Chapter 18 #4
“Nope. I’m not,” Sarah said simply, the relief that Lily finally knew about her and Beth pushing out any anxiety that remained. Lily was an adult now and this was a conversation they could have as two adults talking to one another—direct and straightforward.
Lily grumbled under her breath. “How long?”
How long. What a complicated question. So simple, yet somehow so complex: Sarah thought back over the years and years she had spent loving Beth, but that wasn’t what Lily was asking, and she knew that.
“Officially? Since January,” she stated the same way she would state facts or business objectives in a meeting.
Lily was surprisingly calm after her initial reaction, and Sarah immediately recognized the shift into her info-gathering mode.
“Why didn’t you guys tell me?”
Again, without missing a beat, Sarah answered honestly. “We weren’t ready yet. Your mom and I are still figuring out who we are as a couple again.”
Lily was quiet for a minute, sitting under the weight of the revelation. “The house is up here on the right.” She gestured to the driveway.
Sarah turned the wheel, navigating the steep incline before pulling her car to a stop behind the car Lily had borrowed from Dylan. But when she parked, neither of them moved.
“I’m sure you have more questions.” Sarah shifted, turning her body in the driver’s seat to face Lily.
Lily’s hair fell in long waves over her shoulders. Sarah reached a gentle hand out, tucking the front strand away from her face and behind her ear.
Lily looked at her with an intensity she had somehow managed to inherit directly from Sarah, despite the two of them having no genetic relation. They shared that same fire to get to the bottom of any situation, to understand all sides of something before passing judgment.
“Is that why you and Nell broke up? Because you’re in love with Mama?”
Sarah took a deep breath, aligning her thoughts on how best to explain a concept that had taken her years to fully and truly understand.
“No, sweetie. Nell and I… We love each other, but in a way that works better for us as friends. At the end of the day, love isn’t the only thing you need from someone in a long-term relationship, and Nell and I ultimately needed and wanted different things and that’s okay. ”
Lily’s hands lay clasped in her lap as she digested Sarah’s words. Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah thought she caught the flutter of the curtains in the front window of the house and a glimpse of blond hair, but when she looked again, it was gone.
“I don’t know how to ask this… I love you and Mama both so much, but… How are you not mad at her for everything?”
There was a level of care to Lily’s question that Sarah had never heard in her daughter’s voice before—a protectiveness that again Sarah recognized because it was her own deep-rooted need to protect the people she cared about most.
“Everything is a pretty vague word,” she joked to cover up the realization of just how much of her messy relationship with Beth Lily had picked up on over the years.
Lily rolled her eyes at Sarah’s stall tactic, making the corners of her mouth tug into the shape of a small smile.
“It would be easy to be mad—for both of us to be mad at the other,” Sarah started.
“Your mom and I have known each other a long time. Some of the best and worst moments of my life have been lived with her by my side. But sometimes in living your life, you can inadvertently end up hurting the people you love the most.”
Sarah closed her eyes, flashes of years of messy in-between moments with Beth flooding her memory, of the pain and the hurt of never quite being able to make things work, regardless of how much they had both wanted it to.
“So why are you doing this again? If you guys hurt each other, why set yourself up for that possibility?” Lily asked quietly.
Sarah considered her question for a moment, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
“Because the bravest thing you can do in life is put yourself in the direct path of love,” she said simply, her gaze sweeping over Lily’s confused expression.
“Choosing to love again, even after you’ve been hurt, is an incredibly brave thing, but it’s also equally brave to know when to walk away from a love that’s hurting you.
Your mom—she was able to see that we weren’t growing together anymore.
I’m grateful she left because I never would have had the courage to, and now we get this amazing second chance because of how we grew when we were apart. ”
Lily shifted slightly in her seat. “What if she breaks your heart again?” She didn’t look at Sarah when she asked her question; instead, she fixed her eyes on the dashboard in front of her.
“That’s kind of the gamble of any relationship, isn’t it?
You meet someone, fall in love, and hope to hell it works out.
Maybe it won’t, maybe it will. Being in love requires a willingness to be vulnerable in a way that will ask you to put aside the very human desire to have a love that comes with a guarantee of forever and be open to the work that is needed to build a love that will last. Does that make sense? ”
Lily turned her head, looking at Sarah now with those big blue eyes, the weak gray daylight muting the freckles spread across the bridge of her nose.
She nodded as Sarah squeezed her forearm reassuringly.
“I am never reckless with my heart, Lily. I trust that your mom and I have both grown in the ways we needed to, and now we feel brave enough to try again. I would rather let love in and lose it again than never know what it’s like to love your mom in this phase of my life. ”
Lily let out a heavy sigh. “Well, when you put it like that…” She trailed off, but Sarah noticed the small smile that briefly appeared on her lips. “So you guys are, like, really in love?”
“We are.”
“Then what was Jamie? Because it feels like everyone has just moved on. I still hear her voice every time I’m in the gym.
Every time I think about getting on the bars or the beam, it’s like Jamie is standing beside me, and then I leave the gym, and it’s like she’s gone and everyone has forgotten about her. ”
Sarah thought for a long moment, carefully choosing her words, not wanting to undercut the important, albeit unexpected, role Jamie had taken on in her family.
“Jamie was a part of our family—will always be a part of our family. She’s the reason we’ve gotten here.
I stand firmly behind the belief that Jamie changed our family for the better, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. ”
A slight tapping startled them. When Sarah looked up, Beth was standing on the other side of the passenger window, a worried expression on her face.
“Everything okay, you two?” she asked nervously as Lily rolled down her window. “You’ve been out here for a while.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, pulling her cardigan tightly around her.
Lily glanced at Sarah, that small smile once again tugging at her lips, a sign of her acceptance of everything they had discussed. “Yeah, everything is good, Mama. Hey, I was thinking… Maybe we could have a picnic lunch on the beach? I’ll grab us a few water bottles.”
Beth looked at Sarah, confusion still on her face as Lily unbuckled herself, handed Beth the paper bags with food, and then headed toward the house.
“What’s going—”
“Lily knows about us,” Sarah said, unbuckling her seatbelt, popping the trunk, and climbing out of the car to join Beth. She grabbed a blanket from the back of the car, clicking the button to close the trunk.
“She what? How?”
“Well.” Sarah laughed. “You accidentally told her…”
More confusion from Beth. “No, I didn’t.”
“Your text you sent? My car read the whole thing out loud.”
Beth clapped a hand to her mouth, horror mixing with amusement until she was laughing. “Who actually uses that feature?” she teased, pushing her shoulder gently. Then she grimaced. “How did Lily handle it?”
“Surprisingly well. Shock factor was definitely there, but we talked, and I answered all her questions, and I think we’re okay,” Sarah said confidently, trailing her fingers up Beth’s arm.
“Selfishly, I’m glad she knows, because it means I can do this now and not have to worry about getting caught.
” Sarah slid her hand around the back of Beth’s neck, pulling her lips to hers, sinking into the softness of their kiss.
Lily’s voice interrupted the moment as they pulled apart. “Yeah, it’ll definitely take some time to get used to seeing that again.”