Chapter Fourteen
“Thanks for meeting me here. I’m tired of the deli and bored with anything I bring from home,” Harper said.
“I’m glad I caught you.”
“You sound stressed. Is everything okay?”
Harper was always good at reading Luna, and even better at talking her off any ledge she might be teetering on.
“Nothing new. The roof isn’t fixed. My car is still missing.
The insurance company will pay out the car in the next month, give or take.
And by pay out, I mean five grand if I’m lucky.
Greg pretty much said I should expect my rates to go up even though none of this was my fault.
And I need to buy a car. Which should be a fun thing. Right?”
“Right.”
“Then why am I stressing out about it?”
“It’s a big purchase,” Harper said.
“But it’s not a house. These things paralyze me. Why?” Luna needed her big sister’s advice. The tossing and turning every night since her car was stolen was taking a toll.
“I call it the single tax.”
“What’s that?” Luna asked.
“When you’re married or living with someone who is co-mingling with your finances, there’s someone else invested in helping you make the decisions.
If you screw up, you both screw up and it’s easier to swallow.
When it’s just you and things go bad, you kick yourself and second guess yourself forever.
I see it with the divorced women I deal with every day. It’s exhausting.”
“I’ve been divorced for a long time,” Luna reminded her.
“I know. You should be better at this by now.” Harper laughed.
Luna ran a hand behind her neck, found a sore spot, and lingered to massage it out. “Exactly.”
“How did it feel when Ash came up and put in the alarm system without hesitation?”
“What do you mean?” Luna asked.
“If he’d asked you. Or wanted your approval or input, how would that have felt?”
“Like one more thing I don’t want to deal with,” Luna said.
“And when he didn’t do that? When he just did the thing?”
Luna dropped her hand in her lap. “Relieved, I think. The alarm system makes sense. I probably wouldn’t have spent the money on it. I offered to help him pay for it, but you know Ash.”
“Ash likes to be needed. He’d make someone a good husband one day if he’d let his guard down long enough to go on three dates with the same person.”
The waiter arrived with their twenty-dollar salads and left.
Luna placed her napkin in her lap and picked up her fork. “Do you say the same thing about me?”
“No. You’d make a terrible husband.”
Luna rolled her eyes. “Ha. Ha.”
“It’s different for women. Especially us Cannings. Even Nana, for all her independence and bravado, she always had a man around.”
“But she didn’t depend on them. Not like Mom,” Luna said.
“Nana was in love with the idea of being in love, I think she wanted to depend on the men in her life. Someone to lean on. Probably for the same reasons you struggle with making a decision about a car. Mom is not only dependent on a man in her life to validate her, she’s co-dependent to a fault.
She always finds the guy she thinks she can fix, even if it destroys her. ”
“Or us,” Luna reminded Harper.
They both sat in their own thoughts for a moment.
“Mom makes all the wrong decisions. Nana made ‘some’ wrong decisions. It’s up to us to make the right ones and break the cycle.” Harper took a bite of her salad.
“Maybe that’s the problem. I’m trying to be perfect, which is an unachievable goal.”
Harper finished her bite. “Okay. You don’t want to be Mom, so ask yourself ‘What would she do?’”
“She’d never be in my—”
“Humor me.”
Luna paused. “She’d wait for someone to tell her what to do. Or say fuck it and blow every dollar she had on something she couldn’t afford.”
“You’re too frugal for that. Do you want someone to tell you what to do?” Harper asked.
“No. Not really.”
“Okay then. If you want someone to bounce ideas off of, that’s what I’m for. Ash . . . Miley. We’re not going to let you do something stupid without telling you. Buy the car. You got this. As for the roof . . . it’s better than a mortgage. And if it feels like too much, get another roommate.”
“You sound like Nate.”
“You told Nate about this?” Harper sounded surprised.
“I brought up the stress about the car. He thinks like Ash. Something needs to be done, do it. Within your means . . . but do it.” Luna pulled apart a piece of bread.
Harper paused. “I liked him.”
“Yeah, he’s a decent guy.”
When Harper didn’t say more, Luna looked up.
“What?”
“He’s good-looking,” Harper pointed out.
“Oh my God . . . you and Miley. I work with him. No. That’s not gonna happen.” Her back stiffened and heat rushed to her neck.
