Chapter 7
7
Lexi
For the first time in a while, I’ve been counting the days until the regular Wednesday night meeting of the Wild Widows. I’m usually more of a listener than a talker at the meetings, but this week… This week, I’ve got stuff to say. My emotions have been all over the place, the way they were when Jim was first diagnosed and then later as I saw him through hospice and the final days of his life.
I hardly welcome the return of wild emotions, even if almost everything about this situation is different than it was then.
I’ve come to vastly prefer a calm, quiet, peaceful life where my emotions are more of a straight line rather than the ragged ups and downs they’ve been this week.
Tom is due to be released from the hospital on Friday. He’ll be partaking in cardiac rehab and will be closely monitored by his new cardiologist, but otherwise, he’s on the road to a complete recovery, which is a huge relief.
Even with nothing but good news coming from his doctors, I can’t seem to shake the overwhelming dread that comes over me any time I recall the scene that greeted me the night I found him in distress. I see him on the floor and break into a cold sweat every time. I try not to think about it, but the memory comes to me whether I want it to or not.
I can’t stop thinking about how close he came to dying without feeling as if I’m going to be sick.
It’s been three days since that night in the hospital when he told me he has feelings for me that go beyond friendship. And it’s not lost on me that the wild emotional outbreak indicates that I probably have similar feelings for him.
Feelings .
I hate that word.
It’s so stupid, and so is the song of the same name that my mother used to listen to on repeat when I was a kid.
By the time I get to Iris’s house, I’m in a pisser of a mood and ready to let loose about the bullshit that comes with having feelings for someone who almost died.
“Hey,” Iris says when I come in carrying the buffalo chicken dip I brought to share. “I tried to call you earlier to see how you’re doing.”
“I got your message, but work was crazy today, and I had to run home before I came here.”
“No worries.” She takes a measuring look at me. “How are you holding up?”
“Just great.”
“Uh-oh.”
Brielle, Joy, Roni and Derek arrive, full of chatter, laughter and energy that take some of the piss out of my bad mood. It’s hard to be cranky around the most positive, upbeat group of people you’ll ever meet. Even after life kicked them in the teeth, they’re such an inspiration to me and to one another.
Gage comes downstairs and gives me a one-armed hug. “How goes it?”
“Better now.” I take a sip of the wine Iris poured for me. “Much better now.”
“Glad to hear it. How’s Tom?”
“Good. He’s coming home on Friday.”
“That’s great news.”
I nod because it’s the best news, but do I dare tell him or anyone how afraid I am of him having another incident when it’s just the two of us in the house?
If I say that out loud, I’ll give it oxygen, which is the last thing I want to do.
We fill plates, get drinks, catch up, laugh and tease one another. It’s a typical gathering of the Wild Widows, who have come to feel in many ways like the siblings I’ve never had. One thing is for certain—they’re among the best friends I’ve ever had. Don’t get me wrong. My longtime friends—most of them, anyway—have been amazing since Jim got sick and died. But several of them disappointed me a long time before I lost him, and they’ve made themselves scarce since he died.
These people… They’re the ones I’d run to in a crisis because I know for certain they’d have my back and know what to do. They always know what to do, which is an amazing resource to have available as a widow.
When we’re seated in a circle in Iris’s living room, she takes the lead. “Wynter texted new baby pictures to the group chat.”
That has all of us reaching for our phones to ooh and aah over baby Willow.
“My God,” Roni says. “That is a pretty baby.”
Wynter used sperm her late husband banked before his cancer treatment to have his child, and Adrian has stood by her every step of the way despite his fears about something happening to her in childbirth like it did to his wife, Sadie.
“Would you expect anything else with Wynter and Jaden as her parents?” Gage asks, smiling.
“Nope,” Roni replies. “She’s destined to be a stunner. How’s Wynter feeling today?”
“Still sore but elated. The baby is doing really well and sleeping a lot, which is helpful to the exhausted parents. And, of course, Xavier is smitten with his baby sister.”
Adrian and Wynter plan to raise their children as siblings, and their little family has made them all so happy.
“I’m so thrilled for them,” Brielle says wistfully.
I understand the wistfulness. Adrian and Wynter have been through their own hell losing their young spouses to childbirth and cancer. They’ve worked hard for what they have now with their children, and I’m thrilled for them. Even still, it can be hard to watch widow friends moving into new happily ever afters, especially when everything is still upside down for some of us.
