Chapter Eight #2
I winced.
“How would you react if you were them?”
The words were pulled out of me. “I’d chase me out of town.”
She dipped her head, nodding to the right answer. “And you know I’d want to move you in with me if they did, but your girl lives in a little shoebox apartment above this café with her kid, so there’s no room.”
I gasped, jumping up. “Kid?! Courtney Rose Thorne, have you been out here having babies that I don’t know about?”
She grinned from ear to ear. “Yes, ma’am, I have, and that’s because I was having all kinds of unprotected sex you didn’t know about.
” She fished her phone out of her apron, and showed me the sweet, smiling kid waving on her home screen.
“I caught this little munchkin from a one-night stand who blew through town one weekend and never came back.
“That’s why I named her Chlamydia.”
“What!”
She burst out laughing, falling off her chair. “I’m kidding,” she shrieked. “Her name is Taylor, you freak.”
I busted up so hard, I cried. Gods, did I need this.
I couldn’t remember the last time I full-blown belly-laughed.
But Courtney was always the best person for that.
Her wicked sense of humor would have me struggling to breathe in the back of class while the teacher shouted at us to be quiet or get out.
“Tell me everything about her.”
Courtney beamed like the proud mama she was. “My Tay-Tay is five. She loves puppies, horses, and her kindergarten teacher. Loves him so much in fact, she’s ordered me to marry him.”
Courtney rolled her eyes, but I knew her too well too.
“And you want to,” I said, blunt as a truck.
Her blush came on hot and fast. “I didn’t say that. I mean, sure, Mr. Stevens is sweet, and kind, and amazing with children—especially Taylor—but I’m just starting to get back on my feet. The last thing I need right now is a messy relationship with my daughter’s teacher.”
I waited her out. “Tell me.”
A hefty, whoosh-expelled breath tickled my hair. “Fine. You want the play-by-play? Here it is: After losing my best friend, I was forced to take off for Princeton without her right next door like we always planned.
“I want to say I still pulled it off without her, but not even close.” Courtney scrubbed her face, suddenly looking ten years older. “Everything imploded during sophomore year. My parents were going through a messy divorce, and for some reason, the only person they could talk about it with was me.
“Do you have any idea what it was like being forced to listen to my mother ranting about my father losing interest in her sexually, and that every orgasm she had in the last ten years of their marriage was from a vibrator?”
“Urgh,” I cried.
“That’s right! Urgh!” she burst out. “It was so fucking gross and inappropriate, but when I told her that, she blew up on me and told me I needed to stop being so childish. That’s how it was with the both of them.
They wouldn’t stop calling me up and pouring all this horrible and private stuff about their relationship in my ear—including that Mom cheated on Dad when I was three, had a baby, then they both secretly had him adopted—knowing that I’d never remember she was pregnant.
” She scoffed. “That is until Dad screamed the truth while in the middle of ranting that, of course, he lost interest in touching her. He never saw the ‘cheating bitch’ the same way after watching her give birth to another man’s child. ”
“Oh my goodness.” Horror laced my voice. “Court, I’m so sorry.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek. “It was horrible, Sarah, and it just kept piling on. Between their nastiness, the discovery of a secret half brother, and all the classes I was failing, the only one I could talk to was Teo.
“I went to talk to him the night Dad told me about the adoption, and walked in on him fucking another girl.”
“Oh, no...” I closed my eyes, hunching lower in my chair. I can’t believe Courtney was going through all of this while I was going through my own troubles.
I guess the people we love choose an infinite number of ways to let us down when we need them the most.
“It was too much,” she confessed. “I packed my stuff and dropped out of school the next day. The day after, I was on a flight to Paris.”
That sat me up. “Paris?”
She nodded, shrugging. “I just wanted to be somewhere I could be happy, and you know those summers in Paris were my favorite vacations with Mom and Dad.” She sighed.
“Anyway, fast-forward to me faking like I was still at Princeton, pocketing Dad’s tuition checks, and sleeping my way around the eighth arrondissement.
“Naturally, I couldn’t fake not being in the country forever, so when my folks found out, they went ballistic.
They both cut me off and disowned me—proving they could still agree on something.