“When was the last time you went out on a date?” Harper asked.
“The last time someone asked me who didn’t give off the ick factor before the date.”
“You didn’t answer the question, Luna,” Harper argued.
Luna put the bread down. “I get it. I’m glad you and Jerry have found each other.
That you have that person to bounce ideas off of, so you don’t have to pay the single tax.
I find the whole process of dating repulsive.
Just when you think you’ve found someone remotely compatible; they’re likely married or in a relationship.
By my age they have kids and psycho exes and when they start talking about their kids and exes you know exactly why they’re single.
If a man pays for a meal on a date, it’s a transaction.
The more expensive the meal, the more likely they’ll ask to come in for a ‘nightcap.’ Who even uses the term ‘nightcap’?
And none of them have their financial shit together.
None. When you ask them about that, they blame it on an ex.
You lower your guard, put the dress on, and go through all this effort and for what?
” Luna lowered her voice, looked around.
“Even if you take them up on the nightcap, they can’t find the spot if you drew it on a map.
I’m better off with my membership to Adam and Eve with a monthly box subscription with satisfaction guaranteed. ”
Luna stabbed her salad like it had talked back to her and shoveled it in her mouth.
Her sister stared, jaw slackened.
Luna talked around her food. “Women are the only species on earth that are expected to mate with their number one predator. Did you know that?”
Harper’s gaze softened. “Not everyone is Landon.”
“No. But the last guy that got past all those things was Landon. And yes, Nate’s a good-looking guy, you should see him in gray sweatpants.
It’s like one of those music pumping thirst traps on TikTok.
But all of those things I said before.” Luna waved a finger in the air.
“One or more of them will play out. So even if . . . if I lost my head enough to ignore the fact that we work together and went out with him, that’s when the ex, or the kid, or the crushing debt or excessive drinking or abuse starts in, and then it’s game over and that working relationship is now gone.
There is one thing I do have one hundred percent confidence and control of in my life and it’s my work.
My reputation. It’s what assures me that I’ll never be dependent or co-dependent on a man. I will never be our mother.”
Harper had stopped eating; all humor had left her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
With the tsunami of words out of her system, Luna felt like she’d been punched in the gut. “Me too. I didn’t mean to go off on you like that.”
Harper shook her head. “It’s okay. That’s why I’m here. To support you in whatever is best for you. Go buy the car. And if it’s the wrong decision, you can blame me.”
Luna reached across the table and squeezed Harper’s hand. “I love you.”
Harper cleared her throat and went back to eating her lunch. “Do you really have a subscription to Adam and Eve?”
Luna thought for sure someone close by laughed. Only nobody was looking their way.
Nate sat in his car, hands on the steering wheel, eyes focused on absolutely nothing in front of him.
Elenore had gotten up to use the restroom when a familiar voice came into focus from the tall booth behind his.
Luna.
Before Nate could look around the partition and say hello, he heard his name and froze.
He heard everything.
While Luna mapped out what dating was like in your thirties, Nate found himself nodding and agreeing.
It wasn’t common to get to your thirties without children, or a crazy ex, or both.
He had to admit that men his age that were single did in fact blame their financial demise on someone else.
Cheating in relationships went both ways, but men tended to lie about it where women were up front.
And the men they hooked up with didn’t care.
It was at that point in Luna’s monologue that Nate heard the tone in her voice shift.
Pain seeped in and pulled Nate’s heart right out of his chest.
Man is the number one predator to a woman.
And yet women were expected to ignore that and take a chance.
No wonder Luna had pitched in the dating towel.
Not only did she understand the facts, but she’d also lived them.
From the sounds of it, she’d lived it her entire life.
What kind of men did Luna’s mother bring into the home?
He wanted to ask but didn’t think he’d like the answer.
Then when Luna poked holes in the moments she did let her guard down, if even to notice him in sweatpants .
. . which he didn’t think much of at the time but would certainly use in the future .
. . she immediately rushed to the possibility of red flags.
That there had to be something wrong with him that would cut him out of being in her life romantically.
Luna was right. They worked together. That was reason enough to avoid anything emotional.
Hadn’t Nate told himself exactly that a few times since they’d met?
Yes, yes, he had.