“About?” he asked promptly.
“After.”
“As in after all is said and done.”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Okay. That’s a good place to start. What happens after?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
He smoothed out the robe over his thighs, not that it hid much the way he was sitting, the skank. “Then let’s work through it. Next spring, you graduate.”
“Yeah.”
“And before that happens, you’ll hopefully have an idea about what you want to do next.”
“Hopefully. Supposedly.”
“The first day of the rest of your life,” he said. “How exciting. I’m proud of you, you know? I don’t know if I tell you that enough. I need to be better at it.”
I slumped back in my chair. “I know you are. Thank you.” I hesitated before finding the words that had been buried under everything else. “You and Darren.”
He cocked his head at me. “What about me and Darren?”
I shrugged as I picked at a hole in my sweatpants. “You’re going to want to… you know. Move on. Move in. Or whatever.”
“Ah,” Sandy said. “I see.”
“Yeah.”
“Do the whole cohabitation thing. Be Paul and Vince.”
“Sure.”
“We might.” He shook his head. “No, I take that back. We will. At some point. Isn’t that the point of a relationship? That you eventually combine your lives? Darren and I will get there. For now we’re okay with how things are.”
“I just….” I rubbed a hand over my face, frustrated with how this sounded. “I don’t know what that means for me. And I know that’s ridiculous and selfish, but I can’t help but feel that way.”
Sandy laughed, though it wasn’t mean. “I get it, Kori. I do. Can I tell you a secret?”
I looked over at him.
“When Paul and Vince got together, I was happy for them. I mean, how could I not be? Here was this man, this beautiful, wonderful man who didn’t know his own self-worth. We’d grown up hiding behind our snark and sarcasm. I had Helena, and she was a shield. Paul used his weight for the same thing. I think we were both under the impression that if anyone were to care about us, we’d have to change who we were in order to make ourselves more appealing.”
I scowled. “That’s stupid.”
“It is,” Sandy agreed. “But when you’re one way for so long, you don’t really know any other way to be. And then Vince came along and saw Paul for everything he was and, even better, cherished every part of him. I don’t know what, exactly, caused Paul to take a chance. If you asked him, he would probably say Vince wore him down. But I don’t think that’s it. I think that Paul finally saw that he didn’t have to be anyone else but who he was. He didn’t need to change his attitude; he didn’t need to suddenly drop forty pounds to be happy or appealing. That kind of shit didn’t matter to Vince. And while I was happy for the both of them, I was also jealous.”
“You were?” I hadn’t known that.
“Yeah. I was jealous of Paul for finding someone who could make him smile in ways even I couldn’t. And I was jealous of Vince because I thought he was taking my friend away from me. Silly, right?”
I looked away. “Not so silly.”
“Maybe. But th
e point is that I didn’t need to feel that way. Because even though Paul had found the love of his life, it didn’t mean he would forget me. Oh sure, maybe we weren’t wrapped around each other as much as we’d been, but that was a good thing. Vince brought out a side to Paul I didn’t know existed. And we’re all better off because of it. And I like to think Darren has done the same for me.”