knee where she’s squatted and turns to look at me. “Really? You want it to be like this between you and Josh forever? Setting each other up on bad dates? Coming home to just Winnie?”
“And Vodka, Janis, and Daniel Craig.”
She ignores my humor defense mechanism and digs another hole, holding out her hand for another cube of dirt and airy roots.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” I add quietly, handing it over.
“Try.”
“Josh has always been this person who I admired. I mean, he’s beautiful, we all know that. But he also has that impossible kind of smart, and poise, and is emotionally-controlled. I’ve never been able to manage that type of calm, but he comes by it so naturally.” I stab the ground with the point of a small shovel. “And as a friend? He’s just . . . lovely. Loyal, and aware, and kind, and thoughtful. I sort of worship him.” Mom laughs, and I hand her another clump of roots. “I know I’m like Pig-Pen in Charlie Brown, and I have chaos around me, but it’s like he doesn’t even care. He doesn’t need me to change or pretend to be someone else. He’s my person. He’s my best friend.”
Mom straightens, surveying her work. “I don’t know, honey, that seems sort of wonderful to me.”
A dark streak of anxiety spirals through me. “It is. It was. But then we had sex. The thing is, I know on some instinctive level that I’m not right for Josh. I’m messy and silly and flighty. I forget to pay bills and sing made-up songs to my dog in public before realizing what I’m doing. I spent an entire summer arguing with the city council about not being able to have chickens in my apartment, and remember that time I bought all those balloons because they were a nickel each and then I couldn’t even fit into my car? I know without a doubt that that isn’t the kind of woman he needs.”
A little bit of fire flickers through her eyes. “How can you say that?”
I shrug. “I know him. He loves me as a friend. Maybe like a sister.”
“He had sex with you,” Mom reminds me, and I feel the memory like a pulse in my chest. “In most places, that’s not a sisterly thing. Hazel, honey, are you in love with him?”
Her question slams into me and I have no idea why. We’ve been headed there this entire conversation. I press my hands to my stomach, taking stock of what’s there and trying to translate the ache into words. “I’m not, you know, because I think there’s a fail-safe somewhere inside here. I don’t think I’d come back from that.”
Mom nods, her eyes softening. “Is it strange that I’ve never had one of those? I’ve never really had a love that could consume me. I want to know that kind of fire.”
“I’m not even sure I want that. If I set my heart on someone and they move on, I think it would wreck me.”
Mom reaches up, running a muddy thumb along my jaw. “I get it, honey. I just want you to have the world. And if your world is Josh, then I want you to be brave and go after it.”
“Because you’re my mama.”
She nods. “Someday you’ll understand.”
FIFTEEN
* * *
JOSH
As usual, it takes Emily a solid ten minutes of silent menu perusal before she decides what she wants. We’ve been eating at this restaurant for years. I always get the same thing, so I spend her menu inspection time sorting the sugars, straightening the salt and pepper, staring out the window trying not to think about Hazel.
Hazel beneath me, the warmth of her hands moving down my back, the bite of her nails. Her teeth on my shoulder and the sharp cry she made the second time she came.
The second time. When she came, and came, and came.
I’m definitely not thinking about the quiet way she mumbled she loved me when I carefully lowered her semiconscious naked body onto her bed.
Emily slides the menu on the table, snapping my focus away from the window and back to the approaching waiter. She smiles up at him, giving her order before I give mine, and handing over our menus. We’ve yet to say a word to each other, and it feels like the tense beginning of a chess match, or the hush before the first serve at Wimbledon.
My sister and I unroll our napkins in unison, tucking them onto