Chapter 25
Eden
I’m in the doghouse big time with Pia. The day after the family barbecue was supposed to be our friend day together, but I went down a painting rabbit hole and only just emerged two hours ago.
I’ve been MIA for three days, and even though Sloane and my roomies will understand, Pia will not.
Typically, yes, she knows me well, but with a newborn, not so much.
She’s on such a short fuse with the lack of sleep and baby poop constantly being produced, so she’s not taking any shit. No pun intended.
I know this for a fact because I received a threatening text message from her only moments ago, which detailed what she’d like to do with the copious amounts of baby shit. Specifically, where she’d like to shove my head. I need to come up with something good to get out of this.
“Mum, I need your help,” I shout down the phone as soon as she picks up. “Do you have any ideas how to stop Pia from killing me?”
I could do without the laughter to be honest.
“That’s a tall order, kiddo. She’s super pissed you missed your friend day.”
“Shit! I lost track of time painting,” I whine.
“You don’t need to explain yourself to me, love. Pia, on the other hand…”
More laughing.
“Heeelllppp,” I call, causing her to laugh harder.
“Alright, I’ll help. Only because I’m sick of hearing Pia curse you out in my kitchen. I’ve got a pair of spa passes. They’re open-ended so you can go whenever. If anyone deserves some pampering, it’s a new mother.”
“Perfect! Mum you’re a true legend, thank you!”
“Mmm, remember that when I’m old and need you to wipe my arse.”
“Gross visual, but noted. I’ll be over in twenty minutes. Do you think Todd will be okay looking after Meena alone?”
“Probably not, but me and your dad are here. Pia needs to get out of the house, and honestly, she and Todd could probably do with some space.”
A weight settles in my chest. I’ve been so focused on Sloane and my life, I’ve done a proper shit job of being there for Pia.
“I’ll see you soon. Can you try and wrangle Pia into some clothes? I plan to swoop in and kidnap her before she has time to protest…or kill me.”
“Good plan. I’ll do my best.”
I break about six speed limits making it to my parents’ place. I wedge my car into a spot on the drive and take the front steps three at a time. Mum opens before I can even knock—she’s wearing her favourite apron.
“Pia’s in the living room. She’s been sharpening knives on the armrest.” Mum wipes her hands on her apron before reaching into the front pocket and producing the spa passes in an envelope. She then gestures to the living room for dramatic effect. “Wear your helmet.”
I kiss Mum on the cheek, slip off my shoes, and brace myself. The house smells like sour breastmilk and cinnamon candles. I hear Meena squawking from the back sunroom, Todd yells over her with some weird mashup of classic rock and lullabies. Poor bastard.
I steer toward the living room, spa passes clutched to my chest. Pia’s on my parents’ couch in a well-worn sweatsuit, one leg curled under her, hair twisted up in a fraying bandana.
Clearly, this was all Mum could get her to commit to, clothes-wise.
I guess it’s better than the baby barf-stained night gown I saw her in the last time I came over.
Bloody hell, her eye bags could have their own zip code.
I will absolutely not say that out loud.
She’s balancing a mug in one hand and a book, “Your Baby’s First Year: For Dummies” in the other.
She spots me, closes the book extra slow, places the mug on a coaster even though it’s empty, and gives me that look.
That look could peel paint.
“Didn’t die in an art avalanche, I see,” she deadpans, voice bone dry. “Pity.”
“Hi, best mate I have in the entire world,” I say, sliding onto the ottoman in front of her. “I have come bearing gifts and heartfelt apologies.”
She lets out a humourless laugh. “You missed friend day, Eden.”
“I swear I meant to show, but I got tunnel vision. But I brought this.” I hold up the envelope with a flourish, hoping she doesn’t take it as a challenge to kill me by a thousand envelope related paper cuts.
Her face does a complicated thing: the corners want to smile, but the centre is pure suspicion. “What’s in there?”
“A bribe, clearly.”
She takes it. “Spa passes?”
“Courtesy of Mum.” I lean in, lowering my voice. “The plan is for you and me to ditch both our families for the entire afternoon. Today. Last minute carpe diem kinda thing. I’m not leaving until you say yes.”
