Chapter 23
Girls night at the clubhouse sounds fun in theory.
In practice, it means half the downstairs smells like microwave popcorn and fruity body spray, there are at least ten different blankets taking over the sectional, somebody’s shoes are in the middle of the floor where they absolutely should not be, and the men have all been banished with enough force that even the dumbest among them got the message the first time.
Which, honestly, is probably the most impressive part.
The living room is lit softer than usual, the lamp by the big chair turned on instead of the overhead lights, the television running some reality show none of us are actually paying attention to because the real entertainment is in this room.
Amy is already upstairs with Emma helping get Jason settled, and the rest of us are spread out in our usual chaotic formation.
Kya is sprawled across one end of the sectional like she’s been shot in battle, one hand resting dramatically over her stomach and the other dangling toward the floor with a half-empty bag of sour candy.
Brooke is on the rug with a laundry basket of tiny baby clothes between her knees, folding them slowly and periodically stopping to get emotional over things that do not, in my opinion, warrant tears.
Mac is in the armchair with one leg tucked under her and a bowl of strawberries balanced on the armrest, pretending to be above all of this while also being more tuned in than anyone else in the room.
Shaina is stretched out on the floor on her stomach, chin propped in her hands, scrolling through her phone and making commentary no one asked for.
Ana is beside me on the couch, stealing my chips and pretending she isn’t.
Emma comes back in from the hallway with her hair pulled up and that calm, motherly softness she somehow wears without ever seeming weak. She carries a mug of tea in one hand and lowers herself onto the loveseat like she’s settling into a watch post.
And me?
I am doing my absolute best not to come apart in front of all of them. Which is going great.
“Tell me again,” Kya says to nobody and everybody, “why my spine feels like it’s trying to exit my body through my ass.”
Brooke looks up from a pair of pale yellow baby pajamas and blinks. “That was such an ugly sentence.”
“It’s an ugly feeling.”
Mac reaches for another strawberry. “You’re lucky I like you, because if anybody else said that while I was eating, I’d make them leave. Don’t do it again or I’ll follow through.”
Kya doesn’t even look offended. “You won’t make me leave.”
“I will absolutely make you leave.”
“No, you won’t.”
Mac stares at her for one flat second. “You’re right. I’ll have Dom carry you out.”
That gets a laugh out of Ana and Shaina at the same time.
Kya points a gummy worm in Mac’s direction. “That man has become completely useless, by the way.”
Emma smiles softly over the rim of her mug. “Because he brought you the wrong chicken salad?”
“Because he breathed wrong while handing me the wrong chicken salad,” Kya corrects.
Brooke lets out a watery little laugh and lifts a tiny pair of socks from the basket. “These are so small.”
Shaina looks over. “They’re baby socks, Brooke. That’s kind of the point.”
“I know.” Brooke’s voice wobbles anyway. “But look at them.”
Ana leans over to glance at the socks and immediately grins. “Okay, that is kind of cute.”
Brooke presses the socks to her chest like she’s just been handed proof that life is beautiful and worth living. “I’m not emotionally stable enough for this.”
“That’s become clear,” Mac mutters.
I laugh because they’re ridiculous, because girl’s nights in this club somehow always feel like stepping into the warmest, weirdest kind of safety.
And maybe that’s why I finally break here.
Not because anyone pushes too hard. Because no one does. Because this room is soft enough for the hurt to stop bracing itself.
“You’re quiet,” Emma says gently. There’s no accusation in it. Just noticing. That’s always been her way. She sees things and makes room for them instead of cornering them.
“I’m listening,” I say.
Shaina snorts. “You’ve been staring at the same throw pillow for like ten minutes.”
“That’s not true.”
Ana bumps her shoulder into mine. “Allie.”
There’s too much knowing packed into one word.
I should lie. I really should. I should smile and tell them I’m tired. Tell them I’ve got a headache. Tell them I’m fine in that easy, practiced way women do when we’re trying not to spill our guts all over the furniture.
Instead, I look down at my hands and say, “He did something really shitty.”
Silence falls fast. Not sharp. Not tense.
Just immediate.
Every woman in the room shifts a little.
Kya sits up more slowly than usual, the theatrics gone in an instant. Brooke stills with a tiny sleeper half folded in her lap. Mac sets down the strawberry she hadn’t eaten yet. Shaina’s phone drops to the rug beside her. Ana turns fully toward me so hard our knees knock together.
