“I love it here,” Amy said as she unlocked her car.
“It’s become home for us,” I said and opened the passenger door. “Tell me about Ben,” I said, desperate for a less emotionally heavy topic of conversation.
“He is sexy!” Amy declared. “And he has a heart to match. I can’t wait for you to meet. Hey. Will you be my maid of honor? I’ll happily boot my current maid of honor. That has always been your spot.”
My chest filled with unshed tears. “Oh Amy. I wish I could say yes but particularly now I’m the most unsuitable maid of honor. With my eyesight loss not only will I trip on your train, I’ll take you down with me. Can I just be a guest? Less pressure and all?”
She held my gaze and nodded. “Okay. Just keep in mind that it will be a whole weekend. In a lodge. It’s going to be epic.”
Charlotte
“How can he not know?” Amy asked me after we’d tucked Kayden in and were back in the living room.
We had come home to find Alex and Kayden eating dinner. Amy had made silly faces and wormed herself into Kayden’s heart. After our dinner, Alex had left and then it was just Amy and me catching up.
“He believed I had someone else and that someone dumped me, and I just kept that thought rolling since” I said and sipped my glass of wine.
Amy shook her head. “Men really are dumb.”
“I don’t blame him. That letter was pretty convincing,” I said.
“I didn’t buy it even then,” Amy said.
I looked at her fondly. “No you didn’t.”
“He’s a carbon copy of Alex,” Amy said. “Even a blind per—”
I had to laugh. Amy looked so comically horrified. “Hey, relax, its fine. I know what you mean though. I can barely see and even I see the resemblance.”
“Poor Alex,” she said.
“Why poor Alex?”
“He never did get over you. Time just stood still for him. He’s as in love with you now as he was then,” Amy said.
“I don’t think so,” I said but I was remembering the night of crazy unbridled passion we had shared. “Too much has happened between us.”
“You really are stupid when it comes to men, you know that?” Amy said.
“And you’re a romantic,” I said.
“What about you, do you still love him?”
“I don’t want to think like that. I've forged a life for myself and Kayden here. We’re happy and settled. I don’t want any upheavals.”
“And rejections,” Amy said.
Pain gripped me, squeezing my heart like a vise. Being rejected by one’s in-laws was an experience I never wanted to go through again. I felt sorry for the naïve version of me that I’d been.
I’d so looked forward to being part of a family. I’d believed that as long as I was a decent human being, they would accept me. Clearly things in New York worked differently and what mattered was who your family is.
“Don’t forget that Alex picked you over being coerced by his parents. With the type of parents he has I thought that made him a pretty solid guy,” Amy said.
“He was, and still is, I guess. But can you imagine living with that on your shoulders? Knowing that the reason that your husband doesn’t see his family is because of you?” I shuddered.
“Sometimes you have to take a stand in life, and that’s what Alex did,” Amy said.
There was one person we had not talked about and I was dying to know how she was. “Did you keep in touch with Helen?” I held my breath as I waited for her answer.
She shook her head. “I tried but we sort of drifted apart with the person we had in common gone.”
I had been so excited to finally have a sister but our time together had turned out to be short lived.
“She was devastated when you left. She wasn’t sure what to believe. She hadn’t known you long enough like I had.”
My chest ached as I imagined the hurt she must have felt.
“Will you reach out to her?” Amy said.
I had thought about that a lot and it had been fifty-fifty. But knowing how badly I had hurt her, it wasn’t fair to bulldoze my way into her life again. The kind thing to do was to leave her and her family alone. “I don’t know.”
We talked as easily as we had two years ago. No topic was too painful or too uncomfortable to talk about. We stayed up until midnight and by then we were both yawning every five minutes.
Instead of Amy sleeping in the spare room, we shared my bed like we used to back in college on the nights we went out together and staggered to my place or hers. Amy fell asleep before me and I stayed up a bit longer unable to quite believe that my best friend was back in my life.