“And that’s everything,” I finished.
“Um…” Letty trailed off and glanced over at Brooklyn.
It was later. I was at Smutties and I’d just given my friends the condensed highlights of the last two years of my life with a heavy emphasis on the last six months. Throughout this neither interrupted, at least not verbally. But their facial expressions had said it all. Both were angry. I wasn’t sure if that was directed at me since I hadn’t told them what was going on or if they were pissed at Nate. Maybe a mixture of both.
“Oh,” I continued. “And Reese asked me to move in with him. Well, not move in move in, but move in until I can get on my feet since I’ll basically be homeless in a few weeks.”
“Basically?” Brooklyn sputtered. “Is there a different shade of homelessness I don’t know about? I think it’s like being pregnant—you either are or you aren’t.”
Well, in my case, I could sleep in my office at the bakery so I wouldn’t actually be homeless in the sense I’d be sleeping on a park bench, but I would be without a home.
However, with the stink eye Brooklyn was tossing my way I did not explain the difference.
“We’ll get to Reese in a minute. Let’s go back to Nate and what the fuck?” Letty spat. “What the fuck, Sadie?”
The repeat of “what the fuck” was a clear indication there was no maybe about it; she was pissed at me.
“Lets,” Brooklyn murmured.
“No, Brook. Just no.” Letty’s hand came up, halting her best friend from saying more. “Do you not like us?”
“What?”
“Do you not like us?” she parroted.
My heartbeat quickened to a painful staccato.
“I love you two.”
“Then why? If you loved us, the moment, the very second you found out that stupid fuck stole your money you would’ve been over here or on the phone so fast your hair would catch fire.”
“I know. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing trying to fix everything myself. But that wasn’t right. I see that now and that’s why I’m here.”
“Well, fuck a duck.” Letty threw her hands in the air. “Now I can’t be mad. And I really want to be mad because I’m so freaking hurt you didn’t come to us. And now I can’t be mad because you apologized.”
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Letty was a tad bit dramatic. Okay, it wasn’t a stretch at all, it was just the way it was. She could be over the top about the smallest of things. But this wasn’t small, I’d messed up big. Letty and Brooklyn were best friends, sisters of the heart, but that didn’t mean they didn’t welcome others into their circle. They did. And once you were in, neither of them made you feel like an outsider. Their friendship that had started from practically the womb (their mothers were best friends as were their fathers) didn’t overshadow their friendships with other people.
But along with the drama, Letty could hold a mean grudge and it seemed she wasn’t going to do that. Relief and guilt mixed together.
“I really am sorry,” I whispered. “Everything came bearing down on me and I didn’t know what to do so I shut down. I went into survival mode. Then embarrassment set in, and I was so humiliated I didn’t want anyone to know. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all. Shame turned into stubbornness and when Reese found out and tried to offer me a loan I turned him down—for a week. I was going to lose Treats because I couldn’t get over myself. I had a bunch of stupid excuses that were total lies, but I was so scared I was trying to self-sabotage.
“But when Reese told me about Trevor getting involved and then my house was broken into, a new fear took over. The kind that has nothing to do with losing my business. The kind that makes me afraid Trevor will find Nate, make him pay me back, then want some sort of payback from me. So, I accepted his offer in hopes Trevor wouldn’t continue to try and solve my money problems. But as I told you, Mrs. Simpson paid my rent, so I don’t need the loan.”
“But you still want Reese?” Brooklyn asked.
No, I didn’t want Reese, that wasn’t a strong enough word. He was a necessity, a craving, a basic need for survival.
“She wants Reese,” Letty answered for me. “It’s about time the two of you stopped dancing around each other.”
Brooklyn’s head bobbed in agreement.
“Right. He was getting grumpy and that’s not like Reese. He’s the one who’s always optimistic. Well…” Brooklyn drew that out then finished, “He always has a positive attitude about work and his friends, but the man has serious issues with women. Damn.”
Brooklyn abruptly stopped and slapped her hand over her mouth.
“I know about his ex-wife,” I told her. “I also know about his commitment issues. Trust me, they became clear after we had sex in my office and he essentially told me he wanted to have sex again but there would be nothing more.”
“You what?” Letty screeched. “You left that part out.”
“It wasn’t pertinent to the story.”
“Like hell it wasn’t. That’s the whole plot,” Letty announced, and I braced from the drama that was sure to spill and Letty didn’t disappoint. “Fuck Nate. Fuck him so hard I hope when Reese and the guys find him, they beat him up before they get you back your money. Nate’s the villain. Villains suck but they’re necessary to the story. But the hero…now, that’s where it’s at. And Reese, all tall and pretty with just enough issues to make him interesting…that, my good friend, is the real story. So you had sex. When, where, was it good, is he good? Wait, I don’t want to know, I have to look at him. Never mind, I wanna know.”
I was blinking rapidly, wondering how the topic of conversation had changed so dramatically.
Drama Queen Letty, that was how.
“Good Lord, Lets. Nosy much?” Brooklyn half-heartedly admonished.