Emma doesn’t say anything. She just waits. And somehow that makes it easier to keep going.
“He pulled one of the club girls into his lap,” I say, staring at a loose thread in the couch cushion because I can’t quite make myself look at any of them yet. “Made sure I saw it.”
The reaction is immediate and violent in six different flavors.
Ana is first. “The other night?” Not shocked. Furious. Pure, protective fury on behalf of her best friend and apparently not particularly invested in the fact that the man in question is her brother.
Shaina pushes herself upright. “That’s why you went to bed early? Oh, I’ll kill him.”
Brooke actually clutches one tiny hand to her chest. “No.”
Kya says, with terrifying calm, “I need a weapon.”
Mac closes her eyes for one second like she’s asking the universe for strength before opening them again. “That was intentional.”
It isn’t a question.
I finally look up and nod. “Yeah.”
Emma’s expression doesn’t harden, not exactly, but something in her face shifts enough to tell me she understands exactly what kind of damage a move like that is meant to do. “Did he say anything after?” she asks.
I laugh once, short and sharp. “No. He didn’t need to.”
Because that’s the part that really gets under my skin.
Not that he was with another woman. Not even that he wanted me to think he wanted another woman. That he did it like punishment. Like I’d done something to him by trying to move on. Like he got to hurt me first because he didn’t like the shape of his own jealousy.
Ana is shaking her head already, mouth tight. “I swear to God, Allie, I will go upstairs right now and kick him in the balls.”
“You are not going upstairs right now,” Emma says calmly.
Ana jerks her gaze to her. “He humiliated her.”
“I know.”
“And I’m supposed to just sit here?”
“For the next five minutes?” Emma asks gently. “Yes.”
That should not work as well as it does.
But it’s Emma. When she says something, it lands.
Even Ana only looks mutinous instead of actively dangerous now.
Shaina, who has no interest in being soothed if she can be dramatic instead, points at me and says, “See? This is what I mean. He keeps acting like some caveman with emotional issues every time another man looks at you and then pretends that should somehow count as effort.”
“That is exactly what it feels like,” I say quietly.
And there it is.
The actual thing sitting under all of it. Not just the hurt. The pattern.
The constant, impossible, infuriating pattern of Jimmy only ever really moving when he feels like he’s losing me.
Not when I need him. Not when honesty would cost him something. Not when he could just say one real thing and save us both all this misery.
Just when another man notices me. Just when I pull away. Just when his own fear gets loud enough to force him into motion.
Kya makes a disgusted noise and starts unwrapping another piece of candy like she’s going to chew through someone’s spine. “That man needs to get his shit together.”
Mac leans back in the chair and crosses her arms. “No. At this point, he needs consequences.”
Brooke nods immediately, a tiny footed sleeper forgotten in her lap. “You can’t keep letting him set the terms.”
That lands too.
Because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing, isn’t it?
Waiting for his moods. Reacting to his distance. Letting him decide when there’s heat and when there’s silence and when I’m allowed to matter.
I hate that realization.
Not because it’s wrong. Because it’s right.
“I know,” I say.
“Do you?” Mac asks.
There’s no cruelty in it. That’s what makes it sting.
She’s not being mean. She’s being exact.
I look at her. “I thought I did.”
Mac nods once. “That’s fair.”
Emma shifts on the loveseat and sets her mug on the side table. “Baby, wanting somebody doesn’t mean you owe them endless understanding while they keep wounding you.”
My throat tightens. Because that’s the thing I keep trying not to say out loud.
I still want him.
I still want him after the office and the aftermath and the hallway kiss and the way he keeps looking at me like I’m the answer to a question he hates answering.
I still want him after every mixed signal and every retreat and every time he gives me intensity instead of the one solid thing I actually need.
And that feels humiliating enough on its own without hearing it framed that clearly.
“He looked at me like he hated himself when I walked away,” I say before I can stop myself.
The second the words are out, I want to bite them back. Because what kind of pathetic, hopeless thing is that to admit after everything else?
But Emma just nods slowly, like she’d expected that. “And that made you feel responsible for it,” she says softly.
Yes.
Not because I think I should be. Because Jimmy has this terrible way of making his pain feel like part of the equation even when he’s the one causing mine.
Ana lets out a sharp breath. “I hate that.”
“Same,” Kya mutters.