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“No. Not right now. I need to think things through.” My stomach dropping to the floor told me like nothing else that I teetered on the edge of a mistake, but I could see no way forward at this point.
Brayleigh settled in and pointed at the tv, asking for her favorite show. I flicked it on, and she curled against me.
“I’m going to go into the kitchen and make us something to eat,” Hope said softly. “And then I think we should talk.”
By the time Hope called me to bring Brayleigh in to eat, I was chomping at the bit to get to Minty.
“I can see you want to go. I get it. But I need you to put the brakes on for just a few minutes.” She held her hands out to placate me. “If we ever hope to find love, we need to put up some boundaries in our relationship.”
“I treat you like I’m your brother,” I sighed.
“Yes. You do. And that’s been fine up until this point. But now I think you must treat me like an attractive woman with whom you have a child and an amicable relationship.” She inhaled deeply. “You are my best friend. You may as well be gay. I may as well be gay for all the romantic feelings between us, but that’s not what the world sees. And that’s not what Minty sees. How would Minty feel if you slapped my ass in front of her friends?”
I pictured them, Barrett, Lenny, Junie, Willa, Mara, Bex… frig, Amber would castrate me. “I see what you mean.”
“Lucky,” Hope whispered. “She’d be humiliated. She was humiliated. And if I was dating someone? Well, let me put it to you like this. If Lenny or Barrett patted Minty on the ass? Would you be okay with that?”
I saw red. “No fucking way.”
“So, who’s unhinged? I don’t think it’s Minty.”
A single tear slid down her cheek.
I scooped it with my thumb. “Why the tear?”
“Because this is the end of our friendship as we’ve known it. Because Lucky, even though we don’t have sex, even though we don’t live together, in every other way that matters we are partners. You can only have one partner. And you’ve just found yours.”
I fed the baby and ate what I could, my mind lost in Hope’s words. She was right. But change was hard.
So was loss.
Hope broke the silence. “I’m going to stay here until you get back, and then I’m going to go home. Or, if you want, I can take Brayleigh home with me.”
“No, please don’t do that. Can you stay for a couple of hours? I need to see if she’ll talk to me, but I don’t want to disrupt Brayleigh’s routine.”
Minty
I blasted my music and lay back on my bed. The nice thing about living above the stores is that after hours there was nobody to complain about the noise.
1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5
There was just nobody there at all.
1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5
I turned it up another couple of notches, but it still wasn’t enough.
I pulled my headphones out of the drawer beside my bed and settled them over my ears to block out the world. It hurt more than it should for the short time we were together. I let him in too quickly, much deeper than I should have.
I turned up the music, allowing it to counterbalance the chaos, to buffer the whirling tornado of emotions inside me that threatened to sweep my feet from under me.
The tangle of blankets on my bed, that he’d held me in just that morning, wrapped around my legs.
I ripped the headphones off my head. Grabbing my pillow and a blanket, I went out to the living room and curled up on the window seat.
This was my life. Alone behind the glass, looking out on the rest of the world.
Even so, I was fortunate. I’d been loved. There were good people and unfathomable love in my life. Financially free, I could pursue my art or nothing at all. My time was my own. Truly, I was blessed.
