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Interesting.
So, Kate was talking about me with her roommates. I don’t know why it intrigues me, but it does. I glance at Kate again as she tucks her hair back behind her ear and rubs her lips between her teeth.
“Anything else Mia asked?” I prod.
“Not really.” She turns toward the passenger window, entirely avoiding my side of the car. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. Kate’s a terrible liar, but I won’t call her out on it. Not tonight. They were talking about me. Kate and her friends. Maybe I’m not the only one who’s feeling out thisfriendship.
“When did you get divorced?” she asks, determined to keep the conversation on me and not how she confessed she was talking to her friends about me.
“We were separated for a long time, but it was finalized last year.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. My relationship with Summer was never”––I pause, searching for the best word––“conventional.”
Her silence rings loud in the car as the rain pitter-patters against the roof and windshield. She wants to ask me to clarify but doesn’t want to pry. I can feel it. Her curiosity. Her need for answers. Her need to find the boundaries in our friendship and which ones should or shouldn’t be crossed.
It’s adorable.
How much she wants to ask.
How much she wants to know.
When I catch her knee bouncing up and down, I laugh. “Ask me, Kate.”
“I’m just curious what you meant by never conventional.” She turns to me again. “Like…what does it even mean?”
I search for a way to accurately describe my relationship with Summer, but I come up empty.
How do you explain a seventeen-year relationship with someone you never even fully connected with in the first place? Sure, we were young when we first met, but what about the other years? Yeah. I stayed for the kids, and I wouldn’t change it. But the fact that Summer left me? That I was the one who was left behind, even though I'd been miserable for more than a decade? It makes me sound like a pushover. Like a fool. Like a coward.
“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Kate murmurs.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “It’s, uh… My relationship with Summer was never easy.”
Her head tilts. “What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain unless you’ve met Summer.”
“Humor me,” she pushes.
“I was never able to let my guard down around her. She’s a very…” I stop, searching for the right words again. “Loud, charismatic, bold, empowered woman. And don’t get me wrong. None of those things are bad, but sometimes, it made our relationship a little more strained than if she’d been more willing to listen to me instead of talkingatme. Which is why I was thinking about how quiet you are. It’s different. Good different. I’m not comparing you to her or anything,” I add.
Her mouth lifts with a ghost of a smile before it disappears in the blink of an eye. “I get it. I think it’s normal to compare things and people and try to find the right fit, even if it’s in a platonic way.”
“Exactly.”
“Why'd you get married so early?”
“Summer got pregnant when we were barely sixteen, so I asked her to marry me.”
Kate’s jaw drops. “I–– You have kids?”
“Two of them. Daughters.”
“That’s sweet. Wait. Do they live with you?” She looks out the windshield again, the dashboard light illuminating her worried features.
I chuckle and shake my head. “You won’t be meeting them tonight, in case you’re worried about it.”
