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As much as I hated her meltdown, I was glad it led to them working together.
“Okay. Well, I guess I’ll drive your car, so you won’t have to come back up here with him or Uber.”
“Are you going to stay and talk to her?”
“Not tonight. I think we both need some time to decompress. When I talk to her, I don’t want my feelings in the way. I want to be able to focus fully on hers and what she has to say.”
“A’ight,” he agreed, pulling me into his arms.
I didn’t want just a hug. I needed his lips on mine too. A slight tilt of my head was all the directive Jeremiah needed. He lowered himself to me, connecting his lips with mine.
“We will fix this, a’ight?” he declared, pushing my hair out of my face, and looking into my eyes.
I just nodded. I needed him to be right. I needed all of us to be all right.
18
Three Days Later
Allegra had been workingfrom home. I texted her and told her to let me know when it would be a good time for me to stop by and talk. It took her three days to respond, but when she did, I stopped what I was doing, grabbed her a bouquet of flowers, and headed to her place.
I was glad Allegra had finally been honest about how she was feeling, but I do hate the time and place it happened. It felt like we were finally getting back to our crew. For that to have been the space she used to express that, it made me wonder if she did so because being around the guys made her feel safe to do it. Even if that was the case, I wanted this to be a conversation we had alone.
Once I made it to her house, I told Jerry. He told me I could come over and decompress if I needed to. Hopefully, things would end on a good note and that wouldn’t be necessary. After cutting off my car, I grabbed the flowers and headed to her door. It took her a little while to answer after I rang the doorbell, but when she did, I extended the flowers and used them to hide my face. Allegra chuckled as she accepted them. Instead of her grabbing just the flowers, she covered my hand with hers and used it to pull me close for a hug.
“I am so sorry, Lay. I’ve been waiting for you to talk to me about how you really feel, but I didn’t know it was this deep. I am so, so sorry.”
She held me tighter, and I relished in how good it felt to be this close to her again. When she released me, we went inside and got comfortable in the living room. I asked about my baby, and she told me that Ava was with her parents for the weekend.
“I’m sorry about my outburst,” Allegra said. “I was trying to work through how I was feeling but it wasn’t working. The whole time you were gone, I was worried about you but also upset. I know I had no right because you needed to do what was best for you, but I missed my best friend. Then you came back, and I was happy but still frustrated that you’d left for so long to begin with.”
“While I don’t apologize for leaving, I do accept responsibility for how I left causing you pain. That wasn’t my intention. I guess I didn’t take into consideration how much you’d miss me. I was drowning in my pain, and it was hard for me to think about the pain of others. But at the same time, I’m hurt by the fact that you didn’t tell me you were pregnant. I know I told everyone not to call me, but come on, Lay. That was something I needed to know.”
“You’re right. I should have told you. I knew if I did, you’d come back.”
“Immediately. So why didn’t you tell me?”
With a sigh, Allegra rubbed her hands up and down her thighs. “That’s an even longer story for another day. I can’t talk about that and us right now. But what I can say is that was from a place of anger, and that was wrong of me.”
I could respect that, so I didn’t press it. “Can you forgive me for not being here for you?”
“I can. Again, I’m sorry for unloading on you like that, especially in front of our employees. That was not the time or the place.”
“I’m just glad you finally got it out. Hopefully, we can move forward now.”
“I would like that,” she agreed softly before standing and giving me another hug.
When I left a year ago, I wasn’t worried about my friendship with Allegra or Jeremiah for that matter. We had the kind of bond that I didn’t think could be strained by time. What I had with Jeremiah couldn’t. We didn’t just pick up as if not even a second had passed, but we were even closer now. That clearly wasn’t the case with Allegra, but I prayed now that everything was out in the open, we could rebuild on this new foundation.
19
The Next Day
It seemedlike every time I came home to Memphis, my mom became Nova’s personal cheerleader. I didn’t know if it was because she genuinely wanted me to be with him, or if she thought that was what I wanted. If my daughter had spent a year trying to get over a man, the last thing I’d do was try to push her back into his arms. Her logic was different though. To her, because it took me so long to get to a place where I was able to even face him, it meant we belonged together.
There were a lot of things I’d take my mother’s advice on. Love, however, was not on that list. Staying with a habitual cheater didn’t make me respect my mother less. It did when I was younger, but as I matured, I realized she simply didn’t value fidelity enough to leave. I used to hurt when she hurt. I’m not sure at what point she became numb, but I never did. The woman whose heart was broken when I was ten years old wouldn’t dare tell me to stay with a man who cheated. That was the woman I wished I could talk to today.
She’d spent our entire family dinner asking me about how things were in Rose Valley Hills, just to try to convince me to give Nova another chance. I hated having those kinds of conversations around Tierney. My sister did not have the trauma of our parents cheating visible to her right now, and I didn’t want my choices in men and love to make her think that was okay.
