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“What are you going to do now?” Abby asked, leaning against the side.
“There’s only one thing you can do,” Mia said before I could. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
I gave her a sharp look. “I’m not playing games, Mia. I don’t have the time for it. Hell, I don’t have the patience for it.”
“Have you ever seen her play Monopoly?” Abby raised her eyebrows. “I needed therapy after the first time.”
She darted out of the way with a laugh when I moved to slap her arm.
Mia snorted. “No, but now, I’d like to see that.”
“I’m not playing games,” I repeated, folding my arms across my chest.
“Listen to me.” She scooted forward on the sofa. “Damien is…persistent.”
No shit.
“You want to know why he wants your bar so badly, and it’s obvious he’s going to use his…skills…to break you down. You know that, so just go along with it. Play along with him, still holding your ground, until he realizes seduction isn’t going to get him what he wants.”
“You want me to screw him to make my point?”
“Could be worse,” Abby said. “At least you’ll get an orgasm or two out of it.”
“I fail to see how this conversation is helpful.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I don’t understand how giving Damien Fox part of what he wants will make him realize he won’t get everything else. That’s not how people learn to be reasonable human beings.”
“He’s already an unreasonable human being,” Mia pointed out with a smile. “This is called a compromise.”
“Is that what you did with West? Compromised?”
“Yes. It was enjoyable.”
“And, now, you’re married.”
She opened her mouth, then paused. “Point taken. Maybe we need to rethink this.”
Abby shook her head. “I’m going back out there. Thinking about having sex with him is starting to make me feel sick.”
I stared after her. “You’re the one who told me I’d get an orgasm out of it!”
She held her hands up as she disappeared.
I sighed and slumped against the counter.
“There are worse things you could get from a compromise than orgasms,” Mia muttered.
“Yeah,” I muttered right back. “Like herpes.”
She laughed.
I laughed.
But it was hollow.
This sucked.
***
The cemetery where my mom was buried—and now my dad, too—was tucked away in a quiet corner of the city. I’d once found the distance a hardship, but over the years, as I’d gotten older, I’d come to appreciate it. It was almost always empty when I got there, and if I were unlucky, someone else would be there.
After my mom was murdered a month before my tenth birthday, I’d been completely lost. I had to stumble through my teenage years with the long-distance help of aunts and closer help with family friends who stepped in to be my female influence, including my mom’s best friend, but it wasn’t the same.
I didn’t have anyone to help me choose a hairstyle. I had to buy my prom dress with my dad, and as great as he was, shopping wasn’t his thing. Fights with my best friend, new bras, boys, starting my period—all the things I needed my mom for, all the things she should have been there for, were all struggles for me.
I remember the first time I spoke to her grave. I’d started my period that morning and I was using tissue. I was scared to tell my dad because it was that awkward topic, and so, I’d come to the cemetery for some comfort. I cried and told her everything I would have said to her if she’d been alive.
I’d left feeling weightless and with a sense of purpose. I’d shown up at her best friend’s diner in the middle of the lunch rush. Paula had taken one look at my tear-stained face, taken me to the back, and wriggled it out of me. Then, she’d fed me a chocolate milkshake and a burger and handled everything—a sanitary pad from her purse and a trip to the store, plus that chat with my dad.
I’d realized then that my mom was still there, in a way. The act of talking and laying everything out without the fear or interruption or judgment had gotten me through my teen years. Before I’d left three months ago, the weekly trips had become updates on life in general, like I was writing a letter to a rarely-seen grandma who lived on the other side of the country.
It was soothing and cathartic.
Which was exactly what I needed right now.
I tugged up my yoga pants and pulled open the gate to the cemetery. The old hinges squeaked as it moved, and if I weren’t used to it, the loudness of it would have probably freaked me out the way it used to. I was too familiar with everything.
I juggled the two small bunches of flowers and bottle of water as I closed the gate. My sneakers crunched along the gravel path as I walked to the back of the graveyard where my parents were buried right next to each other.
