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I’ve cried, made a fuck-ton of cardboard turkeys and a full drink menu for the holiday dinner, cried some more, and then picked up the abandoned binocs to verify that my friend across the alley is still gone. The disappointment I felt says a lot about how lonely I am.
I didn’t mean to spill everything to Ruthie, but as soon as I texted her about Thanksgiving plans, she called me back—and it didn’t take long for the whole story to come gushing out. Probably not the best idea, given that Danny got so upset about what she told me before. But I needed a sympathetic ear, and she knows Danny better than anyone, I think. Better even than his friends. She was adamant that she was spending Thanksgiving with me and, if she had anything to do with it, Danny would be too.
“He does this, you know,” she said, leading to the obvious question—
“Does what?”
“When everything gets too much for him, he buries himself…well, inside of himself. But it never lasts forever.”
This would be a banner time for it to start.
“Thanks,” I said, because I was pretty sure she’d said it to make me feel better. “Whatever happens, you’re pretty great.”
“So are you,” she said sadly. “Do you know where he is now?”
“No,” I admitted, not feeling great about that fact, even though I could have asked and didn’t.
“I know.” She sounded pissed about it, which confirmed a suspicion I’d already had.
“You think he’s at Shane’s.”
“Of course, where else? They enable each other. They always have.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed. Considering what we now know about Daphne and Big Mike, a sharp-shooting lawyer is exactly the sort of person he should be spending time with right now. But I’m guessing Ruthie doesn’t know about any of it, and Danny wouldn’t thank me for telling her. I also wasn’t about to disagree with someone who’d just offered to help me.
Ultimately, though, however much Danny loves Ruthie, she doesn’t have a say in his decisions. He’s a grown man, perfectly capable of deciding where he wants to live and who he wants to be with. The fact that he’s decided to be an idiot is completely and one hundred percent under his control.
I’m pissed at him for giving up when he’s the one who told me, more than once, that we’d work through our differences.
So a big part of me is running onfuck youenergy.
But I’m also devastated for me—and for him. Because we did have something special, and he walked away from it, whatever his reasons.
I’m also scared that he’s going to find himself in the kind of trouble that not even his slick-talking buddy can get him out of.
I am, in short, a mess. Which is why I’m grateful when Delia, Shauna, and Azalea agree to come over for an early afternoon drink and bitch session so I can complain to them. They file in, looking like people who have probably showered and preened at some point over the last few days, and the horror on Azalea’s face tells me what I already know. The homemade face mask I put together after watching a YouTube short both smelled terrible and was completely ineffectual.
Complaining usually makes anyone feel better, but it doesn’t do much for me this time. I’m feeling so wrung out and alone that when Delia makes her inevitable offer tocome stay with me, just for a little while,I actually consider it for more than five seconds.
But I still have enough gumption left to turn her down.
Shauna, who’s been suspiciously quiet, gulps down the rest of her drink. “I’m just going to come out and say it. I invited Josie and her boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner. She called Leonard and me, and she was sounding super pathetic, like they had nowhere else to go, and…” She shrugs, her nose wrinkling slightly like she smells the remnants of the face mask. “One thing led to another. This happened before I knew what was going on with you and Danny, obviously, otherwise I probably would have shut her down.”
“Probably?” Delia asks.
Shauna tilts her head slightly, lifting her shoulder toward her ear. “That woman has wiles I don’t begin to understand.”
“You aredeadto me,” I say with a groan. “Dead. They’re sitting next to you. In fact, I might sit the two of them between you and Leonard for ultimate torture.”
“I guess I deserve that,” she says before lifting her empty glass back to her lips again, chasing that last micro-sip. “I'm good with it as long as you sit Nana next to the detective.”
“Deacon?”
He and I are practically best friends now. After he accepted my invitation to Thanksgiving dinner, he called me up to ask my thoughts on mashed potatoes. I admitted that Danny was the one who knew how to mash a potato, and we ended up telling each other our life stories and crying over the phone. It was a very bonding experience, and now I feel responsible for his happiness and well-being.
“She better treat him right. That man has been through hell and back. His ex-girlfriend left him for a clown. Like, a legit clown. This guy had the face makeup and everything.”
Shauna sets her empty glass down. “My grandfather left Nana for a water performer, so they potentially have the circus in common.”
