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“No, it’s about Delia. Delia’s special. You’ll see if she keeps coming to your classes.”
“I think that ship has sailed. She stormed out of there. She didn’t seem too mature to me.”
That answer seemed to satisfy Jeremy for some reason. It pleased him that Delia didn’t like me. “Well, you do have a way of getting under people’s skin. I mean,Ilove you, but you’re an asshole.”
I ignored him, wiping some crumbs off the table and into a napkin. “Listen, if she’s so special, why’d you let me talk you out of it?”
He looked up at me with a contemplative face. “I guess I just thought…you had a point at the time. I didn’t want to lose myjob, and I didn’t want to go through the trouble of transferring or making her transfer.”
“If it were true love, don’t you think you would have?”
He shrugged. “Don’t do that to me, man.”
I could have let it go, but I pushed it, being the asshole that I apparently was. “No, I mean it. Don’t you think if it were really more than something that stroked your ego, you would have ignored my thoughts on you dating an underling and made it work?”
“Maybe. I regret it sometimes, but I ultimately think it was the right call, even if it was hard at the time.” He looked at me and frowned. “I’m glad you talked some sense into me. I could have gotten into a lot of trouble.”
“Hey, I had to eventually return the favor. You talked sense into me so many times. You kept me alive for a while there. I could have ruined my daughter’s life by ending it all so many times, and you always talked me off the edge. I owed you.” I smiled at him and saw the twinkling in his eyes.
Jeremy may have made a mistake a year ago with Delia, but he’d been my best friend for so long, a man who I could truly rely on. When I entered his office ten years ago, broken and single with a baby to take care of, I had no idea what therapy would be like. I just knew I needed help.
Jeremy had been a guiding light out of a fog, and through my work with him, I learned to enjoy things again, slowly but surely.
Eventually, he became a friend, my first friend in adulthood not in the Navy. I owed Jeremy everything. I owed Jeremy my life.
But then there was the nagging thought in the back of my mind, the way Delia had looked in her outfit, the way her brown eyes got so stormy and angry when she realized who I was, the casual smile on her perfect and peachy lips. I tried hard not to acknowledge that thought.
I especially tried not to think about her touch on my shoulders and the way my skin tingled when her fingers made contact. I tried to get her out of my head because Jeremy had really liked her, and I had ruined it for him.
Nothing could be a bigger betrayal than to like her myself. I would have to push any such feelings away.
three
Delia
That afternoon, in disbelief, I watched Kassandra chug down a mimosa. “How can you drink that right now? I’m so dehydrated. I feel like if I drank anything but water, my body would riot.”
“I guess I’m just stronger than you are,” she teased, winking at me over her champagne flute.
I mimed gagging as I looked over the menu, my entire body sore from the long two hours of class.
The classes are supposed to be six hours, and there are only four a month to finish the entire thing, but I had left early during my temper tantrum, and lucky for me, Kassandra had followed.
Even with leaving early, it was still so hard on the body. I felt like sweat had settled into crevices I didn’t know I had. Somehow, even my ears were sweaty.
Kassandra, on the other hand, looked like a pop icon, with tan skin, somehow even in Seattle, and long brown curls that touched her butt. Instead of sweaty, she looked glowy.
I felt frumpy next to her with my strawberry blonde hair matted in my claw clip and my workout outfit clinging to my skin with moisture.
A waitress in a little dress with an apron on top, on theme for the farmer thing the restaurant was going for, sidled up next to us and asked in a syrupy voice, “You both ready?”
I glanced over at Kassandra, who shrugged and said, “A side salad,” clipping her menu shut with a satisfying noise and looking at me.
The waitress took her menu, and I looked between the two of them, feeling nervous under their gaze. “Um…a side salad also?”
I shut my menu tentatively, and Kassandra rolled her eyes. She looked up at the waitress and said, “Give us a minute. Don’t put that order in yet.”
As soon as the waitress walked away, Kassandra leaned in toward me and muttered, “Hey, what’s wrong with you? You’re acting, I don’t know, not like your usual self.”