56. Sage
FIFTY-SIX
SAGE
Amy says sorry three times before our coffees even land, and on the third one I put my hand flat on the table between us.
“If you apologize for him one more time, I’m charging you. A dollar an apology. I’ll have a beach house by Tuesday.”
She laughs and wraps both hands around her mug. We got the good booth by the window, with a piece of chocolate cake between us I ordered “for the table” and have been eating single-handedly. Outside, Sunday moves past at half speed.
“He’s at Pinecrest today,” she says. “Golf. Some members’ thing.” She turns her phone face-down, then thinks better of it and holds the button until it buzzes itself silent. “Which means I get you, and a whole afternoon, and I’m not letting him grovel from forty minutes away.”
“Good,” I say carefully. “I’m glad he’s trying. But I need to be honest: the last few times I’ve seen you two together, he’s made you smaller. I hate watching that. He needs to understand how amazing you are and treat you that way.” I fork off a chunk of cake and hold it out to her.
She eyes the fork like it might be a trap, then leans in and takes the bite.
“Oh my God.” Her eyes close. “Okay. I know I’m mid-relationship crisis, but this cake is a religious experience.”
“I have excellent instincts in moments of distress.”
“You really do.” She chews, swallows, then picks up her own fork. “So . . .” Her eyes lift to mine and she waggles her eyebrows. “Tell me more about these men.”
“It’s new,” I say, and that part’s true, so it comes out easy. “I don’t know what it is yet. But we’re having fun. And you saw how protective they are of me.” I slice off another bite of cake. “We’re figuring it out.”
I keep my answer light because the truth is Eli cracked something open in me and left me holding the pieces.
The others rallied around me afterward—sat on the floor while I cried hard enough to ruin a shirt, and not one of them tried to fix it or talk me out of it or take a single thing. They just stayed. It was the most loved I have ever felt, and it nearly took me apart right there on the rug.
But the really shitty thing I can’t say out loud is the thought that keeps running through my head whenever I look at them—there are supposed to be five.
I can’t even begin to express how selfish I feel for thinking four amazing men doting on me isn’t enough.
I eat some cake so I don’t have to do anything with my face.
“Honestly, though—I’ve been more worried about you.” I say it light, but I mean it like a hand on her wrist. “You look wrung out, Aims. Every time I’ve seen you lately there’s a little less of you in your face.”
She sets the fork down.
“It’s been a rough stretch,” she admits.
“Tyler’s a lot when he’s stressed. And he’s been stressed.
” She picks the corner off her napkin. “But I finally said it. Last night. Told him that if he keeps using me as his—his emotional punching bag, we’re done.
I meant it, too. I had the bag packed in my head. ”
“Good.” I mean that one all the way down.
“And he just folded.” Her face does something complicated—relief and hope and a little dazzle.
“Cried, actually. Said he loves me. Said he’s been a wreck and taking it out on the one person who didn’t deserve it, and that he can’t lose me.
” Her smile breaks through, helpless. “It was a lot. Like, all at once. Apology, tears, breakfast in bed. Eggs, coffee. The whole thing. After—” Her voice drops and her cheeks go pink.
“After a night I am not going to describe to you except to say it has been a while since—” She presses both hands over her face and giggles into them and despite not liking Tyler, I love this moment for her.
I hate the reason it happened, hate the timing, hate how perfectly the apology seems to fit the wound—but I love seeing her lit up again.
“Multiple. Okay? That’s all I’m saying. Multiple. ”
“AMY.” I point my fork at her. She beams. “Repulsive. I’m so happy for you. Keep going.”
“It hasn’t felt like this since the beginning,” she says, glowing. “Like the first month. I really think we turned a corner.”
The comment settles in my chest like a swallowed ice cube—because my body knows that rhythm. The sudden softness after you make a boundary visible. The tenderness that arrives fast enough to make you wonder if you imagined why you were scared in the first place.
But Amy is shining at me over a half-eaten wedge of cake for the first time in weeks, and I’m not her mother, and I’m not going to be the friend who sets the bag back down in front of her before she’s ready to pick it up herself—but I am the friend who’ll ask my masked vigilante lovers to keep watch over her for safety.
I reach across and squeeze her hand.
“I’m really happy for you,” I say. “And listen. Whatever happens. Good news, bad news, total disaster, three in the morning and you need a ride—I’m here. Always. You don’t have to explain a thing. You just call.”
Her eyes go bright. “You’re going to make me cry in a café.”
“Then we cry in a café. We’ll be those women. Someone will assume a breakup and send over more cake.”
“Sage?”
I look up and it’s Jamie, wearing a soft gray T-shirt instead of his usual flannel, a canvas tote over one shoulder. His whole face opens when he sees me, that easy smile that crinkles his eyes, and something in my shoulders drops a notch the way it always does with him.
“Jamie! Hi—” I’m half out of my seat. “What are you doing this side of town?”
