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“Don’t be silly.”
She grins. “You’re the one coming up with ridiculous excuses so you can torpedo your relationship with the hottie football player, and you’re calling me silly? Okay. What else you got?”
“The trade.”
“Wasn’t real.” She waves her hand like she’s brushing my concern to the side.
“It might be next time.”
“So, you can work out of the Pet Threads store we start in that city. Win-win. Hit me with something harder.”
I brush a piece of invisible lint off my shirt and smooth my apron. “The store’s success. What if it’s all him?”
“It’s not. It’s because you kill the designs each and every time. Next?”
“What if he love-bombed me and I’m too infatuated to see that this isn’t even real?”
“Girl, the lies your brain tells you. Even I am unwell because of them.” She gives me a genuine—yet sad—smile. “These are all versions ofwhat if he leaves me? Then what will I have?”
I bite my lip, my knee bouncing up and down. The uneasy feeling returns in full force, and I don’t like it. The rear of my neck itches. The area by my shoulder blades that I can’t even reach. My stomach. Everything. I fight back the tears. “Yeah,” I admit. “That’s it.”
Tab leans forward, covering her hand with mine. “I don’t pretend to understand what you’ve gone through. Okay? But I just want to say, and you can tell me I’m wrong, but living a life with all these exciting and new experiences and with people we love, that’s what matters. At the end of the day, what happensisn’t under our control. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Athena could?—”
“Don’t.”
She squeezes my fingers. “The point is, anything could happen, and you have no control over it.”
“But I don’t like it,” I say meekly, barely conjuring the words. I don’t even know if I can pinpoint why. It’s just…uneasy.
“None of us do,” Tab says. “I’m no therapist, but instead of that one insinuating Micah was a psycho, she should’ve been telling you that your brain lies to you. All the time. It’s telling you things that aren’t going to happen.”
I swallow. Bringing my free hand up, I rub my temple. “Every night before I go to bed, I think about all the ways Micah could die or get taken away. I think that’s why it hit me so hard at the show.”
“Being told Micah was going to get traded while you were doing an interview was on your bingo card? Oh, honey.”
“Not entirely,” I admit. “But Micah moving. Or finding someone else while he’s at an away game. Or maybe he gets hurt on the field. You remember Briar? Her brother died that way. I looked it up.”
“Okay, but look, she’s still living. She’s going to marry an NFL player and have little football babies, and damnit, why am I getting jealous just thinking about it?”
I chuckle softly. Tab always knows when to insert some humor to bring me back to reality.
“Just like what happened to you,” she continues. “Maybe your quota for tragedy in this lifetime has already hit? Now, you’re going to skip off with Micah into the sunset and have amazing sex for the rest of your life. Even when he’s seventy, I bet you’ll still get on your artificial knees for that D.”
I hide a smile. “I have something to tell you.”
“Hmm?” she asks, lifting her cup to her lips.
“Bless your heart, but you ain’t right.”
She nearly spits her coffee everywhere. When she gets herself under control, she says, “Coming from you, I’m taking that to heart.”
I feign shock. “Bitch.”
She reaches her coffee cup out, and we toast to our fucked-up minds.
“So, who was that one player who showed up with Micah that day?”
I think back. I don’t even know if I remember who was there. Preoccupied was an understatement. “Davis?”