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“Careful, you’re going to break my china!” Mom scolded.

I realized I’d been taking my frustration out on the plates.

“Sorry.”

“Let me help,” she said, bustling over.

“Mom, you should go to bed.”

She grabbed a dish, as defiant as ever. “I’m fine.”

But a moment later, I caught her stifling a yawn with the back of her hand.

I shook my head. “Mom, the girls have a full day planned for you tomorrow, remember? They’re going to want you wide awake for that.”

The kids were Mom’s Achilles heel.

She nodded then went over and kissed Reese on the top of her head. “You take care of her,” Mom said as she came back and gave me a squeeze. “Tell her it’s just a stupid boy.”

“Mom,” I said, trying not to laugh. “He’s a man.”

“He’s a little boy if he’s hurting our Therese.”

I laughed, softly. “I guess you’re right,” I agreed.

Once Mom had finally gone off to bed, I gave up on the dishes, instead pouring two fresh glasses of wine and sitting with Reese on the couch.

“So? You want to tell me the whole story now that Mom’s gone?”

Reese looked at me, her lip wobbling. She always felt everything with her whole heart, my sister. I hated to imagine what things would be like with her if she were ever pregnant. That was the last time I remembered sobbing so uncontrollably. Though that was also right after Joe had died too.

I sighed, pushing those thoughts away.

Reese took a long sip of wine and then launched into telling me how she and Eli had gone out on a few dates. Everything seemed to be going great. She used the term date liberally, given they went back to one of their places each time and had, quote,animalisticsex.

“What exactly is that?” I asked. I was no prude, but the images I had in my head weren’t necessarily sexy.

“The chemistry was perfect, okay?” she said. “But it wasn’t just that. We had a deep connection too.”

“The guy was just recently divorced though, wasn’t he?”

“Wasn’t Will?”

A flash of something hot ran over me. “Will’s been divorced a year, and we’re not having a torrid love affair.”

“Right. You’re just friends. Just like Eli wants to be.” She buried her head in her arms again, the wine sloshing in her glass. I pulled it away from her before she upended it on the back of the couch.

The reminder of what Will and I were pricked at me. Maybe things would have been easier if Will and I had just had a fling, like Reese and Eli. Maybe we would have gotten whatever this was between us out of our systems, and I wouldn’t be plagued by constant thoughts of him at all times. Maybe I wouldn’t want to text him with every little detail of my life like I had started doing.

But if that had happened, we surely wouldn’t have become friends, either. And that part had been the most surprising thing.

Over the past three weeks, we’d settled into a comfortable friendship; albeit one that was texting-only, where we never mentioned anything that had happened between us that had been non-friend-like. Especially that moment at his house.

God, that moment. He’d been so close I could smell the scent of his skin. I could feel the heat of him on me. There had been desire in his eyes, as liquid and searing as I felt. It was like he’d barely been able to restrain himself.

Yet he did. He’d pulled back, just before Remy burst in on us.

He’d apologized again the next day, sending me an article about how cilantro-hating was genetic. I’d laughed, despite my jumbled feelings about what had happened. The next day, I’d texted him a photo of my perfect lasagna, and he’d told me I should frame it. The actual lasagna, not the photo. What started as a few texts here and there had turned into whole conversations.