Thirty-nine
On a Saturday, six weeks earlier, Lexi had sat in this very spot and lied her ass off. As she waited for her guests to join her now, she kept her gaze down, not wanting to chat with Brett, who was clearing tables for one of the new waitresses. A petty part of Lexi enjoyed that she wasn’t very good. Because some things were harder than others and no one really knew what they’d be good at until they tried.
She missed Will with an intensity that terrified her. But until she could face herself in the mirror, she couldn’t be who he needed. Jackie and Becca came through the patio doors, joining her at the table she’d sat at with Will. She’d asked Brett if it was okay to pull a second table so there was room for the three of them.
“Finally,” Jackie said, leaning down to hug Lexi. “I thought you were going to put us off forever. Where did you go at the party? Did something happen?”
“I didn’t even get to see you. I’m sorry.” Becca removed her jacket, hung it on the chair. She too leaned down to hug Lexi.
“Don’t worry about it.” Lexi was just grateful no one had seen her dramatic exit.
The waitress, a young girl, probably barely old enough to serve liquor, came to the table.
“Hi. Can I get you ladies something to drink?” Her smile was sweet and Lexi had a vivid flashback to a time when everything seemed wide open and attainable.
“The service is definitely better this time,” Jackie said with a laugh. “I’ll take an iced tea.”
“Oh, that sounds good. Me too,” Becca said.
The girl looked at Lexi. This girl would go through her share of up and downs too. She wouldn’t be in control of some of them but it was up to her how she faced them. It took Lexi too long to realize that.
“I’ll have the same. Thank you.”
The girl smiled, walked into the restaurant.
“Okay,” Jackie said, putting her perfectly manicured hands on the table. “I say we do a girls’ night. We’ll make it themed. Besties old and new. I met your friend Maisie and we were talking about it. She’s on board. Becs, a bunch of people follow you from high school, right? We’ll invite some of them. Lena and her wife, your friend Jamie.”
Becca nodded enthusiastically, making notes in her phone.
“I can’t,” Lexi said.
Both women stopped and looked at her. She took a deep breath, wishing she had her iced tea just to have something to do with her hands. “Actually, that’s not true. I don’t want to.”
Jackie’s face crumpled. She looked so sad that Lexi reached out and put a hand on hers.
“I want to reconnect with you two. I just don’t want to have high school parties or hang out with a bunch of people I wasn’t close to ten years ago.”
“Oh,” Jackie said, pulling her hand away.
“Let’s do something smaller. Us. Your friend Maisie. We won’t worry about a bunch of people we used to know. Hell, we didn’t worry about them back in the day, why would we now?” Becca laughed. “Though I’m always curious what people are up to. Where their lives led them.”
Tucking her hands in her lap, Lexi took one more fortifying breath. “Probably not where they planned. I know that’s true for me.”
The waitress brought their drinks, setting them down with a slightly shaky hand. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Hmm, should we just share a veggie platter? Maybe some hummus and pita?” Jackie asked Becca.
Becca looked at Lexi. “That okay with you?”
Since her stomach rolled like an angry ocean, eating wasn’t on her agenda. “Sure.”
The waitress wrote it down and left.
“Lexi, are you okay?” Jackie asked after taking a sip of her tea.
“I lied to you guys. Right here on this patio,” Lexi said. The relief of telling them made her shoulders feel ten pounds lighter. She sat up straighter.
“What are you talking about?” Becca asked, her gaze narrowing.
Lexi told them everything. The truth about living at home, her mom, the Dress Hut, Will. Waitressing. They sat, listening intently, their expressions unreadable. Even Jackie, who could usually broadcast her feelings with a look, gave nothing away.
“Why would you lie?” Becca asked softly.
“You guys came in looking like you’d barely aged. I was having a bad day. Everything was going wrong and there you both were like a visual reminder of where my life was supposed to go.” She pointed at Becca. “You with your million followers and book deals.” She looked at Jackie. “You with your big rock of an engagement ring, Lena with her partnership. I couldn’t even carry soup.” She showed them the little spot on her left thumb pad. “Look, I have a scar from spilling it.”
