Chapter Fifteen Nora #2
“I ran into Zach at the coffee shop this morning,” Daisy said. “I told him what was happening, and then he just took charge, and before I knew it, he’d rented a truck.”
Sam and Nora both swiveled their heads to look at Zach, who shrugged. “It just seems like basic courtesy. I could get the truck, and quick. She needed help.”
The way he said it made it sound so practical.
“We were piecing together solutions.” Daisy sounded arch and annoyed.
“Which is fine. But you could take the big, already-put-together solution.” Zach’s words were definitive.
“I did,” Daisy countered, turning toward him, and Nora could practically feel the tension sparking between the two of them. Daisy hadn’t mentioned that she had a preexisting thing with Zach. Yes, Nora knew he was a business partner to Daisy’s husband, but she hadn’t realized they had a thing.
Daisy was looking at Zach like she wanted to punch him, while Zach looked completely unbothered while somehow also conveying that he was a breath away from wrapping his arms around her and kissing her. It was clear to Nora that Daisy didn’t see that.
If she did, she would probably look less angry and would be looking a lot more flustered.
Nora wasn’t inexperienced, but that man was hot enough to make her stutter. If he had looked at her the way he was looking at Daisy, she might have combusted.
That made her feel eased slightly, which bothered her. Because she’d gotten a little bit prickly about Daisy’s appreciation of Sam, and it was clear that was generic, and Zach was the one she had real, undeniable chemistry with.
Not that it should matter.
“Well. Let’s get . . . going.” Nora charged forward and knocked on the front door.
Soraya opened it a moment later, her face red and blotchy. “Sorry. Having a mental breakdown.”
“Oh, that’s completely allowed,” Nora said.
Soraya looked past Nora and saw Zach standing next to Daisy. She shot Nora and Daisy weighted looks.
“We’ll wait out here.” Sam waved them away. “Go on.”
Daisy and Nora went into the house, and Soraya closed the door behind them. “I didn’t know Zach Woods was going to help with the move. I . . . I wish I didn’t look like I had just cried my eyes out and ate my weight in bread and butter.”
“You don’t look like that,” Daisy said.
“Oh.” There was a hysterical giggle on Soraya’s lips. “That’s good. Because I just cried my eyes out and ate my weight in bread and butter.”
“That’s progress. Remember just a week ago, you couldn’t eat your feelings.” Nora practically did jazz hands—anything to lighten the mood.
Soraya laughed, but it sounded like a watery choke.
“I should have told you Zach was coming,” Daisy said.
“But I ran into him at the coffee shop, and I ended up telling him what we were doing today. I also told him that Amberly and Jonathan are getting married. Anyway. I think I must’ve looked sad and pathetic, and before I knew it, I had been hijacked, and he was renting a moving truck.
I think he must feel like I’m his own personal charity at this point, between the sets and now this. ”
Did she actually think it was pity? Nora looked at Daisy, really looked at her. She was beautiful, and Nora had a feeling she had no idea. Maybe because she’d spent years with a man who hadn’t told her, or maybe because of the way life had shaped her long before Jonathan had been in the picture.
Weren’t they all a ragtag group of issues they’d collected through the years?
“Daisy.” Nora grabbed Daisy’s shoulders. “He likes you.”
“I . . . What?” Daisy blinked furiously behind her large glasses.
“He likes you.” Nora elongated each word. “Like, he thinks you’re cute.”
“He . . . he does not,” Daisy said.
“Oh, he surely does,” Nora countered. “I felt like I had walked in the middle of a good enemies-to-lovers romance out there.”
“I’m married to his friend.”
“I know,” Nora said. “That wouldn’t prevent him from being attracted to you, and also, you’re not really married to him anymore, even if you are legally, given he moved in with another woman he’s now marrying.”
“That isn’t the biggest barrier to Zach Woods liking me,” Daisy said, her tone dry. “I’m . . .” She waved her hand over her body, and Nora searched for what on earth her friend could possibly be indicating.
“You’re hot, Daisy.”
“No. He’s hot. I am . . . a thirty-five-year-old woman who carried and birthed three children and has all the stretch marks and baggy skin to prove it.
He’s physical perfection. He’s the hottest man I’ve ever seen in real life.
In fact, he was the hottest man I had ever seen on TV back in high school when . . . You remember.”
“I obviously remember that, but what does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with now?”
“He was the hot boy I was into when I was a girl, and he is definitely a hot man for the woman in me now, but, like, fantasy level. I’m only some woman he met a few years ago. Fantasies are all fine and good, but they’re just fantasies.”
“Why does it have to be a fantasy?”
“For all the reasons I said. He’s Jonathan’s friend and business partner.” She looked at the back wall. “So I think you’re crazy, just FYI.”
“Noted,” Nora said.
“But even if I didn’t . . . I’m so tired. I spent all those years doing everything for Jonathan, and for what? If he was that costly, imagine how expensive a man like Zach would be to keep.”
