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“Jesus, are you my mom or something?”
Sitting on the coffee table facing me, she said, “I’m whoever you need me to be.”
Great, here I was being a surly bitch and Zara was countering that with her usual sweet self. As she always did.
Lucy and Emma unpacked the bags and brought everything to the living room, setting it on the table behind Zara. “Now, you’re going to tell Lucy and Emma all about Josh.”
“Fuck off.” I couldn’t decide if that was better or worse than having to tell them all about Gabe, but I wasn’t going to do either one, so yeah, fuck off covered it nicely.
“Look at me.” I forced my gaze to Zara’s and was met with steely resolve. She was hunkering down for the long haul: she had food, wine and reinforcements. She was clearly not going to let me off the hook.
“Fine. Whatever.”
Lucy settled in the armchair in the corner, linking her fingers over her baby belly. Zara moved to sit next to me and Emma sat on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. Once I’d finished the soup and bread, she poured wine for all of us – well, except Lucy, she had sparkling water – and handed it around.
“It’s really not that big of a deal.”
“Bull fucking shit.”
I sighed in resignation. Who knows, maybe talking about it would help. So I told them everything. Even the big finale, where Josh dumped me in front of his friends. And how they’d all laughed at me. The humiliation still burned as much now as it had then.
Lucy: “What an absolutely vile, narcissistic, fucking jerkoff!”
Emma: “Evil, masochistic fuckwad!”
Zara: “Ugly, foul, vaginal desiccant.”
We all stared at her at that one. “‘Vaginal desiccant’?” I asked hesitantly.
“Yeah, to desiccate is to dry out. So, you know, he can’t make a girl wet.”
“Oh, good one!” Lucy leaned over and tapped her glass of sparkling water to Zara’s wine. “But now, let’s get serious.” She turned her green eyes on me, and I felt pinned to the sofa under their intensity. “What that guy did wasn’t just a harmless prank, or a bit of fun gone too far. It was abuse, plain and simple. He took a young girl who was brimming with joy and personality and gaslit you, lied to you, manipulated you, humiliated you, all to make himself look like a big man to his friends.”
“Everything that fucker did says way more about him than it ever could about you, Ally,” Emma said quietly. “Because even if what he said about you was accurate, which it very much fucking wasn’t, by the way, what he did… that was some next level asshole crap. There’s something seriously wrong with this dude, honestly.”
“Amen,” Zara agreed.
“You need to understand that, Ally, so you can move past it. You might need to think about therapy to help you with that.”
“Please, Lucy, it’s not that bad,” I protested, raising my hands in a defensive gesture.
“Yeah it is, I’m sorry to say. Anything that causes this much pain, that makes you terrified to trust again, that triggers a trauma response like what you’re showing here… for so many years… it’s definitely that bad.”
Looking down at my wine glass, I tried to process Lucy’s words. I’d internalized what happened with Josh to such a degree that it had become part of who I was, a failing of mine, not his. “I loved him.” Hadn’t I? I frowned, trying to dredge up those feelings, or even the memory of them. But they were elusive, sliding just out of my reach. Because there was something else pushing them out of the way, something much bigger and more real. And waaaay too fucking scary.
“Anyway, I think that’s enough for now. You’ve got a lot to think about.” Zara reached for the remote. “How about we put on a movie?”
“Great idea.” Emma moved to the end of the couch, making Zara shift over so she was practically in my lap, and pulled the rug from the back of the sofa and draped it over us. “You okay over there, Luce?”
Pulling the lever on the side of the armchair so that the footrest popped up and shimmying into a more comfortable position, she said ecstatically, “Oh man, I’m golden.”
Zara chose a movie at random, and I settled back, pulling the cushion to my chest to cuddle it. The opening credits flashed on screen and I took a deep, cleansing breath. Taking Zara’s hand in mine, I smiled when she gave it a squeeze. Just talking about Josh, getting it out, hearing Lucy’s ideas, gave me a different perspective. I wasn’t exactly sure what it all meant, but what I did know was that I felt lighter than I had in days.
Hell, maybe even years.
CHAPTER41
Gabe
