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It had been years since she’d thought about that girl and she wondered where she was now. Jealous of their friendship, the girl managed to drive a wedge between them.
“You know,” her mother said, “his divorce really hurt him. He couldn’t wait for them to have children and then she never got pregnant,” she said.
“Mom, she was taking birth control pills,” Madison said. “He told me last night. And yes, the divorce hurt him badly.”
Divorces were ugly. She’d dealt with them in law school, and with her own practice, she’d be dealing with them again. And then there was the story of her parents’ divorce that had not been easy.
A sales clerk came to her. “Can I set you up a dressing room?”
“Yes, please,” she said. Madison continued to look through the dresses on the rack. “We’re friends. Nothing more.”
“Yes, but friends turn into lovers and I’d hate for you to hurt him,” her mother said.
Oh, that was priceless.
“What about me? What if he hurts me?”
“You’ve made it very clear that you never want to marry, so I’m more concerned about him. What if by doing this fake dating, he falls for you? What then?”
Why was her mother so concerned about Adrian and not her own daughter?
“We’re friends. Nothing more,” she said again. “Besides, I really helped him last night with his woman situation. Those bitties were after him.”
But when he’d kissed her, it hadn’t been nothing. It had been heat, fire, and flames, and like a plane going down, she had to come up for air.
“As my mother would say, you’re playing with fire and if you’re not careful one of you is going to get burned,” she said, grabbing a dress off the rack and handing it to Madison. “Try this one on for me.”
There was real truth to what her mother said, but she was certain she could keep her own feelings under control. She’d always liked Adrian but that didn’t mean they were meant to be together.
“Mom, you can stop worrying about Adrian. I protected him from three very aggressive women who wanted to make him theirs. We laughed, we had dinner, we danced, and we played at being a real couple. It worked. And when we came home, we parted ways and I slept on your couch. I’ll be back next weekend and we’re attending a barbecue,” she said.
Her arms were once again loaded down and she glanced toward the sales girl. “Come on, Mom, help me try these dresses on and tell me which one looks the best.”
They walked into the dressing room and she shed her jeans and shirt. She had worn shoes with a higher heel knowing she would need to know the length of the dress.
While she wiggled into the first outfit, her mother took a seat in a chair in the corner. Once she had the dress up, she turned so that her mother could zip it up.
Stepping back, she gazed at herself in the mirror. The dress was fitted and showed off her curves. She liked the color and it made her blue eyes sparkle.
“Not bad,” she said, gazing at herself in the mirrors as she twirled around.
“Too tight,” her mother said. “But I do like the color.”
The dress was very fitted.
Turning around for her mother to unzip her, she hung up the dress on a separate hook of possibilities.
“Madison, I know you were so angry at your father for leaving us and never coming back to see you, but don’t let that stop you from finding a man who loves you, getting married, and having children.”
They’d had this conversation several times, too, but her mother would elaborate once more.
“Mom, like I’ve told you before, it’s not just our family situation, though that doesn’t help. I’ve almost walked down the aisle twice now. The first one came out as gay. And the second one cheated,” she said, remembering the girl calling her up and saying she was pregnant and the father was Madison’s boyfriend.
“You’ve had two failures. That’s not the end of the world,” her mother said.
“And a father who left us because his second family needed him more,” she replied, recalling the hurt and anger she’d felt when she learned of his leaving.
That was when that her mother had taken the job out at the Kissing Oaks Ranch and she’d grown up there with the Landry boys. In many ways, she was stronger because of them – of the way they had not babied her but treated her like another brother.
