When I slide back into my seat and pick up my glass to take a drink, Becca says, “Christine.” She would make a good school teacher. I instantly sit up straighter, even as I continue to try to avoid her glare.
“Are you going to pretend we don’t see those?” Caz says, grinning.
“I thought you said things were over with those guys,” Becca says.
I risk a quick glance in her direction. “What makes you think it’s from them?”
“Christine.” She puts so much meaning into my name, saying without saying Get real and You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Things are over,” I say, tipping my soup bowl to spoon up the last of it.
“Nothing about those flowers says things are over,” Becca says. “What’s going on?”
I take another drink of water, slump back against my chair, and tell them the story from the beginning — how I met the Hayes brothers and expected to have a one night stand with them, the shocking reunion with Jay, and the even more stunning development of Jay being open to sharing me with his friends.
I allude to all the great sex, mentioning that it was by far the best of my life, but I also mention the way lupus began to intrude on my fun.
“I was all set to say goodbye to them — sad that they were leaving, but knowing my body needed rest — when they told me they wanted to move here and share some kind of life with me,” I say, mindlessly crumbling a muffin on the plate while I talk.
“That sounds great,” Caz says, then, seeing my expression, adds, “Does it not?”
“You see what the week did to me,” I say. “It wiped me out completely. I can’t keep up with them. I can’t live how they want to live.”
“It was a whirlwind week,” Caz says. “You’d just met the Hayes men, and there was the stress of seeing Jay again, not knowing how things would go with him, and there was the excitement of your birthday party. It’s not as if any of that would be part of your typical day-to-day life with them.”
I lift a shoulder in a tired shrug.
“Jay travels constantly for work, and the other men run an adventure business. All of them thrive on an active lifestyle.”
“So you broke things off because you couldn’t do any of those things with them,” Becca says gently. “Were they asking you to travel with them?”
“No,” I say, after a pause. “They mentioned buying a house here. Maybe they would make the island their home base, I guess.”
“Maybe they’re ready to slow things down,” Caz says.
“That’s the thing. I don’t want them to slow down for me. I don’t want to be the reason they change their lives.”
Becca looks over at the flowers before returning her focus to me. “Shouldn’t that be their decision?”
I crumble my muffin into smaller pieces, realizing that I’ve made it inedible.
“It was noble of you to think about their needs over yours, but you don’t really know what’s in their hearts,” Caz says. “They told you what they wanted. It looks like they’re trying to show you, too.” She turns and looks pointedly at the roses.
“What about Jay?” I say. “He and I tried to make things work before, and that was a disaster.”
“How old were you?” Caz asks.
“Twenty-one, twenty-two.”
“I’m barely five years older than that, and I’m already a different person than I was back then,” she says. “Don’t you think you’ve changed a lot?”
I nod slowly. “Jay has, too.”
“Christine, if you liked being with them, I think you should take a chance. Things could work out better than you’d ever expect,” Caz says. She’s speaking from her own experience, but she’s still in the early days of her relationship, so of course, she thinks everything is puppies and rainbows.
When I notice Becca nodding in agreement, I turn to her. “Why are you supporting this? You never want to be with a man longer than one night.”
She shrugs as her cheeks redden. “I’m a romantic at heart. Blame the books I read.”