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“You don’t like dessert?”
“I love dessert. We just can’t have it around the apartment. Tia has a real thing about temptation. She has zero willpower and a boyfriend who’s all about her figure.”
“Her figure?”
“Mm,” she said, eating some more cake. “He buys her all these clothes, super revealing, so, so tight. He asks her to wear them when they’re going out with his friends.” She shook in an exaggerated shudder. “So creepy.”
“He wants his friends to check her out?”
She held up a halting hand. “You don’t want to know what he wants his friends to do to her. He’s turned her into such a paranoid, anxious mess… He’s a jerk and she’s so beautiful. Really beautiful.”
“Why does she put herself through it?”
She shrugged. “Why do any of us put ourselves through anything? Whether it’s our partners, our jobs, our family or friends, we strive to be better. To impress, not disappoint. We tie ourselves in knots because society makes us believe we’re not good enough.”
“You don’t seem like a paranoid, anxious mess.”
She tipped her head his way. “I don’t have a boyfriend putting me on the scale every morning he stays over.”
“You or Gwendolyn didn’t think to tell her he’s a jerk?”
“We tell her she’s gorgeous all the time because she is. When it’s just us, she’s happy and vibrant. Bryan is just an asshole. And she won’t see it until she wants to see it. Haven’t you ever noticed that it’s easier to see something when you’re on the outside of it? She deserves such love and happiness. Until she realizes Bryan is toxic, she won’t find either.”
“Have they been together long?”
“A year almost. She’s convinced he’s always just a day away from giving her a ring.” She swayed closer. “Spoiler alert: if he tried to give her a ring, I’d tell her to stuff it down his throat.”
“You don’t believe in marriage?”
“I don’t believe in marriage for the sake of it,” she said and shrugged, licking her fingertip to gather up some stray crumbs. “I would rather a guy love me and be loyal than demand a piece of paper. Wouldn’t you? Isn’t love and loyalty more important?”
“Absolutely.”
“Thank you. Geez, who cares about a piece of paper?”
“A lot of people do.”
“I suppose it matters more if you have kids,” she said. Was she talking to herself or him? “Then you can all have the same last name… And I guess I’d want my partner to be my next of kin. I wouldn’t want tough choices to be on my mom.”
“The hope would be you’d go after your mom.”
If the world played by expected rules, which it didn’t. “Yeah, but you have to think about these things. You wouldn’t want your dad to make medical decisions for you, would you?”
A careful frown faded up on his expression. “Why have I never thought about that before?”
“I don’t know. I guess no one thinks they’ll need to think about it.”
“I have a will. I wrote it about ten years ago, but… shit.” His fingers went into his hair for a second before he shifted to retrieve a phone from his back pocket. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.”
His fingers moved fast across the screen.
“No time like the present,” she said. He’d be reaching out to his partner to address the subject. “Glad I can help.”
“Nothing is certain in life,” he said, finishing up his message.
“Just death and taxes.”
He put his phone back into his rear pocket and rested his forearms on the table again. “And that I’ll be here every day to meet you for lunch.”
