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“Do you want to tell me how it went down?”
I force my shoulders back and hold my head high. “No. I’d rather just push through today. And all the days after it.”
“Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that you’re a little to blame for whatever happened?”
“Because you are very perceptive.” I smile but give her my mean eyes. “Anyway—
“What did you do?”
Her tone makes me feel like a kid in trouble again, and my shoulders slump. “After assuming the worst, I flew off the handle and pushed him away.” Owning my mistake sucks, but it’s better than pretending to be innocent. Sawyer and Willow’s wedding was a beautiful disaster in my head, and the disaster part was all me.
“Ah. Well, I’m still sorry things went south for you. Do you think you can fix it?”
“I don’t know if I should, to be honest. Things just got…so sticky and complicated. Like, we have all this history and that got tangled up in my feelings for him, and I lost sight of the point of our strictly physical arrangement. We were supposed to keep things platonic—
“Honey, have you ever had truly platonic feelings for Rowan?”
I laugh. “Yeah, actually. He’s always just been a friend. Until now. I guess the sex blurred those lines, and I started seeing him as amanfor the first time in our lives, and that changed everything.”
“It always does,” a little old woman says from behind Delia.
We blink at each other, and Delia stepped aside to reveal her. I hadn’t realized we had a spy. Quickly, I blurt, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—
“Oh dear, you didn’t.” She must be ninety years old. Thin crinkled skin littered with smile lines and a mop of white curls stands before us with a small wicker handbag I suspect never leaves her hands. “If you don’t mind a little advice from an old-timer?”
I smile and shrug. “Not at all.”
“Is he a good man?”
“The best man I’ve ever known.”
She smiles. “Does he make you happy?”
I nod. “More than I knew I could be.”
“By the time you reach my age, the thing you think about is the things you should have said or done. You love him. Go to him.”
“It’s not that simple—
“Yes, it is.”
I smile patiently. “We’ve been friends for too long for it to be that simple—
“But itis,” she says firmly. “Love neverfeelssimple. But it is the simplest thing in the world, dear.” She takes my hands in hers. Kindness fills her face as her smile grows. “In the end, love is the only thing that ever matters. It is the reason you get up in the morning and the reason you sleep well at night. Love makes life worth living. Follow love, and it will never lead you astray.”
Her words strike at the shell around my heart. I’d built that shell out of every hurtful thing he’d said and done. Every disappointment. It was how I got through things after Mark—by hanging onto the bad times, so I didn’t romanticize the good ones and make him into someone I could forgive. My shell is how I get through every day on my own.
But I see myself in the little old lady. If I’m lucky, one day I’ll be her age, and I don’t want to look back with regret. Her words ring as clear as a bell. They sound like the truth I needed to hear.
I’m not sure what to say to her. Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I tell her, “Thank you for the advice. Are you with the bride or the groom’s family?”
“Bride and groom? I thought this was a bar mitzvah.”
Delia asks, “Are you okay—
“Nana!” A young man in a yarmulke rushes to her side. “There you are!”
“Aiden, where is your mother?”
