I couldn’t wait any longer.
I needed more from her. I needed her to claim me, to assure me that I wasn’t crazy or alone in what I was feeling, to make what we had between us real.
And I would ask for it.
Tonight.SydneyAfter dinner, everyone helped clear the table, and then we all separated into little groups without really noticing it.
Jordan and his brothers were watching football in the living room with Paige, who I imagined was in hog heaven with so many people around who loved the game like she did. Before he retreated there, Jordan had pulled me to the side, asking if we could talk after I put Paige to bed tonight. My stomach was in knots wondering what it was about, but he assured me it was nothing bad, so I tried to trust him in that.
Jordan’s mom, Laurelei, along with Betty and Ruby Grace were gathered at the dining room table, now filled with the contents of Ruby Grace’s wedding planning binder. They were drinking wine and laughing as they went through last-minute preparations.
Mikey and Kylie were in the backyard, sitting together at a little bonfire they’d made while Mikey played the guitar.
Mallory and I were in the kitchen cleaning up, and we cracked the window so we could hear what Michael was playing. He was actually quite good, and I wondered to myself if he would ever consider making a career from music.
He and Kylie were so young, just nineteen years old, and I smiled from time to time thinking about how everything felt so possible at that age, and yet it also felt like nothing had to be figured out at all — not yet.
When I was nineteen, I was in college, with my eyes set on the future. I envisioned working with athletic teams across the country, learning more about the human body every day, and more importantly — how to keep athletes healthy and on the field or court where they wanted to be.
My stomach sank, as it often did when I thought about what could have been. Then I shrank from guilt, knowing that if it had turned out that way, I wouldn’t have Paige.
I blinked the thoughts away as Mallory handed me a freshly cleaned casserole dish covered in warm soapy suds. I ran it under the cool water from the faucet, rinsing it completely before I set it to dry on a towel we’d laid out on the counter.
“I can handle this, Mallory,” I offered for the second time since we’d started cleaning up the kitchen. “If you want to go help the other ladies with the wedding plans.”
She scoffed, cocking an eyebrow at me before she got to work on the next casserole dish. “I know you don’t know me very well, but trust me when I say wedding planning is nowhere on my list of things I’d like to do in my spare time.”
I chuckled. “Not your cup of tea?”
“Let’s just say the only time I like to get serious about what colors to pick for something is when it comes to dying my hair. At least, it was, until this little gal decided to start blooming and I started thinking about what color to paint her room.”
She patted her stomach with a soapy hand, smiling at me before she was back to work on the dish. I took her in then, noting the fading pink and orange at the tips of her dirty blonde hair, the septum piercing in her nose, the fierce and beautiful makeup she wore on her white skin, the sliver of tattoos peeking out from where she’d shoved the sleeves of her sweater up to her elbows along with the lotus flower right behind her ear. She was unlike any girl I’d seen around this town, and I kind of loved it.
“Besides, you can’t get rid of me that easily, not when we’re all dying to know more about you — specifically, you and Jordan.”
The blood rushed from my face, and I took the dish from her hands, rinsing it without responding. My heart was racing as I tried to find the right words to say — or really, any words at all. If only she knew I’d been asking myself questions about me and Jordan for the last two months, and especially the last week, wondering more and more every day what we were, how we could be anything at all considering our circumstances.
The gravity that pulled me into Jordan — effortlessly and completely — also sent me spiraling in the next minute, down a rabbit hole of uncertainty and warning. Nothing had changed since we first made our agreement. He was still my boss. I was still the first and only female on a staff of men in a small town. I still had a daughter who was fresh off my and Randy’s divorce.