by Katie Cross
Stella was a sixty-something single woman who ran the grocery store in Pineville. She dyed her hair black every six weeks, plucked her eyebrows every Sunday, and always had a sparkling white smile for anyone. She was also as wide as she was tall and not-so-secretly envied my leaner figure.
“Leave her alone.” Leslie scowled as she slipped into the booth across from me. “She’s perfect the way she is.” She sent me a reassuring wink, and I smiled. I’d missed her daily stop-ins at the coffee shop. In our book club, Leslie was the stable center to some pretty tumultuous book discussions. Today, she wore a bright-pink winter hat topped with a round ball. Grace, a retiree in her late seventies, had knitted it for her last month.
“Fresh lasagna from Stephanie on the menu tonight, ladies!” said Grace as she slid down the booth across from me, a bag full of knitting needles and yarn on one arm. “I called and talked to the cook myself. You know the secret is extra ricotta?” She sent me a wink.
Although Grace had a pillow of white hair on top of her head and spoke quietly while her knitting needles clacked in her arthritic hands, she had a saucy streak. All of her book recommendations ended up having naughty sex scenes. “Keeps a woman on her toes,” she always said with a delicious shudder.
While the three of them settled into the booth, I tried to keep up with all their questions. They were the perfect distraction in the midst of the chaos. Minutes later, Stephanie appeared with our lasagna. Four plates slid around the table, accompanied by silverware, the smell of basil and tomatoes, and piping hot squares of pasta I couldn’t wait to eat.
“Lasagna night is my favorite.” I leaned over the dish with a deep, tomatoey inhale. “You have my heart, Grace, for choosing it.”
Leslie doled the rest of the lasagna and fresh bread onto each plate. Slippery pasta and ricotta cheese piled high on my fork when I took my first bite. Perfection.
Could JJ do better? Probably. He did everything so well.
Leslie slid our book forward. This month had been romance month. We swapped genres every month, repeating the cycle every six months.
“His Hidden Secret.” She thumped the cover. “Not a bad one, if you ask me. But I think I need a break from Scottish lairds.”
“Not me,” Grace crooned. “I could read about those hunky men forever.”
“It was good,” Stella said. “But it wasn’t great. The narrative was too aligned around description, and I didn’t get enough back-and-forth between the characters. As a tour of Scotland, it was acceptable.”
“Picky woman!” Grace cried. “Did you even notice the kissing scenes?”
“It’s pretty unrealistic, as romance goes,” Leslie said. “Where are the squalling children and annoyed moments? If there’s not at least one scene with the wife almost slapping her husband, I’m out.”
I chuckled around a bite of marinara sauce while the three ladies argued it out. The book had been a bit wordy. Of course, maybe even occasionally boring. Somewhat repetitive. I’d predicted every romantic scene almost to the moment. Maybe I knew romance a little too well. It was hard to surprise me these days.
My phone buzzed against my thigh and caused a somersault in my stomach. Maybe it would be from JJ. I snuck a quick glance at my screen. A text from Bethany. I shoved it back into my pocket without opening it.
“Helloooo?” Stella crooned.
My head popped up. Three suspicious sets of eyes were locked on me. I ignored the buzz of another message.
“Sorry.”
Grace lifted a thin eyebrow. “And who is more important than Laird MacLean?”
“Just a message from Bethany.”
Leslie pointed a fork at me. “That aside, something is going on. You’re so quiet tonight. You had no opinion on the first-kiss scene in the forest? Come on. Spill it. What happened? We’re as much a gossip club as a book club.”
“She’s right,” Grace whispered to Stella, who nodded. “We do gossip a lot.”
I swallowed hard. There was no point in lying to them. They were experienced women and could always see right through me.
Plus, I needed the help.
“Um, yes. Something did happen. With JJ Bailey and me.”
“Now there’s a man I’d like to see in a romance novel,” Grace said with a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes.
Leslie leaned forward, lasagna dripping off her fork. “Does this have something to do with the accident?”
“Accident?” Grace cried. “What accident?”
“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 is quite the 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?”
“You have 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 feeling they were 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 a
sked.
“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.”
