commitment issues, and . . . it went from there.” Sophie wiped her eyes on the tail of her nightshirt. “We had a wonderful time in Europe, but I was”—she hiccuped—“sad and anxious most of the time.” She buried her face in Emma’s shoulder. “I’m the strong one. I shouldn’t be carrying on like this, but I don’t deserve to be happy.”
“Why would you think that you don’t deserve to be happy?” Emma asked. “You’ve worked hard for years to get to where you are now, and you love Teddy and he loves you. This is a stupid fight that can be fixed.”
Sophie rolled off a fistful of toilet paper and blew her nose.
Emma took Sophie by the hand and stood up, pulling Sophie with her. “Let’s sort this out in the living room with some yogurt and two spoons.” She had to be strong for Sophie. She owed her that much, but Emma wasn’t an expert on relationship advice.
“Just let me wallow in misery for a while,” Sophie said.
“You need to pick up your brushes and get busy, not go into a depression like I did all those years,” Emma said.
“I can’t, Em. Whatever this is started on the way home in the airplane, and I can’t shake it,” Sophie said.
“Let’s eat all these cookies and watch a movie. Neither of us can sleep anyway. We don’t have a man in our beds,” Emma told her.
“You want to explain that?” Sophie asked.
“Not tonight. Maybe later,” Emma replied as she turned on the television and put the first season of Castle into the DVD player. She hoped that would cheer Sophie up a bit.
It didn’t work, but just as the sixth episode ended, Sophie fell asleep on the sofa. Emma threw a blanket over her, went to her bedroom, and pulled the spread off the bed. She tucked it under one arm and a pillow under the other. She tiptoed back to the living room and made a pallet on the floor right beside the sofa. When Sophie groaned, Emma reached a hand up and laid it on her shoulder.
“It’s all right. I’m right here,” she whispered. This was the first time that Emma had had to be the strong one, and she hoped she was doing a decent job of helping her friend. Even though she was sad for Sophie, it was an amazing feeling to be needed. She wasn’t an expert on relationships, but she could be there for her one hundred percent.
The clock on the stove said that it was after ten when Sophie awoke. Rebel used to say that everything, no matter what it was, looked better in the light of day. She was wrong this time. Nothing was better.
With a long sigh, she started to get up and realized that Emma was sleeping on the floor right beside the sofa. Anyone who would sleep beside her on the floor was a friend indeed. Suddenly, tears were flowing down Sophie’s cheeks again. She didn’t deserve a friend like Emma, one who would give up sleep and then stay right by her side the whole night through. After the way she had felt about the baby that she lost, she didn’t deserve anything. Her negative feelings had caused her to lose the baby. Maybe she shouldn’t be with Teddy after all.
“My baby would have been a happy child. He would have had Rebel for a grandmother, and once I got over the shock, I could have cleaned houses with you and worked nights on my art.” Sophie eased off the sofa and made her way to her bedroom, where she crawled into bed and pulled the covers up over her head. Just saying that out loud made her a little less sad.
Her phone pinged, so she reached out with a hand and felt around on the nightstand until she located it. When she had a hold on it, she brought it under the covers to discover several messages and two missed calls from Teddy.
She dried her wet cheeks on the sheet and called him.
“Are we okay?” Teddy asked.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re saying the words, but your tone isn’t agreeing with them,” he told her. “I can be there in a few hours.”
“No, don’t. I don’t deserve for you to love me or to come down here and comfort me. I don’t even deserve to know someone like you. Do you even realize that there must be something wrong with you to want to spend the rest of