shouldn’t do this because of why I did it,” Amy, sitting at Rebel’s kitchen table, announced before she shot her tequila.
“I don’t know if I should say I’m proud of you that you filed for divorce and forced Paul to put your house on the market or not.” Rush, standing with his hips to her counter, his boots crossed at the ankle, arms on his chest, watched Rebel say as she sat opposite her friend and didn’t shoot her tequila, but instead studied Amy closely.
Needless to say, Paul had not gotten his head out of his ass.
Rush was unsurprised.
Rebel was upset, but she was dealing.
And apparently, Amy was dealing too.
“Well, I’m proud of myself,” Amy declared. “Because I know my daughter. I know right now, if she hadn’t had what happened to her happen at that volleyball game, she’d be getting her PT degree. She’d be kicking PT degree butt. She’d be running 5K races and snowboarding and finding some guy who, okay, maybe he’d be older, but he’d treat her right and she wouldn’t stand for anything less.”
“That’s the truth,” Rebel murmured.
“And she wouldn’t expect anything less from her mother,” Amy went on. “So it’s a crutch. I’m leaning on that crutch. I’m going to think of how Diane would be, not what she became. It makes it easier. And that house of cards may fall, but I’ll deal with that if it happens. Now, it’s working. Now, I can move on. So I am.”
“Good for you,” Rebel said, finally lifting her shot, tipping it to Amy, and drinking her tequila.
“Okay, I can’t drink much ’cause I’m driving, so should we switch to wine?” Amy suggested when Rebel was done.
Rebel started to get up.
“Got it,” Rush muttered. “Red or white?”
“White, Rush. Thanks,” Amy said.
“Yeah, honey,” Rebel agreed.
He got them their wine.
Then he got the fuck out of there.
But as he was walking out, he heard Amy whisper, “I like him, Rebel. At first he scared me a little. But the way he looks at you, you’re his world. I love that for you, doll. I really do. I just wish Diane had lived to see it.”
This meant Rush was smiling when he hit her living room.
Not a shock, Rebel was all about Christmas and the tall narrow tree in the corner of her living room screamed it. Stuffed full of bright decorations, you could barely see the needles. So many, there were some sticking out. Precisely little branches that had small, bright-colored pompoms at the ends.
She had a huge wreath in the same theme on her door. Fluffy pompom garlands leading from foyer to living room through bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and back to the front door. Colored lights everywhere.
On the other hand, Essence’s pad was decorated for what she called “Yule.”
But it was a lot of the same shit. Just a boatload more of it.
He snatched his phone from her coffee table that had three doves in different patterns of purples, reds, pinks, blues and oranges sitting on it. It also had a big box wrapped in silver paper and tied with a big silver ribbon that was not for Christmas, but for that weekend. Elvira’s wedding.
He was supposed to wear a suit.
That shit was not happening.
He went to the bedroom and nabbed his headphones.
He had no idea how long it was before he watched her come in from where he was on his back on her bed under her pompom garlands and Christmas lights and year-’round ornaments, his stocking feet up on the back of one of the chests that wedged in the bed.
She just smiled at him as she collapsed on his chest and popped out one of his earphones, plugging in her ear.
And then he watched the beauty of her face get even more beautiful when she heard what he was listening to.
It was the song Hop was going to sing when she walked through the garden to him in six months.
The wedding was hers. He’d give her whatever he wanted. He’d told her that.
That song was the only thing he’d asked for.
And although the words might not be what someone would want for the first day of the rest of their lives together, Rush had learned pretty much since he could cogitate with his dad as the example that every day was the first day of the rest of your life and you had to live it that way.
But he wanted her to know, when it was all said and done, they would not live