"It has a fucking pool," I say with a chuckle.
Addie lifts a brow, and I shake my head.
"You love her," she says.
It's not a question, but I nod anyway.
"Does she know?"
"I haven't told her, if that's what you're asking."
Addie stands from her stool, throwing her hands in the air. "Why?"
"She wasn't ready to hear it," I say, confused by Addie's sudden outburst. Her brows furrow, and I continue. "Jade can't be told anything until she's made up her own mind. If I told her, she'd have shut down. I stepped on the brakes so she could catch up."
"Well, the entire world just heard it," she says. "You may not have come straight out and said it, but it's there." She grabs a glass out of the cabinet and fills it with water from the fridge. "Why didn't you guys just tell me?"
"And exactly how do you imagine that conversation would've gone?" I ask, standing up to clean up the lunch mess. "Hey Ads, I think your best friend could be my future wife?"
The glass falls from her hand, shattering into pieces on the tile floor.
"Fuck," she says. "Get me a broom."
I get the broom out of the closet, but see she's barefoot, so rather than handing it to her, I sweep around her.
"Maybe I knew," she says in a hushed voice. "Like instinctively. The more I dwell on it, the more it makes sense. Why else would I insist you hire her?"
I grab Mom's slippers from the hall and hand them to her.
"Thanks," she says. "You know this whole situation is fucked, right?"
"Well aware."
She's quiet for several moments as she gets another glass of water and drains it.
"You should've told me," she says, leaning back on the counter and crossing her arms. Her resemblance to Mom is uncanny when she does that. "I think that's what hurts the most. It's not that you were seeing each other, it's that you did it in secret. She told me it was just sex, but it wasn't."
"I think for her it may have started out that way," I say.
"For her? What about you?"
"Honestly?"
She nods.
"I wanted to meet her from the moment I met Coop." She opens her mouth to speak, but I raise a hand to stop her. "But then I met her, and she was this force. Not at dinner, it was before. Did you know I have a butterfly tattoo on my ass cheek?"
She lifts a brow.
"It's the first thing Jade saw. She'd come in to use the bathroom, and I was on my way to put a shirt on for dinner, but my phone pulled my shorts down. Her reaction caught me off guard, but in a way that made me want more. Like I wanted to push all her buttons just to see what she'd do."
"You craved her vibrancy," Addie says.
"Yeah, and Ads, I tried. I tried so hard, please believe me. I told myself it couldn't happen. Because of you, because of our ages. Hell, because our lives are so fucking opposite, but it was too late. I'd already begun to fall."
"And now?"
"I'm loving her in circles, stuck on a fucking round-about and can't get off because every exit is blocked."
