Chapter 19 #2
“I feel selfish because I didn’t see it,” she says, wiping fresh tears from her eyes. “We were all there. Literally, right there, in the same town, living our lives together, every single day. And I didn’t see it.”
She’s getting worked up, and I don’t want that. But I also know Alis. I know that she’s not typically a verbal processor, so the fact that she’s saying any of this out loud, in front of us, is huge. I’m not about to interrupt her.
“Skye saw it. Said something. Hell, she helped you get out. But I…” Alis’s sobs rip through her, self-control be damned, and I pull her into my arms, Skye following close behind.
The three of us stay there, tangled together, a crying mess of pain, sorrow, and friendship, for what seems like hours but is probably only a minute or two.
The couch sighs under our combined weight.
The lit candle tunnels lower. Betty Boop ticks on the wall, a subtle reminder that as much as we might want to go back and do things differently, time always, only, moves forward.
Once Alis calms, I loosen my hold on her and swipe my thumbs under her eyes, cupping her face while I place a soft kiss on her nose.
“You gonna be okay, honeybun?” I ask, squishing her cheeks together.
Alis furrows her brow, her glasses now foggy from my exhale and the humidity built up from her tears and from being sandwiched between Skye and me in that bear hug. She looks like an adorable, angry chipmunk, and I can’t help but chuckle.
“How do you always end up taking care of me instead of the other way around?” she grumbles.
“Because she’s the mom, duh,” Skye quips from her end of the couch, already tearing into the sleeve of Oreos we said we weren’t going to open.
I release Alis and nestle back into my corner of the couch, running my fingers through my loose hair to detach the strands that stuck to my face while crying it out in our huddle.
The apartment smells like wine and warm sugar and that stupid bookstore candle Skye keeps lighting when she wants me to unclench.
“Not to be the insensitive one,” Skye says, “but have we heavied enough for one night?”
I laugh, “Yeah, babe. That’s enough heavy for now.”
“OHTHANKFUCK,” she huffs. “Because I need so much more of that Sexy Dexy dirty talk in my life it’s not even funny.”
The groan that comes from Alis is unmistakable. “Ben là, tabarnak!”
Skye nearly spits wine. “Give me more of whatever that was. Like, right now.”
“That was me telling you to please, for the love of God, stop,” Alis says, cheeks pink again. She reaches for a grape and misses, plucking a rogue olive instead and making a face. “Also—this olive is lying about being a grape.”
Skye’s grin goes sly. “Okay, fine. New game. I’ll give you outrageous English lines, you translate into French, and T will judge if it’s hot or not.”
“No,” Alis protests, already laughing. “I refuse.”
“Too late.” Skye clears her throat like she’s about to recite Shakespeare. “‘Your mouth is my favorite sin.’”
Alis drops her head back and groans. “Ta bouche est mon péché préféré.” She covers her face. “Happy?”
Skye points both index fingers at me like pistols. “You hear that? I’m bilingual by association.”
“Absolutely not how that works,” I say, but I’m grinning. “Ten out of ten hot, though.”
Skye scrolls through nothing on her phone because she just likes the drama of it. “‘I’m going to kiss you so slow you forget your address.’”
“Your address?” I ask. “That’s what you’re going with?”
Alis half-laughs, half-wheezes. “Je vais t’embrasser si lentement que tu oublieras ton adresse.”
“Rude,” I say, pressing my knees together again. “Arson-level rude. That absolutely should not be as hot as it just sounded.”
“Last one,” Skye announces, feigning sobriety. “‘I want you like coffee wants mornings.’”
Alis squints. “Je te veux comme le café veut ses matins.” She looks horrified by herself. “That didn’t even make sense.”
“Neither do we,” Skye says, smug. “So it’s perfect.”
Alis’s phone pings on the table. She glances down, then tilts the screen toward us. It’s a photo: Otis asleep, half on Dexter’s foot, half on a book, under a throw blanket Sunny clearly swiped from our couch last time she was here. Dex’s caption: Mes monstres préférés. “My favorite monsters.”
“Seriously though,” Skye says, smiling at Alis. “I love him. Like, for you. I love him for you.”
Alis’s smile is so big, and her eyes lit up with pure, undiluted happiness. “Last night he made shepherd’s pie and saved me the corner so it gets crispy. He’s the best.”
“Okay,” I say, clapping once softly to get both their attention. “This is girls’ night, and we have action items. One: wedding spreadsheet. I’ll build a prototype tomorrow at work—budget, vendors, tasks, color-coded tabs that will make you wet.”
Skye perks up in the way only she does at the word spreadsheet.
Alis asks, “Can there be a tab for vows? Not like… to write them, just to collect ideas. Quotes. Lines from books.”
Skye fans herself. “If you don’t put a line from a smutty Regency novel in your vows I will riot.”
“Action item number two,” I continue, ignoring her. “We pick a standing girls’ night once a month. Literally put it in the calendar. Like, right now.”
Skye snatches her phone and starts a new event called SHE-WOMAN MAN HATERS CLUB—because of course she’d call it that. “First Thursday?”
Alis nods. “First Thursday.”
“Three,” Skye says, wagging a finger at me, “Tori lets her friends help. No Lone Rangerette mentality. You put your attorney meetings on the shared calendar so we both know about them.”
I open my mouth to argue and then close it. “Fine. Yes. Okay.”
Skye looks unbearably pleased. “Growth.”
