Wretched Love

Kate

“Do you believe in magic?”I asked.

We were having a girls’ night at Hades and Freya’s house. Almost everyone’s husband was away on this ‘run,’ which I figured meant it was important.

I’d tried to decline the invitation, deciding that now was the time I needed to distance myself from these women, to make it easier for me to leave. But they wouldn’t hear of it. And I wasn’t strong enough to argue with them. I was slowly finding my voice with Swiss, I was brave enough to disagree with him on occasion, but that was rare and when I acted on instinct. I couldn’t unlearn a lifetime of behavior in a handful of weeks.

Weeks. That’s what it had been. Almost a month. How could it have been such a small stretch of time?

I was mulling over that when I drove out into the desert to Freya’s place.

Freya had greeted me at the door with champagne.

Her house was utterly beautiful, utterly her. A mix of bohemian and glam. Her friend Marilyn had been there most of the night and was an absolute delight. She was one of the most attractive women I’d ever seen, and she worked at the strip club Freya worked at before she had Eva.

That’s where I knew Freya from. She had a wildly popular YouTube channel that Violet had loved, speaking about being a stripper, beauty routines and tricks of the trade.

It was wild that my daughter idolized two women I had fallen into hanging out with.

Marilyn had left earlier because her and her husband were getting ready for a baby of their own they were having via surrogate.

She’d invited me to the baby shower. In three months.

I’d accepted the invitation, knowing I’d never attend.

Now we were sitting outside, in the glow of the outdoor fireplace with the desert yawning around us and the stars twinkling above us.

It was total bliss.

I was thinking about everything that had happened in the past month, which had prompted me to ask the question about magic.

“Of course,” Macy responded immediately.

“Oh, no. Don’t get her started,” Caroline rolled her eyes. But in a way a sister might, with softness, with good natured teasing, with love.

“Oh, stop,” Macy shot back. “You loved Lord of the Rings.”

“We did,” Freya agreed, sipping her drink.

“The first time you made us watch it,” Caroline added.

“Not the thirty times after that,” Freya finished.

I smiled, watching them. There was an ease there that I hadn’t seen before. That I didn’t know existed. I was instantly envious of them for what they had, desperate to belong.

“It was not thirty times,” Macy snapped, unaware of how I was coveting her friendships. How I was coveting their lives, except with my own biker, with my own version of a happily ever after. Not the rapidly dwindling amount of time I had left with them all.

“More like forty,” Caroline muttered under her breath.

Freya grinned into her drink.

“Like there is a limit to the amount of times anyone could watch that movie,” Macy scoffed. She focused on me. “Don’t listen to them. They believe in magic all right.”

I smiled at her. “I think it was magic that brought me here,” I said shyly. “I have no other explanation for it.” I looked out toward the desert, promising myself I would one day have a place like this.

Even if it wouldn’t be filled with the man I’d come to love. The women I’d come to love.

“I was driving, looking for… something. I don’t know what. But I knew I was lost,” I whispered. “And I found myself here. With Swiss.” I glanced at the women who were all watching me intently. “With all of you. And I guess I just want to thank you.” My words rushed out at the end as I was embarrassed at how candid I was being.