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“I know,” I said.
“I should be able to do that stretch without even warming up. That is the warm-up! But there I was, struggling. Struggling, Danica. Like some novice. Like a big, fat pig.” More sobbing, and I reached out to pat her wet shoulder a couple of times, hiding the annoyance behind a veneer of sisterly commiseration.
“You’re not a big fat pig,” I said. “You’re pregnant. You have to go easier on yourself. You’ll bounce right back when all this is done.”
“But what if I don’t?” she sobbed. “What if I’m always like this? Forever?” she asked, briefly taking a cucumber off one eye, brimming with tears, to look at me before putting it back in place.
“You won’t, Jaz. You’re going to bounce right back and be onstage again in no time, don’t you worry.”
While consoling her, I let my mind wander back to the decision I’d made at Kane’s lovely home on the edge of the vineyard. Maybe I could just walk away from all this and tell her she needed to take care of her own damn child. That I had something, someone, that wanted a life with me.
Like he had telepathy, my phone chimed, and I looked down to see it was a text message from Kane. I felt the smile stretch across my face and could tell Jaz, sitting in her tub, had taken the cucumber off one of her eyes and was watching me.
Remember, I’m there Friday night. Date #2.
I felt myself trying to restrain a squeal, and I swiped the Dismiss button so I wouldn’t just sit there and stare at the message on my screen. We were doing this. We were really going to try to make this a thing. It made the smile stretch wide across my face to the point where I thought it might split in half, but I was fine with it.
Jaz, however, seemed confused and cocked an eyebrow at me.
“The hell is that all about?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, playing dumb. She pursed her lips to one side and looked at me critically.
“You know,” she said. “Whatever notification you just got on your phone that made you look like you were a sixteen-year-old girl who got the student teacher to notice them.”
“That seems like an oddly specific example,” I pointed out.
“Mr. Poland,” she said. “Senior year. I was eighteen already, but he seemed to have no interest.”
“Probably because it was illegal.”
She shrugged. “Anyway, what was all that about?”
I sighed. She had to know sometime. Might as well be before Kane showed up and we had to have an awkward talk while I shoved her out of the door with a credit card and a hotel reservation. Come to think of it, maybe I would keep the credit card and take the hotel for myself.
Jaz was sitting up in the tub now, looking at me and blinking expectantly.
“Fine,” I said.
“Okay, so, I went to King Vineyard, and I saw this client of mine—”
“Kane?” she asked. “The wrestler.”
“Yes,” I said. “Spelled the same way too. About as big. I think. I never watched that stuff, you did.”
“You watched,” she said with a wry smile. “Every time they came out in just tights, you squirmed in your chair.”
“Yes, yes, now shut up.” I continued to run down a quick overview of what happened between Kane and me, bringing her completely up to speed on everything, all the way up to the text he just sent me.
“Well,” she said, standing up in the tub and grabbing a towel. “I, for one, am super excited for you.”
“You are?”
“Absolutely. God knows you needed to get laid.”
I laughed and shook my head. “It’s more than that,” I said. “He’s just so… so perfect.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Also, a really good time in the sack.”
“I can’t deny that,” I said. She winked at me.
“Clearly, I can’t judge you for that. Come on. Let’s go reheat that pizza and put on some TV. I feel like girl talk.”
Grinning, I opened the door and went to preheat the oven. Figuring we would need more than just pizza, I took out a couple of pint containers of ice cream from the freezer. I had taken to buying them in bulk from the outlet store and sticking them in the back of the freezer so I had them whenever I had a really bad day. Happily, I grabbed two and set them out to soften, thinking that for once I was going to eat ice cream for all the right reasons. And with company, which made it far less depressing.
Grabbing a bottle of wine from the wine cabinet, I popped it open and poured a glass. Above the refrigerator was another cabinet that had some sparkling grape juice that I bought to have for mixers and never opened, and I cracked it open too. Pouring a glass for Jaz, it looked remarkably similar to mine, and I had a long-forgotten memory of us drinking the sparkling juices together out of wine glasses, pretending to be fancy ladies when we were children.