Soraya had been so quiet through the whole exchange that she surprised Nora by speaking.
“I relate to that feeling. I gave David everything, and for what? I gave him my youth, my virginity, years and years of perfunctory sex that didn’t blow my mind even half the time.
I gave him my dreams. I let him reshape them around this house, around his business, his goals, his friends.
That’s why I lost my friends. They’re all married to his friends.
Everything in my life is his, and I get feeling so exhausted by all that.
I just don’t think we failed to hang on to them.
They took us for granted. They didn’t think we’d find a spine and tell them to go to .
. . to go to hell. But we did. So if you’re tired, I get that.
I’m tired too. I’m sad. I’m . . . I’m so sad. But this isn’t our failure.”
It’s not your failure.
Nora tried to cling to that. Maybe it felt more true if you hadn’t been left by your mother, your grandmother. Your father, whoever the hell he was. Maybe for them it was more true.
“Thanks, Soraya.” Daisy forced a small, quick smile. “God. I wouldn’t know what to do with a man like him even if I had the energy to do it.”
“Oh, don’t let that stop you. Soraya and I could help you choreograph it.”
Soraya barked a laugh. “I know how to give blow jobs that send your man straight into the DMs of other women.”
The shock of Soraya saying blow job made Nora dissolve into laughter, and Daisy right along with her, until Soraya broke into a fit of giggles too. It wasn’t that funny. None of this was funny, but laughing felt good.
Nora wiped her eyes. Tears of laughter or sadness, she really couldn’t say. “Oh, we’re a mess.” She let out a breath. “Is Zach even still friends with Jonathan? He’s here with you now, he’s building your sets, he recruited Sam.”
“He’s . . . not happy with him, that’s for sure.”
“Because he likes you,” Nora said, completely convinced of that truth.
“I don’t even know what to say to that. I don’t know what to say to that, and I wouldn’t know what to do with him even if . . . I’ve been with Jonathan since I was sixteen.”
“I know you’re tired. I know you feel weird. But you were also just saying you were missing sex.”
“That doesn’t mean I can hook up with Zach Woods. Be serious.” Daisy looked at Soraya. “Can you say something pure and pious now, please?”
Soraya smiled, or at least attempted it. “Sorry. I fear that I am all out of piety. It’s gotten me nowhere. Here I am, moving out of this house that we had built for ourselves. By your husband, incidentally.”
“Does your electricity go out all the time?” Nora asked.
“It does,” Soraya said. “What made you think of that?”
“Mine does too. It’s that electrician Jonathan uses.”
“That doesn’t really surprise me,” Daisy scoffed. “He’d rather hire his friends than make sure he’s getting the best. It’s like a giant boys’ club.”
“Here’s Zach. Breaking the terms of the boys’ club. He’s here for you.”
Daisy’s cheeks did turn a little pink then. “I think he’s just nice.”
“Except.” Nora held up a finger. “Sam and Zach showed up to help a woman they don’t even know move. I can tell you who wouldn’t be here right now.”
Daisy bit the inside of her cheek, and Soraya nodded slowly.
“Isn’t that a great point. The men who didn’t think anything about betraying their wives wouldn’t lift a finger to help someone in this situation.
But you’re right. I don’t know Sam. Not really.
I don’t know Zach at all, except that he’s rich and formerly famous.
But they’re here. Pretty amazing, honestly. ”
“Sam probably likes you,” Daisy countered, looking at Nora.
Nora thought back to the way his arms had felt around her and pushed that thought away. “Sam and I have a trauma bond. That’s its own whole thing. Besides, we’re practically siblings.”
The lie made her feel funny.
The truth was, Sam had never felt like a brother to her. Possibly because she didn’t know what it felt like to have a brother, or any sort of intact family.
“Okay.” Daisy clapped her hands like a punctuation mark. “We can’t stand in here chatting about boys forever. Boys are what got us into this mess in the first place. We have moving to do.”
Soraya nodded. “I don’t feel like I can take anything that he could accuse me of stealing. But then . . . I didn’t buy any of these things for myself. He made all the money. Everything is his.”
Daisy gripped Soraya’s shoulders and turned her to face her. “You had his kids. You raised his kids. You did that as a full-time job.”
“Not really. I love my kids. They aren’t a job, they’re . . .”
“But you didn’t work so he could. You kept his house and cooked his dinners and created this sanctuary. These things are yours too.”
Soraya nodded slowly and took a long breath. “I have everything boxed up. It’s just . . . It’s been hard.”
So they helped. They shared the burden. Lifted the boxes and brought them out to the truck.
With Nora’s insistence, they took the living room furniture.
Took the table out of the breakfast nook, because they wouldn’t need a whole dining table, and one wouldn’t fit anyway.
Took the pillows that Soraya liked best, her favorite blankets.
Candles and pictures, clothes. All her kitchen supplies.
It fit into a pretty small corner of the moving truck.
Soraya wrinkled her nose. “Okay. Let’s go.”