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Mira
"Oh, my god! What did you do?" My friend Abby cackles from the couch. We’re in the townhouse she shares with her husband Cade. He’s the captain of the English cricket team and currently on a tour of Australia.
"What could I do?" I look into the depths of my glass of Pinot Grigio. "I hauled ass out of there, then ran to the ladies room and checked."
"And," Gio interjects, "was your skirt unzipped?"
"Yep," I say sadly. "I must have tugged on the zipper a little too hard while I was trying to pull it on that morning. It must have broken at some point, and I didn’t realize it."
"Oh, no," Summer, Sinclair’s wife, gasps. "You were wearing a skirt with a broken zipper all that time?"
"Don’t remind me." I tilt the wine glass to my mouth and polish off the liquid. The alcohol slides down my throat, hits my stomach and sets off a pleasant warmth. I hold out my wineglass.
Gio tops me up, then herself. "I can’t believe he pointed that out to you."
"It might have been worse if he hadn’t. I’d have ended up flashing the world. This way, I only flashed him. I hope."
"Oh, honey, I am so sorry." Summer rises from the couch and walks over to me. She hitches a hip on the arm of the chair I’m seated on and touches my shoulder. "I can only imagine how mortifying that must have been."
"It was." I press my head into her arm. My family is not the most demonstrative, to say the least. My ma died when I was little. My father married again, and my stepmother and half-sisters, have never been welcoming to me. Surprisingly, it worked in my favor when I wanted to leave home. My stepmom sided with me—probably because she wanted me out of her hair. Definitely, because she wanted me to get into trouble, in the hope I would spoil my chances of making a good marriage.
How I wanted to be able to do that, too. But I couldn’t break my father’s heart that way. Maybe he wasn't always available to me, but he loves me, in his own way.
That's me, the responsible girl, at heart, even though a part of me wants to break free and rebel so much. I tried to please my stepmom, went out of my way to be friends with my half-sisters, but that invisible barrier that comes from not being blood seemed to always be between us. The three of them were a unit, and I was always on the outside. I thought I’d never find my tribe, until I met Abby and her girlfriends. They adopted me, and for the first time in my life, I feel like I belong.
"Learn from it and move on, honey." Summer runs her fingers though my hair. "Don’t dwell on it, or it’ll drive you a bit crazy."
"I have been going around in circles in my head," I admit.
"I hope you, at least, flashed Priest properly," Gio drawls.
Abby spits out the non-alcoholic beer she’s been drinking. She’s six months along and glows with that radiance that pregnant women seem to exude.
"Really, Gio?" Summer says mildly.
"He probably got a glimpse of my stockings." I try to shrug in a nonchalant manner.OMG, he saw my pantyhose, and probably a hint of my panties through the material."Though, I doubt it made any impact on that man." I glance up at Summer. "Has he always been this…inscrutable?" Of all of us in the room, she’s known Edward the longest.
Summer straightens and slips into the armchair next to mine. "He’s always been the quietest of the Seven, and the one who always seemed the most wounded from within."
"So, he was like that even before he left the priesthood?"
"He was, maybe, more hopeful when he was a priest." Summer twirls a lock of hair about her fingers. "He seemed to have a purpose then. But after what happened with Ava—" She firms her lips.
"Ava?" I frown.
She lowers her hand to her lap. "Pretend you didn’t hear that name from me."
"But—"
"It’s not my place to tell you, Mira. You understand that, right?"
I purse my lips. "I understand, but don’t agree."
"Did she break his heart?" Gio asks.
"Is he still carrying a torch for her?" Abby muses.
Summer merely shakes her head. "Not fair guys. I don’t want to speculate about his love life—"
