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She gave me a sad look. “He left?”
She didn’t have to say his name. After the caber tossing dinner we had the other night, she knew all about my interest in Daniel. And his dick. And the fact that being with him and his talented dick was short lived. He was casual. He wasn’t permanent. Our three-day relationship was conditional. That was what a contract did. Made it conditional based on agreed upon bullet points, one of which was an end date.
I nodded, swallowing hard. I’d felt empty knowing his plane had left, like aStar Warsmovie where the Force went missing. It was the first time I really wasn’t okay with someone leaving me. That I cared more than I should for someone who walked out of my life.
She eyed me closely. Bridget and Mallory had given me hugs and not said a word. But Lindy? She might be pregnant with her first child, but she’d raised Bridget. And pretty much Mallory, too. Since I was their age, she lumped me in with her big-kid crew. She was a pseudo-mom for all of us.
“Yes,” I added. “He’s probably driven on the wrong side of the road and eaten a filled sheep’s stomach by now.”
“It’s okay to have a fling,” she said after she was done grimacing.
“So says my mother,” I replied.
Lindy pulled me into the kitchen and practically pushed me into a chair. Bridget turned at the sink to see what was up, pushing her glasses up with a soapy finger.
“I heard she’s in town,” she said. My mom was fifteen years older than Lindy, but I was sure they knew each other, at least in passing. Everyone over the age of thirty had to know about the mayor fiasco.
“News travels,” I said, then panicked. “Wait, she didn’t sleep with someone this trip she wasn’t supposed to and have them fired, did she?”
Lindy grinned, then bit her lip to stifle it. “Not that I heard. I’m guessing your mom hasverydifferent relationship views than you do.”
I laughed dryly. “I think this is the perfect time to sayduh.”
“You like Daniel,” she said, taking my hand.
“Again,duh.I wouldn’t have… you know, if I didn’t.” I blushed and couldn’t saysexeven after everything Daniel and I did together.
“That’s the difference between you and your mother,” she said. “You need to care for someone for there to be any kind of relationship. She doesn’t.”
“Yes, that’s true, but with Daniel, it wasn’t a relationship.”
“A relationship can be short,” she clarified. “You connected and you grew to like him.”
I sighed, feeling ashamed that I couldn’t even do a short relationship right. I was supposed to have sex and just… let him go. “I did. He’s ridiculously bossy and he doesn’t enter a room, he invades. I didn’t know it was possible for a man to growl as much as he does.”
A smile spread across her face, seemingly pleased to hear about how unique Daniel was. “Yet he’s sweet to you.”
Bridget turned off the faucet and wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Not that sweet based on that blush.”
“When he comes back, you can pick up where you left off,” Lindy said.
I shook my head. “He’s not coming back.”
“He can’t move away forever. His life’s here,” Lindy countered.
“Maybe he’ll come back to visit, but he made it very,veryclear his life here is done,” I said to Lindy, but also as a verbal reminder to myself that it was over.
Lindy waved her hand. “He has a son and brothers here. A business.”
“He sold it,” Bridget added, coming over and dropping into a chair. I’d never seen her in a dress before, but she was wearing one now. It was green to match her eyes.
“The last thing a man wants is a clinging woman,” I reminded. “Me pining after him and then showing up on his doorstep when he comes back to town is the epitome of clingy.”
They looked at each other, then me.
I leaned forward, set my forearms on their kitchen table. It was very eighties and I imagined it had been the same one from when their parents were alive.
“Look, we made a deal,” I told them, laying out what he and I had agreed on. “An arrangement. He did everything I wanted to feel safe with him. Fine, it was a fling, if that’s the definition you want to give it, but remember, a fling is temporary. If it was anything else, it wouldn’t be called a fling.”
