Page 42 of What We Got Wrong

Rhea smiled, still treading lightly. “What do you mean?”

“Audrey knows about Quinn,” Liv admitted. Audrey’s eyes narrowed, and Liv could tell that she was trying to hold in a twinge of jealousy. It was clear that her cousin realized that Rhea had known this major thing about her life first.

“So, are you going to give me an update?” Rhea asked when Audrey didn’t say anything.

Liv groaned. “There’s no update. I think she hates me.”

Her thoughts drifted to the Melted Crayon…

“Oh, please,” Rhea replied, waving her off. “Has she seen you in this outfit?”

Liv blushed. Her memory flashed back to the first night, when she’d talked to Quinn at the bar. The way her words about Liv looking great had heated her all over… “Trust me. The way I look has never been the problem with Quinn.”

They both grinned at her. In that moment, she realized she should probably slow down on the wine for the night. She was being far more honest than normal.

Still, she took another sip of her wine.

“I’m going to try to give her space,” she said, even though she had been rethinking that decision since her encounter with Mel. “I don’t think this is what I thought it was.”

“What did you think it was?” Audrey asked.

Liv and Rhea had already talked about this, but she tried to put thought into her answer, even if her mind was starting to get hazy. “I’ve been following her career, right? From a distance, obviously, but I knew she’d started her company, and I obviously knew about their viral video.”

“Do it badly!” Rhea was also getting to a silly place. They’d never been drunk together before, but Liv could imagine that it was the first time in a while that the incredibly busy woman, someone who ran an organization and parented and kept hope alive with her sweet marriage, probably didn’t get many opportunities to let loose.

“And when I saw that Prism had applied to do a workshop, I thought maybe… I don’t know, maybe she was hoping to reconnect. I’m not delusional,” Liv said. “I wasn’t thinking that she’d fall in love with me. But it was like…maybe friends? But I think I was very wrong.”

“What makes you say that?” Rhea asked softly.

“She didn’t know I got divorced,” Liv answered. “It’s like… I thought maybe, on some level, she wanted to see me? But she thought I was still married to Conner. I clearly wasn’t on her radar at all.”

Rhea was sympathetic, but Audrey shook her head. “You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth right now.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Liv replied, trying not to snap at her cousin.

“You’re saying that you didn’t have any expectations, that you just wanted to see her and maybe be friends. Then, why does it make a difference if she thought you were married or single?” Her cousin looked extremely smug at this summary, and damn it, she was right. “I offered to help with Operation Bangable Giant. You need to be honest with yourself on what you want.”

“Please stop calling it that,” Liv said, at the same time Rhea let out a whoop and yelled, too loudly for the restaurant that they were sitting in, “I love that.”

“Be honest, Livvie. What were you hoping would happen when you saw her again? Did you want her to fuck your brains out? Did you want her to fall in love and propose and ask you to carry her enormous babies? Or did you really want to be friends?”

“She was a great friend,” Liv said. It wasn’t the whole answer. Maybe it wasn’t the answer at all. But she felt defensive, being called out like this by her younger cousin.

“Okay, great. Friends it is, then,” Audrey replied, with an overdramatic eye roll to let her know that she obviously didn’t believe that was the end of the discussion.

Both Audrey and Rhea were staring at her, and Liv didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure if Audrey actually expected her to voice what she wanted, but she certainly wasn’t going to announce to the world that she’d choose any of the options Audrey had laid out above, anything that would keep Quinn in her life.

And maybe she just wasn’t operating with all her faculties, because the words that came out of her mouth were, “They’re going to a lesbian bar tonight. The Melted Crayon, I think.”

“Who are?” Rhea asked.

“Quinn and Mel, her business partner,” Liv explained. “Mel invited me to join them.”

“Aw, she didn’t invite me,” Audrey replied, her lips in a pout.

“She did, actually,” Liv said. “She specifically told me to bring you.”

Audrey clapped. “Oh, then we’re going. I know exactly what I want from her.”