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“Lucky?”
She nodded. “As much as we didn’t suit, Max is a great guy. The fact that he would pick me, well, you understand. I felt like I won the lottery.
At that moment, Anna saw it. This woman didn’t truly understand relationships or why anyone would want to be involved with her. While Cynthia tried to break them up, Anna felt a smidgen of sadness for her. That any woman would find the need to marry to feel complete—especially to a man she didn’t love—was tragic. This is the twenty-first century.
Some of Anna’s thoughts must have shown on her face because Cynthia said, “Please don’t pity me for losing Max.”
“I don’t pity you for that.”
“But you do pity me.” The defeat she heard in the other woman’s voice struck a chord in Anna.
“No. Not in the sense you think.”
She rolled her eyes.
“No, listen, Cynthia, we are different.”
“That goes without saying.”
“But we are both women. Both of us were raised by Southern standards that can be good but can also tell us that we need a man. We don’t.”
Cynthia looked away. “It was what I was raised to do.”
“Fuck that.”
Her lips curved, and her eyes danced as her attention returned to Anna. Damn…it was hard to remember just how pretty she was. Anna had always seen her as beige, bland, and buttoned down, so she never looked past that. And to be honest, some of it was jealousy because of Max. Now, though, she saw a woman while not wholly broken…she was constrained.
“Do you have something you like to do?”
“I have a degree in finance.”
“That’s not what I asked. What I asked was, is there something you like. Is there something you do to feel good?”
She opened her mouth and then shut it.
“No. Tell me.”
She sighed again, and Anna felt she did that a lot.
“Come on, Cynthia. No one is here.”
“I love to bake.”
“Bake?”
She nodded. “I love to come up with new twists on flavors…I do it to relax.”
Why would she want to hide that? “Isn’t that something that good southern women should want to do?”
“Well, I guess, but with my family, any manual labor, even for fun, is seen as beneath the family name.”
Anna studied her to figure out if she was pulling her leg. Pure honesty shone in Cynthia’s blue gaze.
“I will say it again. Fuck. That.”
A bubble of laughter escaped, along with a guffaw. Anna smiled.
“Easy for you to say. I depend on my father.”