“Who wants to start?”
Joy raises her hand before I can raise mine, which is fine. I need more wine before I take the floor. “Mama had a second date with the guy .”
Brielle pumps her fist. “Yes!”
“Easy does it,” Joy says with a quelling look that makes Brielle giggle.
“How was it?” Derek asks.
“It was… surprisingly enjoyable. I took y’all’s advice and stopped trying to find Craig in him.”
Her late husband died in his sleep of natural causes, whatever that means. I don’t like thinking about that or knowing things like that can happen, especially considering recent events.
“I’m so happy to hear that, Joy.” Hallie takes a seat in the circle, holding a plate and a glass of wine. “Sorry I’m late.”
“You haven’t missed anything,” Iris tells her. “We just started. Tell us more, Joy. What’s his name?”
“Bernie.”
“What’s he do?” Gage asks.
“He’s an OB-GYN, of all things.” She makes a face that has the rest of us laughing. “Not sure how I feel about him being all up in lady parts all day.”
“Eh, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” Derek says with a smirk, knowing we’re all going to jump on him, which we do. He just laughs and holds up his hands to fend us off.
“As you well know,” Roni tells him, “some are way better than others.”
He gives her a dopey grin. “You’re so right about that, love.”
The rest of us laugh while they make eyes at each other.
They’re so damned cute and happy and in love.
“How do you guys do it?” The words are out of my mouth before I even decide to say them.
“Do what?” Roni asks, brows furrowed in confusion.
“Make it look so easy. You two, Iris and Gage, Wynter and Adrian… Where do you find the courage to try again?”
Derek and Roni exchange glances.
“May I?” he asks her.
“By all means.” Roni crosses her arms and smiles as she settles in to hear what her fiancé has to say. They, too, plan to raise each other’s children as siblings.
“If I’m being entirely honest,” Derek says, “you’d have to be crazy to let yourself fall in love again after what we’ve been through.”
Roni sputters while the rest of us laugh. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting him to say that.
“I’m serious. You’d have to be certifiably insane to risk that kind of hurt a second time. But… It’s a matter of asking yourself which is worse… The thought of losing this new person you care so much about or living without them for the rest of your life. When you look at it that way, the equation starts to feel a little less bonkers.”
Roni stares at him. “How is it possible that makes total sense?”
His smile lights up his handsome face. “Because you get it. You had to make that same decision.” He shifts his gaze my way. “We all have to make that decision at some point, and there’s nothing wrong with deciding you’d rather not risk it all again. If that’s what’s best for you, then so be it.”
“How do you know what’s best?” I ask him.
“All I know is that by the time I met Roni, I was ready for something more than what I had being Maeve’s dad and the deputy chief of staff to the president. While those things are wonderful and fulfilling, being with Roni and now Dylan, too, helps to fill the gaping wound that Victoria’s death left inside me. I’ll always miss her and wish she could see Maeve growing up, but the raw ache of that loss isn’t as intense as it used to be.”
“Just to add to what Derek is saying,” Roni says, “I wasn’t in any way ready for him when he came along.” They met shortly after she lost her young husband to a stray bullet on a DC street. “That he was willing to wait for me to be ready told me everything I needed to know about who he is and what he’s about.”
“Thank you both for sharing that.” I hesitate before I add, “This has been a tough week with Tom in the hospital and trying to deal with the PTSD his emergency resurrected. It’s been a while since I’ve been in this screwed-up place, and I have to say I don’t miss it.”
“How is Tom?” Joy asks.
“He’s doing much better. Due to come home Friday with cardiac rehab in his future.”
“And how are you ?” Brielle asks.
“I can’t stop seeing him unconscious on the floor.”
“Those memories will lose some of their sharpness in time,” Hallie says.
Her late wife, Gwen, died by suicide, and she was the one who found her, so she knows of what she speaks. She’s been seeing Robin, who has stage-four breast cancer. Hallie has been struggling with whether she can cope with being in a relationship with someone who has been given a terminal diagnosis.
