Chapter 4
Nic
“Any new hot, high-profile clients?” Derek asks while he fixes me a gin and tonic.
It’s an old joke—because he knows very well I can’t say—and so is my response. “Madonna came to see me. I’ll have her all fixed up in no time.”
“Please don’t fix Madonna,” he says. “She’s perfect just the way she is, and she always will be.” He hands me my drink and we head out to the patio.
Once we’ve sat down, he holds up his glass. “In memory of our beloved Lois.”
I clink my glass to his. “May she be served an equally tasty drink wherever she is,” I say, rather stupidly, while toasting my deceased wife. She would have been sixty-eight today, but she only made it to sixty-three and two months.
“May she swear into eternity. She was so damn good at it. Remember when she called me Lady Sasshole?”
“I’m still chuckling from when she called you a limp-wristed attention whore.”
“She was always on the money.” Derek grins. “I miss her terms of endearment every day.”
I take a breath because I don’t want to cry. I didn’t come here to break down in tears. I came to see my best friend, and to have a drink in Lois’s memory in good company—company she loved, too.
“Where’s Ben?” It’s safer to talk about significant others that are still alive and kicking.
“Late shift.” Derek looks me in the eye. “Speaking of…”
I take a sip, expecting some insider information about their relationship.
“Ben has a new captain at the station.” He waggles his eyebrows. “She looks mighty good in a uniform.”
“Really?” I tilt my head. “On Lois’s birthday?”
“Exactly on Lois’s birthday,” he says. “Today is an excellent day to nudge you toward the semblance of a love life again. You’re fifty-four, Nic. Are you really planning on staying single the rest of your life?”
“I honestly have no idea.” I take a gulp of my drink rather than a sip.
“Come on. You must have thought about it.”
“Sure, but… I’m not interested in anyone else. Lois was one of a kind. Where am I going to find someone like her again?”
“Agreed, she was completely unique.” He nods. “But maybe another Lois is not what you should be looking for.”
“We were together for almost twenty years. That’s not something you can just shake off.”
“That’s not what I’m asking you to do,” Derek says.
“Also, when you’re into older women, it’s even more difficult to find someone to…” I can’t even name it properly. Connect with? Have some sort of chemistry with?
“Hm,” is all Derek replies to that.
“Fine,” I say on a sigh. “Tell me about the captain.” Listening to Derek doesn’t commit me to anything.
“She’s only fifty,” he says. “Does that put you off already?”
I have to laugh as I shake my head. “No.”
“Granted,” Derek says, “it’s not easy being a cub in your fifties. It doesn’t really sound right.”
“Yet I’ll never be a cougar like you.”
“Daddy,” Derek says. “Please.”
“All right, Daddy.” I find his twinkling gaze. He’s enjoying this, and we might as well enjoy ourselves on Lois’s birthday—we’ve cried over her sudden loss enough. “Do you have a picture of this fifty-year-old firefighter lady?”
“Of course.” He grabs his phone and scrolls through it, then shows me the screen. The woman looking back at me does look very dapper in her uniform, but she’s just a picture.
“Quite butch,” I say.
“Nuh-huh,” Derek says. “You can’t say that anymore. It’s masc now.”
“Argh,” I groan. “I’m too old for all this. I don’t even know the correct terms anymore.”
“You’re never too old. Look at Ida and Faye, both very close to fifty when they got together.”
“I can’t compare myself to Ida Burton and Faye Fleming.”
“Why not?”
“If Ida’s coming out hadn’t coincided with her falling in love with Faye, she would have had hundreds of suitors.
” And also because Ida Burton is one of the most beautiful women on the planet, I don’t say out loud.
Derek used to be married to her—they were each other’s beard until Derek couldn’t take it anymore and bust out of the closet.
Ida kept up the charade much longer, until she finally cracked as well.
And how—the one and only Faye Fleming was waiting for her outside of the closet.
“Darling, you’re absolutely gorgeous,” Derek says. “The only reason you don’t notice that other women are interested in you is because you have no interest in them. We only see what we want to see.”
“Are you suggesting I go on a date with Ben’s new lesbian boss?” I quirk my eyebrows. “I can still say lesbian, can’t I?” I’m being facetious, but in my job, I have to watch every single word I say, so it feels good to just say whatever comes to mind when I’m with my friends.
“We could have you both over for dinner. Keep it casual.”
“Let me think about it.” I sink into my chair.
“I know you loved Lois so incredibly much, but I’m convinced that she’d want you to find love again. Didn’t you talk about that sort of stuff, what with her being almost fifteen years older than you?”
“Those are not the conversations I remember,” I say, although I know, in my heart of hearts, that Lois would want me to find happiness with someone new.
Derek slides his hand over the table toward mine. “Just say the word and I’ll set it up.”
“Thanks, Lady Sasshole,” I quip.
“Why did it always sound so much better, hardly even like an insult, when Lois said it?” Derek gives my hand a little squeeze.
“She had the rare gift of charming you while calling you names. It made her very special.”
“She was one of a kind.”
“Stubborn enough to make a mule look reasonable,” I say. In a way, it’s what killed her. That in combination with being the world’s worst driver while being convinced she was the best.