Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
I take Lucy out for drinks the next night and tell her that I’ve been sleeping with Ash for six months.
She doesn’t say a word, just storms out of the brewery and doesn’t answer my texts.
* * *
Lucy spends three days not answering my texts or calls. I consider going over to her house to try to talk it out in person, but she lives with her well-meaning-but-nosy parents, and neither of us wants to explain this to them.
It lasts a week. Nora refuses to run interference between the two of us, and I can’t blame her.
Saturday night, I finally come up with a plan.
* * *
I’m not surveilling Lucy’s house, because that would be weird and I’m just a friend who fucked up pretty bad, not a private detective. I’m just… quietly waiting nearby until her parents leave for church on Sunday morning.
As I walk to the front door of her parents’ house, my hands are shaking a little. I really wish I’d had breakfast, but everything in my kitchen was so unappealing I didn’t bother.
I’ve got the chocolate croissant she likes from the bakery in one hand and a Venus flytrap in the other.
Flowers would have made her parents suspicious, and besides, she’s probably more in the mood for a murder plant than something pretty.
Obviously, I’m here to apologize, but half the reason I’m nervous is I’m not sure I’m willing to apologize enough.
I’m definitely sorry that I wasn’t honest with Lucy, and I’m sorry that her heart got broken, and I’m sorry the last year has been rough for her, and I’m really, really sorry that I probably made it worse by lying to her about whether I was sleeping with her ex.
But I’m not actually sorry for sleeping with her ex, which is something I’ve now been doing for two months longer than they dated.
When Lucy answers the door, she’s in an enormous t-shirt and pajama shorts, and she glares for at least ten seconds without saying anything.
“Okay. Fine,” she says at last, then turns and walks into the house, so I follow her.
“I brought a peace offering,” I say as she heads into the kitchen, grabbing two mugs from the cabinet. If she’s grabbing two, she can’t be that mad at me any more.
“Is that—” she says, then tilts her head to read the label on the bag. “Oh, goddammit.”
She waves a hand in the air.
“They’re at church, by the way. Where they’ve been trying to get me to go with them so I can meet a nice husband.”
Mugs forgotten, she takes the bag, pulls out the croissant, and tears into it.
“There’s probably nice men at church,” I point out, taking over pouring the coffee.
“Yeah, but I’ve met them all and I don’t want to marry any of them,” she says.
She chews the croissant, and I fix her coffee the way she likes it before handing it over. For a long moment, we just stand there, leaning on opposite counters and it feels sort of normal, like we’re sixteen again and just had a sleepover.
“I’m sorry for going behind your back with Ash,” I say, after it’s been long enough. “I should have at least told you.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, but she doesn’t seem angry. Or, not that angry, at least. “I wish you had, I feel like such an idiot for being the only one who didn’t know.”
“We didn’t tell anyone,” I say. “Nora found out by accident.”
That gets a withering look, so I drop that line of apology.
“She’s on your side, by the way,” Lucy finally mutters.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Okay, not entirely,” Lucy admits. “But. You know.”
I nod and sip my coffee, because I do know.
“I’m sorry too,” Lucy finally blurts out.
“It’s not up to me who you date, or who you’re sleeping with, and it’s not like he was the love of my life or some shit, it’s just—that breakup really fucked me up and I wasn’t expecting it to, and even though it’s been like a year and a half I’m still sort of mad at him about it.
Even if that doesn’t really make sense.”
“It was a really shitty time,” I say, because it was.
“He dumped me like three weeks after Nana died, and it was right when I was finding out that my landlord hadn’t gotten my rent check in like four months, and my old job was talking about laying people off, and—I dunno, it was easier to be mad at some stupid boy then all the complicated things in my life,” she says.
I watch her for a moment, tapping one finger against my mug.
“Lucy,” I say, slowly. “Have you… been to therapy?”
She sticks her tongue out and flips me off.
“Not yet,” she admits into the coffee mug. “I made an appointment.”
“That’s great!”
She makes a noise.
“Seriously. I’m proud of you,” I say. “That part’s hard.”
“You slept with my ex, you don’t get to be proud of me,” she says, but I can tell the bitchiness is just for show so I cross the kitchen and give her a big, obnoxious hug.
We stay like that for a long time. I think she might be crying, a little bit, so I don’t let go because I know she doesn’t want me to see her.
“I just,” she says, a few minutes later. “Wanted someone. I wanted it to be my turn.”
I sigh into her hair, smooshing my face against her.
“It will be,” I tell her. “Promise.”