Becca covered her mouth, and her eyes suggested she was covering a laugh. Jackie leaned in like she was really concerned, then leaned back.
“Nigel’s mother hates me. I mean, can’t stand to be in the same room as me. She only comes to our house when I’m working late and when I get home, I notice all of these little things she’s changed. A vase in a different spot, my towels folded differently. One time, she rearranged my silverware drawer because the small and large spoons should go next to each other. Nigel says I’m just being paranoid, that she’s just trying to help. Hates. Me.”
Becca gave Jackie’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze, then looked at Lexi. “I bought my first one hundred thousand followers. You can do that. I was feeling lonely and bored and tired of like three people responding to my posts. At that time, even bad engagement was good for me.”
Lexi’s gaze widened. “I had no idea.”
Jackie smiled. “Why would you? What we present in public or online is very rarely the whole story.”
“I’m sorry. I feel like an awful person,” Lexi admitted.
“You avoided us because you were lying and didn’t want us to know the whole truth?” Becca asked.
Lexi nodded, feeling like a child who knew she was about to get scolded.
“Because you cared what we thought. Because you remembered who we used to be, individually and together. We were happy to see you, Lexi. We were high on some successes that day. But that doesn’t mean every day up to that point was perfect.”
Jackie murmured an agreement. “A month before he proposed, I showed up at Becs’s with a bottle of cheap wine—the exact one you brought to our house.” She winked at Lexi. “I drank the whole thing and told her Nigel was never going to ask me. That we were going nowhere.”
“You guys seem so happy together,” Lexi said.
“We are. But it takes work. Life takes work. And patience, friends who can pull you out of the pit of despair and remind you to shake it off. That you can do this. I’m sorry you thought we’d judge you poorly for doing your best to deal with things that were out of your control.”
Tears burned. “I’m sorry I put my own insecurities on you. I was really happy to see you guys too. I’ve missed you and thought about you. I just wasn’t happy with who I was and didn’t want you to see that version of me.”
Becca reached across the table but pulled back when the waitress brought their food. She set it in the center of the table with some side plates and napkins. They thanked her, took a minute to add some snacks to their plates. Lexi’s stomach had calmed a bit so she added some carrots and dip to hers.
“I think who we are can change more times than we can count. You have to take the moments that make you happy and hang on to them. Have you talked to Will?” Jackie asked. She bit into a piece of celery.
“No. I want to. I miss him more than I thought possible but every time I think about phoning or texting, I think, if it hurts this much to be away from him after only six weeks, I understand why my mother fell apart. Twenty-five years of loving someone so much it becomes a piece of you. Now I feel like I misjudged her as well. We were only ever dating and I haven’t wanted to do anything since I walked away. Not get dressed, shower, do my hair, go out. I kept thinking my mom should just get better, move on, but now I don’t know how she’s come as far as she has.”
“She won’t ever forget him, Lex. Neither will you. He’ll always be part of her and you. But she’ll move on, become a different version of herself. Not better, not worse, just changed, ” Becca said, dipping a piece of broccoli in the hummus.
“See,” Lexi said with a watery laugh, “you have grown up. You’re so smart. How the hell do you know so much?”
“It’s easier to pick apart someone else’s life and spot the ways to fix it than it is your own.” Jackie grabbed some pita chips, put a few on Becca’s plate.
“She’s right. Plus, writing books is hella hard. Like, way harder than I thought, so I’ve been doing all of this research and reading all of these books, trying to figure out how I can say something different. Something that matters.”
“What you guys have said to me matters.”
“We judge ourselves through pretty harsh lenses,” Jackie said.
“Hmm,” Becca said, swirling a pita chip in the dip. “You’re giving me book ideas. The book is tentatively titled Finding Your Own Happy . Maybe I need to explore the idea of accepting the different versions of yourself, past and present, as the road to getting there.”
“Careful how you word things or you’ll end up in a whole different section of the bookstore with finding your happy and getting yourself there,” Jackie said, stabbing the air with a chip for emphasis.
The three women dissolved into laughter and for the first time since she was twenty-two, Lexi felt like maybe everything would work out okay. More than that, maybe she wasn’t doing so bad after all.