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“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Holly couldn’t argue, because that was definitely what she did. “It doesn’t matter with this one, though. She just… she hates her life, and I don’t think I want to be a part of it.”

“Sounds like an excuse to me! Maybe if you really like her, she’ll make you actually put in the work.”

What the hell? That, she could argue with. “I work my ass off, Caitlin. I have since I was twelve and got my first under-the-table job, remember? So we could get new backpacks for middle school?”

“You do work hard, at your job. And not at all at anything that involves emotional vulnerability,” Caitlin said. “Which is kind of ironic for someone who says they don’t dream of labor!”

It was a low blow to quote James Baldwin at her.

“Look, I know you don’t want to hear this, but most people aren’t naturally good at friendship or romantic relationships. Lots of people get mean when they’re scared or feel threatened. And they work hard to stop. You can be a different partner this time, but you have to actually try. Or you can be a jerk to this girl, too, and mourn her for ten years like you have with Ivy.”

Caitlin wasn’t saying anything Holly hadn’t begun to ask herself as she spent more and more time with Tara. She kicked the tree in front of her in frustration, and a shiny pink ball fell to the ground and shattered. Shit. She hadn’t meant to break their ornaments.

“I’m hanging up now, Cait. I’ll call you never!”

“I love you!” Caitlin said as Holly hit end on the call.

She rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes, not ready to go back out into the crowd. It was true that she was scared she hadn’t changed. But that wasn’t the real issue.

The real issue was she could change into a whole different person, one who was kind, emotionally generous, open, loyal, and she would still never be Marriage Material for Tara. So why try?

Chapter 17

Tara

Can I tell you something kind of awful?” Miriam asked, sitting next to Tara on the porch swing.

She’d come outside because the energy in the dining room was a little too romantic for her to handle, and it was starting to give her traitor brain ideas about how she and Holly could, next year, be celebrating their anniversary at Carrigan’s. If they really got together. Which they obviously couldn’t, even if she wanted them to. She didn’t even think Holly was interested in a real relationship.

Holly had a whole world to see, and she hadn’t said anything to make Tara believe she wanted anything past their agreed-upon weekend.

Tara startled at Miriam’s voice. “Please! I love a terrible confession.”

Miriam sighed. “I want to be unreservedly happy for Cole and Sawyer, but I’m feeling a little… jealous. That I’m going to have to share him with a romantic partner.”

“I get it.” Tara nodded, although in actuality she had lost Cole’s affection years before, when she’d walked away after the fire, and when he’d met Miriam. Miri had never, really, had to share Cole with Tara. “And I feel better that I’m not the only one.”

“Hmmm, I mean, he became friends with me, and he didn’t stop loving you. It will probably be okay? Cole’s very big—he has a lot of room for love in his body.”

“I’m not sure it’s the same thing,” Tara argued, though she should leave it be, since Miriam was only trying to make herself feel better. “I was never the most important other person in his life.”

“Are you sure?” Miriam asked skeptically. “Because the way he tells it, you were his other half, and then after the fire, you pulled away and he was floating around desperate for a life raft when he happened to meet me.”

As if he had been summoned by his name being spoken, like the chaos demon he was, Cole appeared. “What are we talking about? Is it me?”

“Not everything is about you, Nicholas,” Tara said, but Miriam threw her under the bus.

“We were talking about how you love Tara the most of anyone.”

His blond waves bobbed as he nodded emphatically. “Not just of anyone, of anything. Oceans, sailing boats, lobster pants, international crime, bad decisions—there’s nothing and no one on earth I love more than this one.”

He pointed at Tara, and his tone was melodramatic and ridiculous but his eyes were serious as they held hers.

That was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard, and she wouldn’t—couldn’t—entertain it as an option. Even the possibility that it might be true overwhelmed her, gutted her, and tried to rewrite her, as if Cole were able to hack her most basic wiring. If he loved her that much, as much as she loved him, she had been dismissing his love for half her life, refusing to believe in him. If he had been serious every time he effusively adored her, and not joking, as his manner implied, he had offered her his heart and she’d rejected it, and she could have spent the last twenty years with a soulmate but instead she’d sent him off to sea alone and hurt them both.

Her version was safer. “You love me like a blankie,” she said, but she couldn’t meet his eyes.

She felt herself be swept up, and then she was sitting on his lap. It was unfair, how fast he could move, and also how strong he was. He settled her against him, his arms around her waist. “Your ass is way too bony to be a good blankie, Tar.”