you let her speak her piece,” Polly said. “She bought you a freakin’ store with money she could have easily run off with. God knows that’s what I would have done if I were in her shoes, and I’m the one who told her to lock you down if ‘forever’ was what she had in mind. Sounds like it was.”

Thomas nodded as if he knewanything.“If you love her back, figure your shit out. I’m tired of seeing you old and single. You’re bumming me out, Tove.”

---