“You’re right. They will.” Memories of things that happened when Jim was ill, things I thought I’d never forget, don’t haunt me the way they used to. Likewise, Tom’s emergency will fade in time. Intellectually, I know that to be true. In the meantime, however… “I’ve also learned that faulty hearts are prevalent in his family. His dad and two uncles died prematurely, and his aunt had bypass surgery.”
“Oh shit,” Derek says.
“That about sums it up. He… he finally came right out and told me he wants more than just friendship between us.”
“How do you feel about that?” Iris asks.
“I don’t know. I like him. I mean… I was crazy in love with him in high school.”
“No, you weren’t,” Gage says. “You had a mad crush on a guy you hardly knew and who hardly knew you. That’s not the same as being in love.”
“You couldn’t tell that to my desperately-in-love teenage heart. I thought I’d die if he didn’t notice me.”
With a wave of his hand, Gage says, “Teenage drama isn’t the same as real life. What does current-day Lexi think about having more with current-day Tom?”
“She doesn’t know what to think. On the one hand, he’s been an amazing friend to me, and the low-level high school crush never really went away. Years ago, when one of my friends mentioned him, my heart did a crazy little skip at the thought of him, and I was married at the time.”
“It’s so sweet that you’ve reconnected with your high school crush,” Brielle says, “and that he’s stepped up for you the way he has.”
“Don’t forget, he barely knew I was alive back then. He was older than me and way out of reach. I crushed from afar.”
“I’ve always thought it was tremendously meaningful that he offered you a place to live with no questions asked,” Gage says. “He certainly didn’t have to do that for someone he allegedly barely knew back in the day.”
“That’s true,” Derek says. “It was a big deal for him to do that, and I’ve suspected it had as much to do with him wanting you around as it did with doing a favor for someone who needed it.”
“How much do you guys charge for this male perspective?” Joy asks.
“It’s free to you guys,” Gage says with a wink.
“I appreciate that male perspective very much,” I tell them as I process what they said.
“Do you feel better after talking about it, Lex?” Brielle asks.
“I do, thank you. Feel free to move on to someone else’s problems.”
“But yours are so interesting,” Christy says.
“Not as interesting as your barnburner of a new romance,” Iris retorts.
“It is indeed a barnburner,” Christy says with a goofy smile.
“Tell us everything,” Joy says. “Leave out none of the dirty details.”
Christy laughs. “The details are very dirty, but I’ll just say that I wish I hadn’t held out so long with Trey because, as it turns out, I was only denying myself something amazing.” Her husband, Wes, died suddenly of an aortic dissection that severely traumatized Christy and her children, who witnessed it. “I still feel guilty sometimes, like I’m cheating on Wes or something, but I’m working through that. He’d want me to be happy, and Trey makes me happy.”
“That’s fantastic, Christy,” Roni says. “How are the kids adjusting?”
“They’re becoming more comfortable around him. Shawn teased him the other night about how he uses a spoon to twirl his pasta like he’s a fancy pants, or something like that. While they laughed, I had to fight off tears because it felt like a big deal that Shawn said that to him and knew it would be well received. If that makes sense.”
“It makes all the sense,” Iris says. “That’s how strangers become a family—one teasing joke at a time.”
“Just ask me,” Gage says. “I’m the favorite victim around here. The kids are ruthless.”
Iris laughs. “They don’t miss much, and you do give them plenty to work with.”
Listening to them, witnessing their happy second chapters, and that of Adrian and Wynter, too, fills me with a new feeling that might be called hope. If they could find the courage to move forward, especially with children to consider, then surely I can find it in me to at least try with Tom.
“When do we get to meet Trey?” Iris asks.
“I was going to suggest another Mexican night and invite him to come, if that’s okay.”
“We’d love it,” Iris says. “Let’s bring the kids, too. Laney has been asking for Maeve and Dylan. They haven’t seen each other in a couple of weeks.”
“What’s everyone doing next Friday night?” Joy asks.
While they make plans, I fully exhale for the first time since I came home to find Tom on the floor. Being with them is always a reminder of how important things like resilience and courage are in the aftermath of loss. I’m at a crossroads with a big decision to make. Who do I want to be in this widow life? Do I want to be someone who hides from anything that can ever hurt me again? Or do I want to risk it all on a second chance at love?
I’m not sure yet which path is best for me, but I’m comforted in knowing that whatever I choose, these special friends will be by my side to make the journey less lonely than it would’ve been without them.