Alis chimes in, “I don’t need all the details, but just so I’m caught up: that ball is rolling and the things are happening?” I nod in affirmation.
“Her attorney’s office is, like, right next to my shop, so it’s hella convenient for me to attend all the meetings,” Skye says. “Even the ones she ‘forgets’ to tell me about, since my phone pings whenever one of you shows up in my vicinity.”
“Mmmm, yes.” My voice is not at all laced with sarcasm, nor are my shoulders lifted up to my ears. “I love the stalker setting on our phones so, so much. It’s my favorite.”
“Shut up,” Skye chastises, standing and snagging the empty wine bottle off the table.
We migrate to the kitchen for tea because we’ve hit that age where two bottles of wine means death tomorrow.
The kettle clicks on; the tile cold under my heels.
Skye hums to whatever indie-pop music plays on repeat in her head while Alis stacks plates, rinses olive juice from her fingers, and lines everything on the drying rack like tiny dominos.
“Tell me one fun thing about wedding plans,” I say over the kettle, nudging her shoulder with mine. “Anything. Color palette? Cake flavor? Will Otis wear a bow tie?”
Alis soft-smiles. “Sunny wants constellations somewhere. She keeps drawing them on scrap paper and telling me which one is ‘Sunny’s Star.’” She shrugs. “I like the idea of something in the night sky watching us.”
“Babe,” I say, throat thick for half a second in a good way, “that’s perfect.”
Skye bounces on her toes. “We can do starry escort cards. Or a constellation seating chart. Or tiny cookies shaped like moons that say dirty things in French, just to see who knows the language and who doesn’t.”
“Absolutely not,” Alis says, scandalized. “You forget that my in-laws will be there.”
“Thus the basis of its appeal!” Skye quips back in her best impression of Kat Stratford.
Alis starts pulling tea bags from canisters—mint for her, chamomile for me—but stops when she realizes the Earl Grey is empty.
Before she can ask what Skye wants in its place, we turn to see she’s already popped a new cork and is filling her mug with wine.
“You don’t want tea?” Alis asks.
“No, thanks. I’m recently monogmugamous.”
“Monogmu… what?” I, too, have no idea what she just said.
“Monogmugamous. I’m faithful to coffee. He’d know if I stepped out.”
Then she lifts her mug of wine to her lips, takes a sip, and walks out of the kitchen. As if what just happened was perfectly normal and not the most absurd thing she’s ever done.
Which says a lot, considering she’s Skye Kennedy and you never know what the hell is going to come out of that woman’s mouth.
Tea brewed and bodies settled under blankets on the couch, we spend the next half hour talking about Sunny’s school project on plate tectonics and how she drew a fault line under her teacher’s patience.
We talk about Dexter’s new lecture series, the way he gets lost in his research and babbles on about Madeleine de Scudéry as if she’s an old friend instead of a seventeenth-century author barely anyone knows about—(I literally have no idea who she is).
We talk about Otis’s new trick: “shake” with either paw depending on which hand you offer, which is unreasonably impressive for a dog with the attention span of a toddler who got ahold of Mountain Dew.
Somewhere around the bottom of the mugs, our laughter thins to the soft contentment that only shows up when you’ve said all the words. Alis sets her cup down and tucks her feet under a blanket like she’s putting herself away, settling in for the quiet part of the evening.
“Thank you for telling me,” she says to me, quiet but steady. “Even the hard parts.”
“Thank you for asking,” I say back. “Even when you were scared to ask.”
Skye reaches all the way around Alis to my hoodie, pulling both of us in for another group hug. “I love you bitches so damn much,” she says.
“I love you, too,” Alis mumbles. “But can you please let go? Because my face is smashed into your boobs.”
“Shhh,” Skye coos. “Rest in my bosom, sweet Alis.”
“Um, no thank you.” Skye continues to hold us in her death grip—her arm wrapped around my neck in more of a chokehold than a hug, Alis smashed between my chest and hers.
Finally, Skye loosens her grip enough that I’m able to duck out from underneath her arm and Alis resurfaces, making a show of inhaling as if she couldn’t breathe before.
“And remember. Vault,” Skye declares, tapping her chest. “The good kind. The glittery kind.”
“Those exist?” I ask.
“Only the most secure. Super rare,” she says.
We put on our favorite rom-com and quote over all the dialogue, as is our sacred custom.
When the credits roll, Alis stands and collects her things slowly, like she’s not quite ready to break the spell.
At the door, she hugs us both in a three-person tangle, and for once none of our elbows stab anyone in the boob.
“I’m here,” she says, one last squeeze.
“I know,” I answer. “Me too.”
After she’s gone, Skye leans her forehead against the door and lets out a soft, tired exhale. “I love her.”
“Same.”
She turns, eyes flicking over my face like she’s checking for cracks. “You okay?”
I think about tonight. About having to explain the shitstorm that was my marriage to my best friend, and how the three of us held each other in the aftermath.
I think about how, even in the midst of so much pain and heartbreak, with these two women I am always safe, always completely at home. “I’m okay,” I say, and it’s true.
Skye bumps my hip with hers. “Next month, we make Alis say ‘integrate me’ in French.”
“Good God, woman,” I huff. “You really are feral.”
She grins, smug and soft. “Love you, too, mon c?ur.”
“Don’t start,” I warn, but I’m laughing as we kill the lamp and let the string lights do the rest—our little apartment warm and bright, the night outside knocking softly and deciding to leave us be.