“The first step is admitting you’re a disaster,” Stef said sagely.
“I’m not fine. I am a disaster. Even my family doesn’t know what I do for a living because they can’t handle the thought of me anywhere near even the slightest whiff of danger. If they had any idea how dangerous my job is, they would fly out here, form a protective shield around me, and force me to move home with them.”
My tiny personal audience all watched me over the rims of their glasses.
“And I’m drinking water because I had a heart condition that almost killed me when I was fifteen. I missed out on all the normal teenage things thanks to surgeries and being the weird girl who died in front of an entire stadium of people. It’s fixed now, but I still get PVCs when I’m stressed. And I’m stressed as hell now. Every stupid flutter reminds me what it was like to almost die and then live a suffocating half-life of homeschooling, medical appointments, and overbearing parents who I couldn’t blame for being overbearing because they watched me essentially die on a soccer field.”
“Whoa,” Sloane said.
“More alcohol, Joel,” Naomi begged, holding up her now empty wineglass.
“So excuse me if I don’t tell everyone I meet all the details of my life. I spent enough of it being micromanaged and reminded that I’m not normal and I won’t ever have normal. Until I got here and I met Nashhole.”
“Good one,” Sloane said with an approving nod.
“What happened when you got here and met Nash? Sorry. I mean Nashhole?” Naomi asked, hanging on my every word.
“I took one look at him and his whole wounded, broody thing—”
“By ‘thing,’ do you mean penis?” Stef asked.
“I do not.”
“Stop interrupting her,” Naomi hissed. “You took one look at his wounded, broody not-penis and what?”
“I liked him,” I confessed. “I really liked him. He made me feel like I was special and not in the weird cardiac-arrest-in-front-of-everyone way. He made me feel like he needed me. No one’s ever needed me. They’ve always protected me or babied me or avoided me. God, my parents are trying to book plane tickets just to bully their way into my next cardiology appointment so they can hear my doctor say I’m still fine.”
More drinks appeared in front of Naomi and Sloane. Joel slid a bowl of nuts my way. “Those are fresh out of the bag. No one fingered them up yet,” he assured me.
“Thank you for the unfingered nuts,” I said.
“So Nash came clean—after some berating—about the panic attacks he’s been having and how you helped him,” Naomi said.
“I didn’t take advantage of him,” I insisted.
“Honey, we know. No one thinks that. Not even Nash. He’s a Morgan. They say stupid things when they’re mad. But I have to tell you, it’s nice to see him mad,” Naomi confessed.
“Why?”
“Before you, he wasn’t mad or happy or anything. He was like a photocopy of himself. Just flat, lifeless. And then along came you and you gave him something to care enough about to get mad.”
“I lied to him. I lied to all of you.”
“And now you’ll do better,” Naomi said, as if it were that simple.
“I will?”
“If you want to stay friends you will,” Sloane said. Three shots in and she was already listing to one side like she was on the deck of a ship.
“Friends make friends better. We accept the bad parts, celebrate the good parts, and we don’t torture you for your mistakes,” Naomi said.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you,” I said softly.
“It kind of makes sense now at least,” Sloane pointed out. “If I had to lie to my parents about everything just to lead a somewhat normal life, I can see how easily that would turn into a habit.”
“I get it,” Naomi said sympathetically. “I did lie to my parents about everything when I first got here because I was trying to protect them from my mess and Tina’s mess.”
“I know the feeling.” I stirred my straw around the water. “I actually let myself start to ask ‘what if?’”
“What if what?” Stef asked.
“What if it worked out with him? What if I stayed here? What if this was the sign I’d been looking for to quit my job and try something new? What if I could actually have normal?”
Naomi and Sloane were staring at me with wide, watery eyes.
“Don’t,” I warned.
“Oh, Lina,” Naomi whispered.
“I know you don’t like to be touched, and I respect that,” Sloane said. “But I think you should know that I’m hugging you in my mind.”
“Okay. No more shots for you,” I decided.
They both continued to stare at me like big doe-eyed, needy cartoon characters. “Make it stop,” I begged Stef.
He shook his head. “There’s only one way to make it stop.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ugh, fine. You can hug me. But don’t spill anything on me.”
“Yay!” Sloane said.
They hugged me from both sides. There, sandwiched between a drunk librarian and a tipsy community relations director, I felt just a little bit better. Stef patted me awkwardly on the head.
“You deserve to be happy and have normal,” Naomi said, pulling back.
“I don’t know what I deserve. Nash hit pretty much every shame and guilt button I have.”
“He dropped a truth bomb on me at one of Waylay’s games earlier this season,” Naomi sympathized.
“Thank God the season’s almost over,” Stef joked.
“You know why honesty is so important to him, don’t you?” Naomi asked me.
I shrugged. “I guess it’s important to everyone.”
“Knox and Nash’s dad is an addict. Duke started using drugs—mostly opioids—after their mom died. Knox said every day with their dad felt like a lie. He’d swear he was sober or promise he’d never use again. He’d commit to picking them up after school or tell them he’d be at their football games. But he just kept letting them down. Over and over again. One lie after another.”
“That sucks,” I admitted. My upbringing had its challenges…you know, like dying in front of all my friends and their families. But that didn’t compare to how Knox and Nash had grown up. “However, unpopular opinion here. You’re not responsible for how you were brought up, but you are responsible for your actions and reactions once you’re an adult.”
“That’s true,” Naomi admitted before guzzling more wine.
“The beautiful woman with the very long legs has a point,” Sloane said. “How tall are you anyway? Let’s measure!”
I nudged her glass of water closer. “Maybe you should give the shots a break.”
“Let’s follow this train of thought,” Stef announced. “You went through a shit time as a teenager, which thanks to puberty is already horrible.”
“Fair.”
“Stick with me here,” he continued. “So you grow up, move away, become fiercely independent, and take a dangerous job. Why?”