“Please, like you don’t want to know. I bet he’s good. He has to be; no way is God so cruel He’d give Reese all the goods and have him suck in the sack.”
“You’re going to hell,” Brooklyn groaned.
“Don’t say that!” Letty fumed. “I’m a good person.”
I sat nestled back into the overstuffed bean bag that Letty called a Love Sac. It was so comfortable I could fall asleep in it and wake up the next morning well-rested and ready to take on the day. Though I could also do that in my bed sleeping next to Reese, which I much preferred.
“It wasn’t good.” I cut into their staredown. Their heads snapped in my direction. “It was in my office in the middle of a fight. I jumped him. It was quick and rough and he’s bossy. Super bossy, and I think he’s taken lessons on dirty talk. Which, we need to find where those classes are taught and post about them on Facebook, Insta, Twitter, and TikTok. All men should enroll and learn the art of giving women orgasms with words.”
Slowly, they turned to look at each other, then after a beat back to me.
“But it wasn’t good?” Letty asked disbelievingly.
“In all the words in the English language and others besides, there isn’t one to describe what it was. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t even life-changing. It was something else. It was me feeling powerful. Beautiful, sexy, desired. It wasn’t about sex; it was more than that. It was like I needed to be connected to him in a primitive way or I’d die. I said I jumped him—maybe attacked is a better description. I was pissed and we were arguing and suddenly there was this clarity that I was looking at the man who, I don’t know, I was meant to be with. But I couldn’t say that so I did the only thing I could do.”
“Holy shit,” Brooklyn wheezed.
“But then after it was over, the depth of my feelings scared me so bad I told him to leave. And when he told me we’d be doing that again, I denied it and told him we wouldn’t. And we haven’t. I mean, the sex, that hasn’t happened again.”
“Are you cray-cray?” Letty asked.
Yes, I was totally crazy.
“I told you my head was messed up.”
“But it’s straight now?” Letty went on.
“Last night after the break-in I was feeling a little raw and I woke up in the middle of the night. Reese was supposed to be sleeping on the couch, but when I went out to check, he wasn’t there, and I panicked. He was just in the bathroom.” I waved off Letty’s big eyes. “But Reese, he saw it and took me to my room and got into bed with me. He told me he wanted to be more than friends, more than just sex. It took him a little bit to get me to agree, but he promised it wouldn’t get messy and I believe him. He didn’t say he’d be patient with me but he didn’t have to because over the last week he’s proven he will. Any rational man would’ve run a mile, but Reese stuck it out, so how could I not get my head straight?”
“Reese slept in bed with you?” Brooklyn asked, then her eyes darted to Letty.
“Yeah.”
“Like, all night?” Letty joined. “He didn’t, let’s say, climb in, talk to you, then climb out and go back out to the couch to sleep?”
“I’m getting the sense this means something. But you’ve lost me.”
Brooklyn leaned in and with a conspiratorial whisper that she didn’t need since we were the only ones in the bookstore, she told me, “Rhode told me that Reese doesn’t spend the night.”
“Okay.”
“No, Sadie, he doesn’t spend the night at women’s houses, and they don’t spend the night at his. Not since he divorced his wife, and that happened in his early twenties and he’s now forty-one.”
“Reese is forty-one?”
“Focus, Sadie. He spent the night with you.”
I was getting it. To them, this was a big deal and I understood why it would be. But for me, it felt natural. Reese didn’t belong to those other women. He belonged to me. He was meant to be in my bed.
“He told me this morning he hadn’t woken up to a woman in so long he couldn’t remember what it felt like, but he’d never forget what it felt like waking up next to me. And he told me that this morning was the first time in a long time he woke up happy.”
Brooklyn jumped up so quickly I jolted in surprise. When she was on her feet they started to shuffle in what looked like was supposed to be a dance but instead, it looked like she was having an epileptic event. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or call an ambulance.
“Reese loves Sadie,” she chanted. “He loves her. He wants to keep her.”
“And everyone says I’m dramatic,” Letty huffed and swept her hand in Brooklyn’s direction.
I wasn’t sure about love. But according to Reese, we were going to find out. Not that I was going to fight it. I was all in to see where a relationship with him would go.
“Hello, we haven’t discussed me moving in with him,” I called out.
“Why would that be a discussion?” Letty asked.
“Because I have to give him an answer.”
“The answer,” Brooklyn started, “is yes. Hell to the yes. So much yes don’t let the door hit you on the ass when you move what’s left of your shit into his cabin, yes.”
I couldn’t stop my smile.
Not that I tried all that hard.
I’d been scared for nothing. I should’ve known Letty and Brooklyn wouldn’t judge me. They gave me support in whatever form I needed. That was what friendship was about. An ear to listen, advice to be given—or not, depending on what was going on—smiles, celebrations, crazy dances.
I guess I was moving in with Reese.
But I knew that before I’d wandered over to Smutties to convene with my girls.
Their agreement was just icing on the cake.
“I think you’re rubbing off on her,” I told Letty.
“Tell me about it. The heifer is trying to home in on my act.”
The drama that Letty dished out was no act, it was just her.
Which made her one kick-ass mama jamma.