I hadn’t been to a family gathering since high school. “Oh, I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding. And I won’t take no for an answer.”
I smiled weakly, gulping down the entire glass of wine as soon as she closed the door behind her. Feeling the wine churn in my gut, I sent up a prayer for a miracle that would get me out of the family get together.
***
Friday night I was running late for work at the bar. Ellie had decided to cook us dinner and it had turned into an unsalvageable disaster. We’d ended up eating out and losing track of time as we fell into deep discussion about our work—Ellie’s research and my book. Ellie had gone home to bed because of an awful headache that had come on suddenly, and I hurried to the bar. I shot Jo an apologetic look as I passed through and into the staff room. I was just shoving my things in my locker when my cell rang.
It was Rhian. “Hey, hon, can I call you back on my break? I’m late for my shift.”
Rhian sniffed down the line. “Okay.”
My heart stopped. Rhian was crying? Rhian never cried. We never cried. “Rhian, what’s going on?” The blood pounded in my ears.
“I broke up with James,” her voice cracked along with my belief.
I thought Rhian and James were solid. Unbreakable.
Fuck.
“What happened?” Oh God, had he cheated on her?
“He proposed.”
Silence fell between us as I tried to understand what she was saying. “Okay. He proposed, so you dumped him?”
“Of course.”
What was I missing? “I don’t get it.”
Rhian growled. Actually growled. “How can you of all people not get it, Joss? That’s why I’m phoning you! You’re supposed to fuckin’ get it!”
“Well I don’t, so stop yelling at me,” I snapped, a pang radiating in my chest for James. He adored Rhian. She was his entire world.
“I can’t marry him, Joss. I can’t marry anybody. Marriage ruins everything.”
And it suddenly dawned on me we were entering our no-go area. This was about Rhian’s parents. I knew they were divorced, but that’s all I knew. It had to be something deeper, something worse, for Rhian to turn her back on James. “He’s not your dad. You’re not your parents. James loves you.”
“What the hell, Joss? Who the fuck is this and what has she done with my friend?”
I paused. Maybe I was spending too much time around Ellie. She was rubbing off on me. “Fair enough,” I mumbled.
Rhian sighed in relief. “So you think I’ve done the right thing.”
“No,” I replied honestly. “I think you’re scared shitless. But from one scared shitless person to another, I know no one’s going to change your mind.”
We were silent, just breathing down the phone to one another, feeling that connection between us, that relief that there was someone else out there just as messed up.
“Have you thought about the reality of this, Rhian?” I finally whispered. “James with someone else I mean?”
A choked noise crackled down the phone.
My heart broke for her. “Rhian?”
“I’ve got to go.” She hung up. And somehow I knew she was hanging up to cry. We never cried.
Feeling a deep melancholy settle over me, I texted her to advise her to really think about things before she did anything she’d regret. For once, I wished I wasn’t so broken, so Rhian had a best friend who was strong and not afraid to love, to hold up as an example of what was possible. Instead, I was her excuse that she wasn’t being irrational. I was her enabler.
“Joss?”
I glanced up over at Craig. “Yeah?”
“A little help, please.”
“Oh sure.”
“You fancy a quick shag after work?”
“No, Craig.” I shook my head, following him out, too depressed to even banter with him.
***
Sunday rolled around before I knew it, and I was so preoccupied with my book and with Rhian, who kept avoiding my calls, and too afraid to talk to James in case he put another crack in my heart with his heartache, that I didn’t have a prayer’s chance in hell of coming up with an excuse to get out of dinner with Ellie’s family.
Instead I was bundled into a cab with Ellie, dressed in celebration of the hot day in my Topshop shorts and a pretty olive-green silk camisole. We took off for Stockbridge and stopped literally five minutes later outside an apartment that looked a lot like ours.
Inside, I was unsurprised to find the Nichols’ home very much like ours too. Huge rooms, high ceilings,