I only partially regretted telling her that I’d peed myself a month ago because I’d sneezed too hard after holding it in too long.
Only thirty seconds passed before I got another text.
Luna: I thought for sure that’s what it was going to be!
Me: WTF is that exclamation mark for, bish? Don’t sound so disappointed.
Luna: It’s been a long day. A girl can dream.
Luna: I can come over tonight.
Me: [middle finger emoji]
Me: You okay?
Luna: [laughing emoji] I’ll text you when Rip gets home so he can stay with my shortcake. I’m taking her to the doctor in an hour. She’s been pulling at her ear and crying. I feel so guilty she’s feeling bad is all.
The fact that we were talking about her baby, planning around a little thing named Ava, was just another reminder of how quickly life could change. Just two years ago, everything had been normal. Or at least what normal had been for us at that point. She’d had a guy in her life—not that her now-husband was a guy; he was a big hunk of a man—but things had changed.
Once upon a time, I had been a nineteen-year-old with maybe two friends who were girls, and Luna had been an eighteen-year-old who had smiled her way through a self-defense class that I had taught at Maio House for a little extra cash. I had asked her out to eat because I had liked how nice she had been to the other women in the class. I didn’t like judgy-ass people, and that was why I had invited her. I was competitive enough, but I didn’t give a fuck what other people did or didn’t do, and Luna hadn’t given me a single vibe that said she was anything but easygoing. And, as I learned, she really was about as laidback as you could get.
I fell in love with her within a month. She was kind, patient, optimistic, and was so chill, it relaxed me. Luna was a whole lot of shit that I wasn’t. We spent the next eight years navigating through life together. Two girls with a lot in common but at the same time nothing in common, trying to survive and grow up. Then she got a boyfriend—and again, not that there was any boy in him—and right around that time, everything changed.
The next thing I knew, I was thirty-one years old, and the only thing in my life that was the same was my grandfather and Peter existing in it. Even my relationship with Luna had changed a little. I no longer knew who the hell this new person in my body and in my mind was. Not that it was bad or that I didn’t like myself, but… I was just different. Everything was different. Circumstances had changed. I had changed. Everything about life had too. Like when you lose weight or gain it and aren’t sure how you fit in your own skin anymore.
You aren’t who you used to be.
And you aren’t totally sure how it happened or when it happened, but it did.
And that was supposed to be okay. At least that was my grandpa’s sage-ass advice. God knows he made up shit all the time, but it made sense… in a way. Like how, by the time every seven years rolls around, every cell in your body has been replaced by new ones. You’re different. You’re supposed to be. It’s inevitable. It’s natural.
Life keeps evolving whether you want it to or not.
And I wasn’t about to whine about it.
Me: Okay. I’ll text you when I get home, but it should be at the same time. Hope my goddaughter feels better, and chill out. It’s not your fault she’s sick.
I pushed all those thoughts aside: about needing to tell her the truth, about being different, about my worries, about my fucking regrets too, and cast one last look at the frame sitting on my desk. I focused back on the spreadsheet I needed to go through so I could send it off to the gym’s accountant by the end of the week.
Jonah Collins was going to call, or he wasn’t. He was going to come here, or he wasn’t. There was nothing I could do to stop it other than calling someone in immigration and claiming he was smuggling drugs in his butthole. So….
I glanced at the picture on my desk then got back to work, turning the playlist on my phone on, which pushed it