Just Friends(79)

“Oh, hush! You deserve the world. Now let us in. We have way too many bags for a two-night stay.” Roshi boogies past me through the doorway with her suitcase like an auntie in a movie. Overly comfortable and unwilling to accept your sappiness.

Faye follows her in, and I watch as their jaws drop. “Shut up,” they say in unison.

“This is all yours?” Roshi shouts.

“I mean, what you’re looking at now is pretty much the whole house. But yeah, isn’t it cute?”

“Um yeah! You think? I’m trying to furnish my house, and let me tell you, I don’t have the eye for interior decorating like I thought I would. And Stephen is no help in that department.”

Her words make me grateful in an instant. A house, fully furnished by Lottie herself, was a blessing I would never get over. I give them the short tour, and then set up Faye’s things in my bedroom, and unbox the blow-up mattress I had shipped overnight for Roshi in the living room.

There was an ease with which they slipped into my home, as if no time had passed. It made me wonder what I was so upset with them about. Perhaps it was easier to convince myself they “weren’t there for me,” when what I was really mourning was our distance.

After getting them settled in, we walked the short couple blocks to a cliffside view of Seabrook. The town seemed to be showing off. The sunbeams danced on the waves, which glittered as they splashed against the rocky cliffs. The ancient trees stretched their spindly branches as if guarding the landscape.

“Wow, Blair,” Faye said, awestruck by the view. “Why have I never even heard of this place before meeting you? It’s absolutely breathtaking!” She clutched a hand to her chest like a rich, elderly woman.

I chuckled. “Yeah, not many people have. Everyone seems to be pretty secretive about it.”

“I would be too if this is where I grew up,” Roshi added.

I’ve stared at the beauty of this place for so long, it’s become my normal. But seeing it through their perspective gives me fresh eyes. Just two months ago, I might have been embarrassed—embarrassed that I had given up a prestigious job to stay in my hometown and write a book with no prospects of publishing. But I’d never felt freer, in one sense at least. In the other, the cloying agony of wanting Declan but not wanting to hurt him nipped at me.

That night, after eating dinner, we settle into my little seaside cottage, or what Roshi and Faye are referring to as my “Nicolas Sparks movie-set-house.” It feels like I’ve lived here forever with them making themselves cozy in the living room. And with our pajamas on, candles lit, and soft jazz playing on the television, Roshi finally breaks open the conversation I’ve been steadily avoiding.

“Okay, Blink,” she starts, getting settled beneath a fuzzy cream blanket on the couch. “I’ve never heard you refer to yourself as ‘in crisis.’ So, let’s hear it. What’s going on?”

I blow out a big breath, eyes going wide.

“Oh boy,” Faye quips.

“Yeah. Oh boy, indeed,” I reply, and then, in a surprising turn of events that shocks everyone, including me, I tell them everything. Every painstaking detail. So much so that the earth must have made its full rotation by the time I’m done speaking. Not actually, but it feels like a lifetime has passed when Roshi finally pipes in to say: “And why do you think you’ll hurt him?”

“Because I did the first time. And that was before any of this grief stuff hit. If we do this again, I don’t want it to end. Ever. And I definitely don’t want to be the one responsible for hurting him a second time. But how am I supposed to know I’m in a healthy enough mindset to be making a commitment that big? What if I’m too emotionally weak and he ends up having to support me all the time, and then he feels tired of having to take care of me? I cry every single day now, and I never know when it’s coming, and when it does, he’ll feel like he needs to drop everything to be there for me. Isn’t it selfish to enter a relationship like that?” I plead.

“Okay, yes. I hear you, one hundred percent. But first off, grieving doesn’t make you ‘emotionally weak.’ I can understand not wanting to start a relationship like this, but you can’t spend the rest of your life waiting for a time when both of you are in perfect headspaces for a relationship. You will inevitably be supporting each other through something or another in this lifetime. It’s not always going to be a perfect fifty-fifty split. And secondly, from what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound like Declan is scared off by your tears in the least. And actually, a third point I’m just now thinking of, and not to diminish your grief at all, but this sounds a little bit like a case of CMIL,” Faye says tentatively.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Crazy Mother-In-Law.”

“He’s not even my boyfriend, let alone my husband, Faye.”

“Yes, I know that, obviously. But doesn’t what Gwen said feel a little manipulative? You weren’t doubting yourself at all until she planted those things in your head. And now you don’t even know if you can trust your own judgment to have good judgment. It’s like this weird circular argument.”

“Yeah,” Roshi chimes in. “I will say, Blair, you’ve never been one to doubt your choices. Faye and I have to talk twenty people’s ears off before we make a decision, but you’ve always just kept it all in here, no problem.” She taps her temple.