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“It’s one of my signature dishes,” I said, shrugging as I twirled the creamy pasta around my fork. “It’s nothing like Lyla’s,” I continued. “Or anything like the Michelin star restaurants you’re used to eating from, but it’s not bad.”
“Stop it,” she chided me, scooping up another huge bite of the Cajun chicken pasta. “I love it. No one—outside of our chef or my mom—has ever cooked for me before.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “Not one of your…” I don’t know why I didn’t want to sayexes. Maybe it was because I was worried it would hurt her or maybe it was because I didn’t want to acknowledge she’d ever been married before.
“My ex-husbands were assholes,” she said without missing a beat. “Not all of them were abusive, but not one of them actually liked me. They were there for the thrill of marrying a VanDoren. A drunken thrill ride with the prospect of a grand prize at the end of it.” She shook her head, hanging it a bit lower as she twirled more pasta around her fork. “So no,” she continued. “They weren’t leaping at the chance to cook for me, but to be fair, it’s not like I ever took the time to learn to cook for them either.”
I swallowed hard, anger flashing hot through my veins. Worry washed over me at just how far the abuse went with her exes, but I knew she’d tell me if she wanted to talk about it. She deserved better. “Why…” I stopped myself, shaking my head. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”
“I’ll tell you almost anything you want to know,” she said, shocking the hell out of me.
“Almost?” I asked.
She breathed out slowly. “There are some parts of my life I can’t even share with my therapist yet,” she admitted. “But I’m trying. I really am. I’m working up to it, but…” She clenched her eyes shut, and I reached across the table, laying my hand over hers. “I’m not there yet. Other than that, I’m doing this thing where I’m trying to be as honest as possible, even if it paints me in a bad light.”
“I understand,” I said, drawing my hand back so she could keep eating. “Is that what was bothering you today?” I asked. “The things you’re not ready to talk about?”
“You could tell?” she asked. “Is that a cop trick you learned? To detect when someone is off?”
“No, it’s an Anne trick,” I answered. “I’ve always been able to tell when you’re off.”
“Wow,” she said, focusing on her pasta, a soft smile on her lips. “Yes,” she admitted. “It was. Sometimes memories just get ahold of me and won’t let go. Fighting them off is exhausting sometimes too. But again, I’m trying my best.”
“I get that,” I said. “And I think you’re doing amazing. I know it’s not easy.”
“Nothing worth it ever is, right?” She took another few bites. “So, you wanted to know why I got married so many times, right? Most of them not even lasting a few months? That’s what you were going to ask before.”
“Only if you want to tell me,” I said. “But yes, I was wondering.”
“The time right after you and I broke up was the hardest time I’ve ever been through,” she said. “Not only because I lost you, but because of…other situations. I decided it would be much more fun to escape into a fantasy land than live in reality. I tried to drown out memories I couldn’t erase, and spent my time traveling in an attempt to outrun my past. I thought if I could get enough distance between this place and me, I would magically get better. I thought if I partied hard enough, I would actually start to believe that I was living my best life. I thought that if I was married, I wouldn’t have to think about how alone I felt.”
I set down my fork, no longer hungry, my appetite replaced by a deep sadness for the girl I used to love. She’d been full of life with aspirations to travel and research the countries’ histories before one day settling down here in Sweet Water. What awful thing had happened between the time we broke up to the year she left to turn her world on its axis so much?
My gut whispered an answer, but I didn’t want it to be true, and I certainly wouldn’t ask her until she was ready to talk about it.
“So, yeah,” she said. “That’s why I got married so many times. And spoiler alert, none of those things actually worked.”
“And you came back here anyway,” I said. “Even though you were determined to stay away.”
She nodded, blowing out a breath. “My sister’s wedding,” she said. “And my mother’s failing kidney brought me back. The fact that Sephie had gotten married during a weekend in Vegas made me think maybe she wasn’t as perfect as she always seemed. That maybe, just maybe, we were alike in all the ways I used to feel like we were. But, in true Persephone form, her mistake turned into a goldmine. And in true Andromeda form, I tried to ruin it for her. Tried to turn her hasty marriage into something closer to my own mistakes.” She wrung out her hands.
“I was awful,” she continued. “Wanting her to be as broken as me. Wanting to expose her marriage like one of my mistakes. And then after, when I realized how much Cannon loved her, how madly in love they both were…I snapped. Hitting rock bottom is an actual thing and it happens more than just once. It feels like you’ve jumped off a ledge. Everything hurts when you realize what you’ve done, what your addiction helped you do.” She looked down at her hands.
“When I tried to get tested to see if my kidney was a match for my mother’s is when the doctors told me about my liver, told me I might not live to see another year if I didn’t make a giant life-change, but asking my sister for help was more of a breakthrough than even finding that out. Mending those wrongs between us, wrongs she doesn’t even understand, means more to me than even healing my scarred liver.” She finally looked up at me. “And my mother,” she said. “Knowing she’s okay and is going to live, I feel like I have a second chance to make her proud. To right the wrongs I’ve done to her in the past. But my father…”
I swallowed around the knot in my throat, hating that I didn’t have the right words to respond. I thought she’d been living a wild, care-free life traveling across the globe like she always wanted to, but she’d been suffering in ways I couldn’t even imagine.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him. But I’m trying to at least earn back his respect.” She shrugged, taking a sip of her ice water. “Sometimes that seems a harder task than staying sober.”
I flinched. “It shouldn’t be that way with family.”
“VanDorens,” she said in a mocking tone. “Anyway,” she continued, trying to brush off the seriousness of the conversation if her smile was any indication. “Not all his stipulations of earning my way back into the family’s good graces are bad.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Like what?”
“Working with you for one,” she said. “Working for Lyla for two. I never thought I would enjoy waiting tables as much as I do. Maybe it’s because I’ve never done it before or maybe it’s because I never knew how satisfying a hard day’s work could feel. Either way, that is one thing I don’t regret about this whole process. And my studio apartment is cozy, even if I can barely turn around in it.”
I laughed, trying to protest when she stood up to clear our finished plates. I watched her as she rinsed and put them in the dishwasher, the actions so domestic it made it hard to breathe. It was like I’d fallen into one of my painful fantasies where we lived happily ever after and cleaning up after dinner was a normal, everyday occurrence for us.