She stares at me, arms folded. “Meena’s borderline feral today. Todd’s about to have a breakdown. I’m still wearing what I slept in. You do realise what the word newborn means, right?”
Okay, so Mum didn’t get her to dress at all. No worries, I’m sure she tried.
I glance solemnly toward the baby’s wailing, which battles with her father’s desperate harmonies. “I do. This is a rescue mission. For both of us. But mostly for you.”
There’s a small, dangerous smile now, trying to win territory on her face. “And you think my second mum will just let Todd crash and burn?”
I love that she sees my mum as an adopted parent. I hate that her own parents are so shit.
“Already coordinated with Mum. Operation Unload Baby is a go.” I point at my phone. “She’s on bottle duty, Dad’s got diapers, I’m the designated getaway driver.”
I sound ridiculous, but the silliness is working.
She sets the envelope aside and props her foot on my knee. “You suck.”
“I know.”
She sighs. “Forty-five minutes. I have to…look like a human again.”
“I’ll time you.”
She stands, shuffles toward the stairs, then doubles back and sock-slaps the back of my head. “Don’t ever disappear on me again, Eden.”
I let her go, still feeling the zing of her affection disguised as aggression.
I set a countdown timer for forty-five minutes and retreat to the kitchen, where Mum is already wrist-deep in a mixing bowl the size of a bathtub.
She doesn’t look up when I sneak in, just mutters, “Nice recovery, superstar,” and gestures at a plate of slightly burned lemon squares cooling on the counter.
I grab two, even though the citrus aftershock always makes my left eyelid twitch. “You realise you’re aiding and abetting an abduction?” I say through the cake.
Mum shrugs, licking a spoon. “She needs you. You need her. Todd will survive. We won’t let anything happen to him or Meena.”
I rest my head on her shoulder, careful not to drop crumbs down her shirt. “I really did mean to be there for her. I just…got carried away.”
This time, she puts the spoon down and turns to look at me properly. “It’s not a crime to get lost in your own life, Eden.” She taps the counter for emphasis. “But you are her best friend. She just wants to know she’s still a priority.”
As if on cue, Meena howls from the next room.
Todd barks something about projectile spit-up and there’s a general clatter of objects falling.
Mum wipes her hands and heads in, while I loiter in the cool, lemon-zested silence of the kitchen, thinking about what it means to be someone’s best anything.
Pia emerges from the bathroom exactly forty-four minutes and fifteen seconds later, and she’s a miracle of dry shampoo and waterproof mascara.
She’s swapped sweats for jeans, then a battered Newcastle United tee, which I brought back from the UK years ago.
For some inexplicable reason, she supports the team.
She’s also sporting a denim jacket that predates our friendship.
“Let’s do this,” she says, eyes a little wilder but voice steady. “But if you crash the car, Eden, I will haunt your future children.”
I refrain from telling her it’s highly unlikely I’ll have kids for her to haunt.
I salute. “I’d expect nothing less.”
We sneak out the front while Meena’s adopted grandparents step in to save Todd from any more bodily liquids ruining another shirt.
I make a note to find out where Gran and Grandad have scarpered off to.
So much for wanting to spend time with their new great-grandkid.
My bet is that they’re out shopping and sightseeing all day, only to come home and get the golden hours with Meena.
To be fair, I think they’ve got the right idea.
We slip into my car, which has paint-splashed cloths draped over the seats. Pia just accepts it with a grunt, like she always has. I learned my lesson when I got my first car and managed to stamp a perfect ass print in white paint on the driver’s seat.
She cranks the window, sticks her head into the breeze, and for a minute, she’s the same sixteen-year-old who used to blast Bangra and call me a poser for wearing aviator shades as I drove.
Halfway down the street, she mutters, “You are a poser,” just to prove she’s psychic.
The spa is one of those new money places with a name like “Sanctum” and water features that look suspiciously like they’re about to birth a Celtic fairy.
The moment we step in, the air goes quiet and cold, and a woman with an overly white set of teeth smiles before offering us ‘complimentary cucumber elixirs.’
“I see you and raise you two shots of espresso,” Pia whispers out the corner of her mouth, then answers the woman with a dazzling, slightly deranged, “Thank you.”