For several moments, quiet hung over the table. Thankfully, Grace turned the conversation back to a snowstorm moving in later that night, and then to overused tropes in romance books. My phone vibrated against my thigh, pulling me out of my inner spiral.
Numb, I answered it. Ellie’s voice rocked me back to reality.
“Why aren’t you answering your text messages?” she snapped. “Something is wrong with Shane. He’s in the hospital in Jackson City.”
My hair streamed behind me in bright, burning banners as I ran to the hospital elevator and jabbed the button three times. The hospital was a forty-five minute drive up the canyon, all the way into Jackson City. The drive had felt like a short eternity.
“Come on,” I muttered. “Level three.”
The speed of light wouldn’t have been fast enough as I waited for the stupid elevator to arrive. The moment it opened, I rushed inside and jammed a finger into the circular three. What felt like another eternity later, the doors chugged back open and I spilled onto the pediatric floor. Nurses and visitors whirled past me as I followed Ellie’s directions, found the right door, knocked gently, and slipped inside.
Maverick stood at the end of a crib in a quietly subdued room. Bethany sat in a rocking chair holding a bundle of blankets with a clear tube trailing out the bottom. Her eyes were bloodshot and cheeks tearstained. Behind them, Ellie and Devin lurked by the window. Tension filled the room.
“He’s okay,” Bethany said when she saw me. She sniffled. “Just some breathing trouble. They’re doing a few tests. He’s stable on oxygen right now.”
Relieved, I collapsed onto a chair. “He’s not going to die?”
“No.” Bethany shook her head firmly. “He’ll be fine.”
Maverick stiffened, his nostrils flaring. He leaned over, whispered something to Bethany, then strode out of the room. At the door, he looked at Devin, jerked his head to the hallway, and disappeared. Devin filed out, leaving the three of us and Shane behind. The moment they disappeared, Bethany melted back into the chair.
“Finally,” she muttered. “I thought he’d never leave.”
Ellie shrugged at me when I sent her a silent question. Bethany and Maverick rarely fought. Something was clearly wrong, however. When I looked back at Bethany, she leaned her weary head against a hand.
“Bethie, you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, just tired and emotional and postpartum. Maverick and I . . . I’m fine.”
“What’s going on with Shane?”
Bethany gave me a brief update. Shane had been a little congested over the weekend, and it had been getting worse. Wasn’t eating. Seemed limp and restless. Jada, Pineville’s family doctor, had sent Bethany to the ER just in case. His oxygen levels were so low when he arrived that they’d admitted him immediately.
“A virus, probably,” Bethany said. “He’s so little he needs extra help, that’s all. I think he’ll be okay. Now that he’s on oxygen, he’s nursed better. That alone has helped because I’m not engorged. Squirted him right in the eye on accident.”
She managed a pathetic attempt at a smile, but I felt only concern as I studied the two of them. They were both exhausted. The smacking, suckling sounds that issued from the blanket every now and then reassured me.
“Why were things so tense?” I asked.
Bethany’s jaw tightened. “Maverick blames me because I took Shane with me to the grocery store on Friday. He thought we should leave Shane home for the first three months of his life, but I can’t deal with that. I’m going crazy at home, being cooped up all winter long. It was just the grocery store.”
Ellie rolled her eyes. “Mav is being overprotective,” she said. “That’s all. He’s stressed about a house he’s working on. Renovations have been double his original estimate. Devin and Mav left to get some dinner, then Devin and I’ll head back to Pineville.”
The machines beeped overhead with colors and numbers I didn’t understand, but Bethany’s relative calm and the lack of hovering nurses helped me relax.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Bethany eyed me. “How was book club?”
“Fine,” I said too quickly.
Ellie folded her arms. Her gaze darted around the room uncomfortably. She’d always hated hospitals. Bethany studied me through slitted eyes, but had to readjust Shane, which bought me time to change the subject. Within minutes, a more companionable prattle had filled the room, banishing the tension.
When Maverick returned with bags of food, Ellie and Devin took some and headed out. Shane had nursed himself to sleep, so Bethany stood up and passed him to me. I gratefully accepted the warm, sleeping bundle as she stretched her arms out and readjusted her bra.
