Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
T ori paced the living room, one breath away from bursting into her mom’s bedroom. She hadn’t said she was going to kidnap Mia mid-party—and what the hell were they talking about in there? For an hour?
As soon as they walked out of the hallway together, Tori held her breath. It was obvious they’d been crying, and it took all of her self-control not to ask why. She clenched her teeth and looked for clues. Neither Mia or her mom looked upset right then, but they obviously had been.
Giving her some bullshit about needing more ice, Mia grabbed her purse with Tori’s keys inside and went out the front door. Worried, Tori followed.
They made it all the way to the gas station, packed on a sticky Sunday afternoon, before Tori broke. As soon as Mia walked out of the store with a receipt for six enormous bags of ice, Tori put her hands on her hip. Blocking the massive ice chest next to the cage full of propane tanks, Tori couldn’t stand another minute of not knowing.
“What happened?” Tori asked, sounding more scared than annoyed. “With my mom,” she specified before Mia could tap dance around the direct question.
She usually didn’t mind Mia’s skillful pirouetting around hard things. She’d never lost patience waiting for her to be ready. But the pit in her stomach had bred unbearable anxiety, and she couldn’t take it anymore. If Mia was going to dump her, she just needed to know now. She couldn’t handle the unknown. Not again. Not like this.
From crying, Mia’s hazel eyes had turned the bright green of spring. She looked at her like she was debating how far it would be to run home instead of answering. But then she took a deep breath and shoved the receipt in the pocket of her jeans.
“I told her something,” Mia said, gripping her own hands for comfort. “Something I’ve been scared to tell you.”
Clenching her jaw, Tori braced for the truth—the one that would yank her out of this impossible, fragile happiness. She’d known, somewhere deep in her heart, that she couldn’t possibly be so lucky. Nothing in life had ever been so effortless and easy as being with Mia. Of course it couldn’t be real. There was another shoe out there, and with her luck, it would kick her in the teeth rather than drop.
“Okay.” Tori tried to sound brave even when every muscle in her body was trembling. Even when she was torn between throwing up and passing out. “Whatever it is, Mia. I want to know.”
Mia nodded, gaze flashing down to the gross sidewalk peppered with black splotches of old gum and bird shit and streaks of running water. Or what she hoped was water. It made sense, Tori thought, that illusions would be shattered in a disgusting gas station with reggaeton blaring from a car so low to the ground it defied logic.
“I told her what I think I’d been trying to tell Marigold,” she started, too far from the end.
Tori wished she could hit fast-forward. To just know so she could go home and shatter and get on with the business of putting herself back together again. She shoved her useless hands into pockets that were two fucking small and tried to wait.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you something you want. That being with me will be like, I don’t know, incomplete?” Her eyes glistened and Tori resisted the urge to scoop her up and tell her that everything would be okay.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to hold Mia close. It’s that she didn’t trust her knees wouldn’t give out if she took a step. Didn’t trust her voice would cooperate if she tried to speak.
“You are so incredible, Tori. And I know people throw that out there all the time, but you really are. I’ve never met anyone like you. Actually, I’m pretty sure there’s no one else like you in the world,” she said, beginning what Tori imagined was her version of it’s not you, it’s me .
Tori wanted to say that she didn’t need to be let down gently. That she actually preferred to be drop-kicked so she could get a head start home.
“And you deserve everything , Tori. You deserve someone who’s whole. Someone who can give you a family.” She looked down at the hands that had gone white where she held them too hard. “And I just wouldn’t survive another loss like that, Tori. There’s just not enough therapy in the world for me to get there. Whether it’s your body or mine or a surrogate’s. I just can’t do it.” A thin tear streamed down one of her flushed cheeks and it was like a bell bringing Tori out of hypnosis.
“Are you trying to tell me you don’t want kids?” Tori needed clarity before she unclenched every muscle in her body.
Mia shut her eyes tight before she nodded. When she looked at Tori again, her unforgettable eyes were dripping with heartbreak. “Tori, I swear I understand if that’s a deal breaker.”
With a laugh that spasmed in her weak muscles, Tori took a step forward, relieved she hadn’t fallen to her knees. “Baby, don’t you get it by now? There is no such thing as a deal breaker with you.”
“You can’t know that you’ll never want a family?—”
“There are so many ways to be a family, Mia. You. Just you. Are more than enough.” She reached out for her and Mia slid into her arms. “I never imagined my life with kids, but if at any time you change your mind about what you want, I support you a thousand percent.”
“What if you change your mind?” Mia clung to her, body shivering like it wasn’t nearly eighty degrees outside.
“I haven’t in thirty-three years,” she promised. “You are more than enough. I can’t imagine a life more full than one I live with you,” she said, stopping short of telling Mia she loved her with every fiber of her being. That it was easy to trade something she didn’t even want for the only thing she did—though she hoped Mia wouldn’t barricade the road to motherhood. There were other ways that didn’t involve pregnancy, but it wasn’t the time for that conversation.
“Don’t you want more?” Mia looked up at her but didn’t move from their hug.
“What more could I want? I love my job. I have you. One really good friend. Running. My family.” She grinned. “What more is there?”
With a raspy chuckle, Mia shook her head. “Wow, one friend, huh?”
“I know, right?” Tori smiled. “I’m a lucky little shit.”
Mia sniffled and wiped her eyes before Tori could. “Okay, but if I’m not allowed to run away and you’re not going to break up with me, can we slap a label on this bad boy already?”
“What?”
Mia rolled her eyes, but her smile was too bright to sell it. “Victoria Cruz, I’m asking you to be my girlfriend.”
“At a Chevron?” Tori screeched.
Mia’s laughter rang against Tori’s ribcage. She squeezed her tighter. “Are you being a princess about this?”
Whiplashed, Tori struggled to find her words. “We can’t do this here! You deserve— I mean, Jesus, anything better than a freaking propane cage! I had been waiting for the right time. It felt kind of weird to ask you when you were still technically married, and then I didn’t want to spring it on you right when you came back, and?—”
Mia cut off Tori’s spiraling with a kiss, warm and trembling, lips swollen and salty from crying. Tori’s frantic energy dissolved. Her pulse slowed. The suboptimal surroundings shrank to Mia’s mouth, her hands, her certainty.
“What an adorably neurotic side of you,” Mia said when she pulled away, leaving her arms around Tori’s neck.
Holding on to Mia’s waist for dear life, Tori was barely aware of being stared at by randos pumping gas. “At least a nice restaurant,” she mumbled, trying to hang on to her disapproval but focus shifting to the truth of Mia’s body in her arms. Of her heart, already living in Mia’s chest.
“This moment is perfect, Tori. You are all I need.” Grinning up at her, Mia sighed as if overcome by a revelation. “You are all I’ve ever needed.”
A car honked a moment before an old man cursed at a soda delivery truck for having the audacity of existing.
Tori laughed. “Oh, yeah. Perfect.”
Mia pulled Tori down to her lips again. “Absolutely perfect.”