I want to hug her. Instead, I drink the cucumber water and immediately regret it. What in the bloody fuck is that taste? I’m a vegetarian, for fuck’s sake, but cucumber water is just too much. It’s like consuming a fusty glass of drain water.
They suit us up in matching navy robes and lead us to a relaxation room where all the furniture seems designed for Instagram, not spines. I bet it’s IKEA.
Pia immediately commandeers the pod-shaped chaise in the corner and flops onto it, phone in hand.
“I’m looking at pictures of Meena,” she announces.
“We are supposed to be disconnecting.”
“I am, I swear, but I just need to see her face for like a second.” She smiles.
We line up for the fancy ‘facial retreat,’ where a woman named Brandy plasters me in goop that smells like ass and eucalyptus.
I can’t stop giggling at the tickle of the brush.
Pia keeps up a steady stream of small talk with her aesthetician, drifting from Meena’s sleep cycle to why Americans don’t know what a proper cuppa is.
It feels like the best version of old times: ridiculous, pointless, and safe.
Mid-mask, Pia turns her head and stares at me through a sheet of algae-green gunk. “You know you’re an asshole, right?”
“Historically proven,” I say, my mouth barely moving under the mask.
Her voice is softer, vulnerable. “I needed a break, too. I just didn’t know how to ask for it. Or who from. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful to Todd. Or to—“ She breaks off, eyes flickering ceilingward.
“Or to my parents,” I finish.
She nods. “Bit shit, isn’t it? Wanting time alone, away from your family.”
“It’s not shit. It’s human.”
I reach over the armrest and try to link pinkies with her, but the mask makes my whole hand slippery, and instead I plant my green, sticky fist on the towel between us.
“You’re such a dork,” Pia says, and for the first time in weeks, I hear her laugh. Like, really laugh.
By the end of the session, we’re limp, greasy, and about three percent less anxious.
We spend the rest of the afternoon in the spa’s sleep room, drinking overpriced tea and making lists of all the places we’ll never go now that we have mini-Pia to contend with.
I keep telling her the kid will probably be a genius, exactly like Pia: smart, stubborn, and prone to friendship-based kidnapping adventures.
We talk about the advancement of mine and Sloane’s relationship, which earns me a dead arm because I didn’t immediately call Pia and tell her we were having sex again.
When the conversation is exhausted, Pia turns to me with a small frown. “Promise something?”
I brace for impact. “Sure?”
“Don’t leave me. Even if I’m being a bitch.”
I don’t even hesitate. “I promise.”
“I mean it, Eden. You’re, like—“ She glances sideways, embarrassed. ”—my person. You and Meena are going to have to share custody or something. So don’t bail, even for art.”
And there it is, all the things we can’t say in public, squeezed between two mugs and a blanket made from sustainable rainforest alpaca or whatever.
“I won’t. Not ever again.”
She leans back and closes her eyes, basking in the silence, and for a second, I think she’s fallen asleep.
“Next time, don’t bribe me. Just text.” She sighs, sounding chill.
“Would you have said yes?” I snort, already knowing the bloody answer to such a daft question.
She cracks a smile, eyes still closed. “Absolutely fucking not.”
We both laugh, falling into our old rhythm with the ease that only comes from a decade plus of carrying each other through every weird, dumb, and brilliant thing that’s ever happened to us.
As soon as I drop Pia home, she’s mobbed at the porch by a screaming Meena. Todd looks a mixture of grateful and traumatised. He gives me a curt nod and a thumbs-up, as if I transported his wife back from war. Life resumes.
Back in my car, I dial Sloane. She answers after one ring, voice a little crackly from wherever she is. “You survived?” she says with a light laugh.
“Barely. Pia tried to drown me in eucalyptus.”
She laughs, soft and hot. “Are you coming over?”
“On my way.”
I relish the memory of the afternoon spent with my best friend until I find myself seated on Sloane’s couch, attentively listening as she goes over her notes from the recent mentoring session.
Her new job at Holcroft starts soon, and she’s clearly nervous.
There’s no need because I know how hard she’s worked to get herself set up.
From the conception of the idea to now, Sloane has already got herself a business which is ninety percent ready to go. I’m in awe of her, to be honest.