“Stay with Shane for a bit?” she asked. I nodded. Bethany motioned Maverick out into the hall with a firm nod and pursed lips. He sighed as she followed him out.
Shane let out a little mewl as I got comfortable in the chair, then smacked his lips and settled back to sleep. My heart stirred. Forget romantic love. Being an auntie was way better. I pressed a gentle kiss to his tiny forehead and stared at the oxygen tubing that led to his nose.
“Don’t ever do this again,” I whispered as I ran a finger around the shell of his ear. “Or we’ll have words later.”
My phone dinged with an email alert that I ignored. When ten minutes passed and Bethany and Maverick hadn’t returned, I dug my phone out of my pocket. The words Pinnable Employment on the preview screen made my stomach seize.
“Sweet baby pineapple,” I whispered, frantically putting my password into the phone. Within seconds, I speed-read through the words.
We regret to inform you that we have not chosen you as a candidate . . .
My phone clicked as I closed it. I set it gently on the side table near the rocking chair, then leaned back. Heat rushed into my eyes all at once. What now? What could possibly go wrong now?
This entire month had been nothing but obstacle after obstacle after obstacle. What next? Anything else you want to throw at me, universe? I almost yelled. A wordless, bubbling response surged through me. It felt like rage but tasted like bitterness, and I almost let it go. Instead, I pulled it into check. It simmered there beneath the surface.
Seconds later, Bethany stormed back into the room and collapsed against the wall.
“Bethie?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She sucked in a shuddering breath and a half sob. “I just need to cry for a minute.”
Carefully, I stood. Shane stirred as I put him into the crib, and then I turned to Bethany in concern. I held out my arms. “Can you cry with me?”
She peered at me through her fingers like a lost child, then reached for me. I pulled her into my arms and held her.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I had a baby,” she cried. Tears filled her eyes. “And these hormones are crazy. I feel like a psycho person that swings from one emotion to the next. I drink water all day long and it never feels like enough because I’m so freaking thirsty from breastfeeding, and Maverick is driving me bonkers. I’m so tired. He’s tired. We’re all tired from Shane being sick and work and being stressed. I just want my baby to be okay, and I want to be done breastfeeding.”
/> She gripped my shirt in her fists. For half a second, I expected her to let out a scream. Then she did, right into my shoulder. It was a guttural thing, a cross between a shrill sob and a bellow of rage. A giggle peeped out of me—I couldn’t help it. I pressed my lips together in a poor attempt to hide it, but more giggles escaped me. When she pulled away in shock, she just looked so ridiculous and exhausted and perfect.
Bethie stared at me, eyes swimming, until a half laugh, half sob burst from her. Then she really laughed. Within seconds, both of us were belly laughing as we sank to the floor. The entire moment was so ridiculous it only made me laugh harder.
Minutes later, I sat on the floor, my sides pinching.
Bethany wiped her cheeks off with the back of her hand. “Thanks.” She sniffled. “I think I needed that more than anything.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just . . . this is hard. And Maverick is trying to make it better, but he’s just . . . just . . .”
“Protective?”
“Overbearing.”
“Think he’s scared?”
She blinked. “Why would you think that?”
I shrugged. “Just wondering. He looks overwhelmed all the time now. Like he’s been staring too long at the sun and can’t blink the aura away.”
She giggled again. “Me, too, probably.”
“I would describe you as more closely aligned with mama-zombie.”
A rueful sigh escaped her. “Definitely. I’m sorry. I just needed to escape for a moment and get away from Mav. Does that make me an awful wife?”
“No. I think that makes you a real one.”
Six months of intense pregnancy nausea hadn’t done her any favors. She looked downright haggard now, and I wanted to fix it all for her. Was this what Leslie, Grace, and Stella were saying at book club? Maverick and Bethany always seemed to have the perfect romance, but it wasn’t actually perfect. This was real-life romance at work. Bethie and Mav would pull back together—they always did.
So why wouldn’t JJ and I also figure it out? came the thought. I pushed it away for now, but it hovered in the back of my mind.