” Courtney rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I was never too responsible with money, so I blew through every cent superfast.
“I needed a job, and at the time, I was dating a pastry chef. He said he’d give me a job in his café and let me learn under him so...” She fluttered her hands. “The rest was history.”
“Not history,” I reminded. “You came back to Lantana.”
She tipped her chin. “Yes, I did, after being the one who went on and on about how I couldn’t wait to leave this town. Well, after the pastry chef dumped and fired me, I was pretty sick of Paris.
“I came back home hoping to make up with Mom and Dad, but they weren’t having it,” she said, pulling a face. “I didn’t know where to go, so I decided to stay until I figured out my next move and...”
“And then there was Taylor.”
She smiled softly. “Yes, and then there was Taylor. As much as I bitched about this place, I wasn’t complaining because I thought Lantana was a bad or an unsafe place to live. Just a boring one. But now that I’m a mom, I’ve come to appreciate how nice safe and boring is.
“I just want something stable for her. Something she can trust won’t leave her when life gets tough.”
“You’re the something trusted and stable, Court.” I grasped her hands. “You’re that someone for me after ten long years, and you’ll be that for her always.”
She ducked her head, pulling a hand away to roughly wipe her face. “Don’t make me cry.”
“I won’t if you say I can have another cupcake.”
That got a little chuckle out of her. “It’s all yours. You’re paying for ’em.”
After that we settled in, talking and catching up about how shit-miserable our lives got after our parents failed in their basic duty to not be massive assholes to their own children.
“I just don’t understand why you disappeared on me of all people,” Courtney said softly.
We had moved from the table and were in the kitchen.
I whipped the strawberry cheesecake filling while she prepped the graham cracker dough.
“I’ve missed you like crazy. Every good and wonderful thing that happened, I wanted to tell you.
Every horrible thing that happened, I wanted to talk to you first. I wanted you there.
“And you weren’t.”
My heart broke into pieces. “I’m sorry, Court. I wish I could say I didn’t know why I never called you in all this time, but I do know why. I was afraid that you thought I could do it. That you believed what everyone else did—that I sabotaged the trapdoor and almost killed Colin—”
“But of course you didn’t do it,” she broke in.
“You and Colin were friends. You both never took that competition stuff seriously. Plus, all you cared about was getting the grades to get into Yale, which you did. Why the hell would it matter that he became valedictorian over you when you’d already gotten everything you wanted? ”
“Yes, thank you!” I shouted. “That’s what I said over and over, and no one believed me.”
She gave me a hard look. “I would’ve.”
“I know that now, but I was a mess back then. I convinced myself that as long as I didn’t know if you believed the lies, then we were still friends and nothing had changed. It was Schrodinger’s friendship, Court, and it was really stupid and I’m sorry.”
She held the look for a long spell, then let it go with a smile. “Well, all that matters is that you’re here now. I love you, freak. Don’t do that to me again.”
“I won’t. I love you too.”
We lapsed into silence for a bit, working on our tasks.
I was first to break it.
“Have you thought about trying to find your brother? He’d be twenty-five now.”
She shrugged both mouth and shoulders. “It’s tough. After Dad let the secret slip, I went crying to Mom, then she went screaming to him. They both clammed up tight and haven’t given me a single detail about the adoption since.
“I don’t even know if they used an agency, or arranged a private adoption outside of the system. I don’t know his name or birthday. I don’t know if he’s still in the state. Or the country,” she cried. “I’ve got nothing to go on.”
“I’m sorry. That is tough. But if it makes you feel better...” I reached out, putting my hand on her shoulder. “Siblings are the fucking worst.”
Courtney barked a laugh, shaking her head at me.
“Yours definitely was. Talk about a cautionary tale. But since you brought Sue back up on your own, I’ve got to ask, what the hell are you going to do now?
Because you can’t just sit around all day, lying and pretending while waiting for your mother to die.
” She flashed me an apologetic smile. “Sorry to phrase it that way, but I couldn’t think of another way to put it. ”
“There isn’t another way to put it because that’s exactly what I’m doing.” I clutched the mixing bowl to my chest, rocking back on my heels.