Helpless is something I loathe. I call bullshit on it most times. You’re never helpless; you can always do something. I just wish I could figure out the something about this.
Wine sloshes against Emily’s glass as she fills it again. “Just thinking I might need this to get through this convo.” She takes in my reaction. “Or you might need it. Either way, I’m prepared.”
“A regular survivalist,” I joke.
She leans back in her chair again. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”
“I don’t know.” It’s almost a whine, but I’m too overwhelmed to care.
“No, you do know. And I know, and he knows, and the whole damn world knows.”
I groan again, louder this time. So loud, in fact, that my voice fills Emily’s entire backyard, and her neighbor’s dog starts to howl right along with me.
“Stop.” Emily laughs, shoving me in the arm. “I think you’ve officially lost it.”
Lost it. Her words send a shiver across my skin. The thought of losing Machlan knocks the wind out of me. How I thought I could do that—just distance myself from him forever—seems idiotic now.
It’s always this way once I’ve spent time with him. Five weeks, five days, five hours—it’s always the same. Maybe it ends badly or we drive each other crazy, but I always walk away knowing two things: one, I love him and, two, he’ll never commit to me.
“What if I lose him completely, Em?”
My friend doesn’t need a further explanation; the look on her face shows she gets it.
My chest shakes as I take a breath. It’s the kind of shake that happens when your body is full of adrenaline, prepping to keep you going through some perceived danger. There may not be a lion in the area, but I’m on the cusp of getting eaten alive anyway.
She lays her hand on my arm, giving it a gentle squeeze before removing it. “Isn’t that what you came here for?”
My entire body sags, pressing down in the wooden deck chair so hard I think I hear it crack.
“Yes. No. I don’t know anymore. When I’m away from him, he’s what I want, and I tell myself I have to make it stop. Then I’m with him, and it’s really apparent I can’t make it stop.” I cover my face with my hands. “I just want to be one of those women who is all confident and independent. One who calls a number and meets up at a hotel when she needs a man.”
Emily snorts.
“I mean it.” I look at her with every intention of being serious but end up laughing as soon as our eyes meet. “Stop making me laugh!”
“It’s my job.”
“Well, make it your job to help me figure out how to live my life. Just make all my decisions for me, will ya?”
“You need to relax,” she says. “Seriously.”
“I know.”
The temperature seems to drop. I run my hands up and down my arms as the crickets in the lowlands get louder. It makes me think of camping with Machlan—campfires and s’mores and the taste of bug spray. I close my eyes and imagine his red tent with the hole in the top from the summer night when Peck forgot to watch the fire and the top of the tent went up in flames.
What a fun time of my life that was—being with my favorite people, doing the simplest things. Making memories that are still some of my most precious possessions.
“How do people survive this?” I ask. “How do they love someone who doesn’t love them back and go on and have a happy life with someone else?”
“Maybe they don’t.”
“Oh, gee. Thanks.”
She laughs. “Maybe those people never get married because they refuse to see the big sea and all those other hunky fishes swimming around them. Or maybe they do get married and are never truly happy because they keep thinking about the fish from the reef back there.”
I struggle to keep a straight face. “You’re so super helpful.”
“Hear me out,” she says, waving a hand to shush me. “You know how you can go three days and not eat cake and as soon as you say you’re on a diet, all you can think about is cake?”
“Wait a minute. What happened to the reef?”
“They’re connected. I promise. Stick with me.”
“Okayyy …”
She shimmies in her seat. “Okay. So, all you can think about is cake, right? Well, it’s the same thing here. It’s the same thing as Fish Girl.”
I pretend to think. “Nope,” I say, shaking my head fervently. “I’m not following you.”
“Gah!”
“Cake and fish should never go together.”
“They go together in this way: you want cake on minute one of a diet because it’s what you can’t have. As soon as that luscious piece of heaven slathered with buttercream goodness is off-limits, you need it like you need air. Am I right?”