“It feels like it was a lifetime ago.”
“And what happened?”
Now it was my turn to blush. Just thinking about Eamon made my skin hot. “I thought it was over and then he reappeared in my life. Sort of like magic.” Except that it wasn't really magic, was it? There was a logical explanation for what had happened. The magic that I had once hoped for, Eamon reading and replying to my letter, begging me to come back to him, never came to fruition. But the way it had happened was better. I might not be sure I was ready for love now, but I had undoubtedly not been ready then.
“I hope everything works out.”
“Me too.” As to what “working out” meant, I didn't know. The world seemed to think it was the picket fence, but I wasn't convinced.
Shelly smiled. “Thanks for the advice. I like talking to you. I can see why your sister loves you so much. You were all she talked about before you got here.”
“Really?” I watched Amy as she chatted away with her future mother-in-law. How I could ever question my sister's love was beyond me, but I did sometimes. Seeing her in this setting, I had to wonder if I'd been holding her back all these years.
In the caron the way home, I called Eamon. "I hope this is an okay time to talk. I really needed to hear your voice."
“I love hearing you say that. And yeah, this is a good time.”
“You don't need to sign the boobs of random women with a Sharpie?”
“I’m done with the boob signing for today. Thank God. I nearly got a cramp.”
I laughed nervously, watching out the window as we started to escape upscale suburbia and enter the realm of normal people again. “Very funny.”
“I hope you know I'm kidding.”
I didn't really know that, so it was nice to hear. “Good. That makes me glad.” I realized then that I'd already gone from being the woman who wasn't sure this was a good idea, to the woman who didn't want to share him with anyone else. Those women were not entirely compatible. I was going to have to stick to one, for my sanity and his.
“How did the party go? You don't sound drunk, so it must've been at least tolerable.”
“It was okay. Everyone was really nice, but I definitely did not feel comfortable. Their whole family is like pod people. They're all so happy and normal.”
“Why does that make them pod people?”
“I don't know. Because that's nothing at all like my family? And there's no family dirt, which I find a little impossible to believe.”
“You went digging for dirt at your sister's engagement party?”
“Hey. You're the one who told me not to drink too much. I had to entertain myself somehow.”
He unleashed the laugh I find most disarming. In my head, I could see his off-kilter smile. “There's always dirt somewhere. Trust me.”
“That's what I was thinking.”
It got quiet on the other end of the line and I wondered what he was thinking about or whether he was maybe tired. I would've given anything for him to be waiting for me at home right now, rather than thousands of miles away. I couldn't escape the loneliness of that fact.
“Katherine, can I ask you something?”
“Of course. Anything.”
“What exactly is it about that situation that makes you so deeply uncomfortable? Your sister getting married. I know it's not just that you feel like you're losing her. There's something more to it, isn't there?”
It felt like my heart was doing a bad impression of an old clock, ticking away at an unreliable pace. There was so much about this for me to unpack, probably because I'd devoted so much of my life to keeping it hidden. “My parents didn't have a great marriage and they did a lot of things to hurt each other. It's hard as a kid to witness that. It definitely sours your opinion of the institution.”
“I suppose.”
“Am I being unreasonable?”
“No. You're not. I just think that's not the only way to look at it. Some people might go through that and decide that they can do better. Maybe that's the way your sister feels.”