“Bookstore.” He lifts the tote, which clinks with what is very much not books. “And the bookstore is next to a wine shop, which is entrapment, and I fell for it.” His eyes go to Amy, friendly, curious. “Sorry—I’m interrupting.”
“You’re not. Sit.” I scoot over. “This is my best friend. My roommate. The love of my life.”
Amy snorts.
“The famous Amy.” Jamie slides in beside me and offers her his hand across the table. “I’ve heard the legend. Reality TV, catastrophic takeout opinions, and something about gas-station sushi that gave you both food poisoning.”
Amy laughs, surprised and pleased. “She told you about the sushi?”
“She tells me plenty. I’m her counter therapist. No license, no notes, free pie.”
“Counter therapist,” Amy repeats, grinning. “That sounds wildly unethical.”
“It’s only unethical if I start billing insurance.”
Jamie settles in beside me like he belongs there—careful not to crowd, one knee angled away from mine even though the booth is tight.
He smells like laundry soap and paper and the cold air from outside.
Familiar. Easy. Safe in a way that still feels embarrassingly precious to me, because apparently I collect dangerous men and one soft-spoken bookstore guy like it’s a personality trait.
He glances at the cake. “Am I too late to get in on whatever sacred ritual this is?”
“Very,” I say, shielding the plate with my fork. “This is support cake.”
“A noble category.” He presses a hand to his chest. “I would never intrude on support cake.”
Amy watches us with bright, interested eyes over the rim of her mug.
I can practically hear her cataloging this—Jamie, easy smile, not six-foot-something and terrifying.
A civilian. A normal man, or close enough to pass for one.
Bless her. If she only knew how fake normal has started to look in my life—and how much I still want to believe in it anyway.
Jamie orders his own coffee and a second slice. And soon the conversation turns from books to bestseller adaptations and whether the book is ever better than the movie, and it’s so weirdly normal that for a minute I almost forget how strange my life has become.
“The movie version of Gone Girl works because Rosamund Pike is terrifying,” he says, cradling his coffee with both hands. “But most adaptations sand off the sharp edges so everybody stays likable enough to market.”
Amy points at him with her fork. “Yes. Exactly. Thank you. Sage always judges me for needing at least one person to root for.”
“I don’t judge you,” I say.
“You absolutely do.”
“I silently disapprove with love.”
Jamie grins. “Healthy friendship dynamic. Brutal honesty. Shared gastrointestinal trauma. I see why you kept this one.”
Amy laughs again, easy and bright, and the sound unclenches something in my chest.
This is what I wanted, once. Before the beach. Before blood and rope and knives and a camera in my ceiling and four—five—men who have rearranged my bones.
My phone goes off against the wood. Then again. Then a third time, a fourth—the specific machine-gun stutter that means the group chat has woken up.
I flip it over.
Micah:
Baby girl, help! Milo booked us for LAWN BOWLS.
I stare at the screen.
Then I laugh. Loud enough that both Amy and Jamie look up.
“What?” Amy asks.
I turn the phone so they can see it. “Milo accidentally booked lawn bowls instead of actual bowling.”
Jamie blinks. “Like . . . retirees in white shoes lawn bowls?”
“Apparently.”
Amy chokes on her coffee. “Oh my God. Your chat is called Kitten’s Hangmen?”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t ask.”
Jamie, mercifully, does not.
Another message hits.
Milo:
There was no alley. Only grass and judgmental retirees.
Holden spent the whole time looking like he was about to arrest a pensioner.
Knox tried to throw one through a hedge.
Micah:
He did not try.
He succeeded.
Holden:
You’re full of shit. I had no plans of arresting anyone.
Anyway, we lost. Terribly.
MILO:
WE WERE ROBBED
HOLDEN:
We were not robbed. We simply suck at this game we’ve never played.
MILO:
knox back me up
KNOX:
The oldies were better than us.
MILO:
I AM SURROUNDED BY COWARDS AND TRAITORS!!!!!!!!!
Then a photo comes through from Micah: Milo, beaming, in flat white rental shoes that look too big, cradling a teal ball the size of a grapefruit like a newborn, flanked by a wall of horrified pensioners in pressed whites. Across the bottom, it’s been captioned:
BALLS OF FURY: 0 dignity, 1 borrowed shoe fungus.
The three of us hang over the text thread, Amy cackling, Jamie’s shoulder warm against mine, Milo typing and deleting and typing again at the bottom of the screen.
And for one whole bright minute there’s no panic.
No sharp edges. No blood under my fingernails and no fifth man standing in my kitchen telling me he’s done.
There’s just this. Table cake. My best friends’ laughter. And a phone full of idiots who love me.
I let myself have it.
When I look up, Jamie isn’t looking at the phone. He’s looking at me—that warm, still attention of his—smiling like my being happy is the best thing he’s seen all day.
“They sound wonderful,” he says.
“They’re a disaster.”
“Same thing, sometimes.” He reaches over and scoops a bite of cake. “I’d love to meet them—officially, I mean.”
“You will,” I say, easy, already turning the phone back to type something cruel to Milo. “They’d love you.”