“It does,” she said. “But just be honest with him. You don’t have to go into every detail, but he deserves your honesty.”
There was no way she could be aware of the impact those words had on me, conveying an idea that I had struggled with ever since Declan was a baby.
“Of course I want to be honest with him,” I said. “But for a kid his age, understanding the whole logistics behind a breakup isn’t really something I think he’d grasp.”
I was aware suddenly that we were standing awfully close. We hadn’t started that way, had we? But Allie was now less than an arm’s length away from me, and it was almost as t
hough I could feel the heat radiating off her body.
“Can I pick a flower?” Declan yelled over to us from the garden.
“Of course you can,” Allie said. “Thank you for asking, though.”
I took a big step to the side, widening the distance between us. “And then we better get back to our yard, Declan,” I said.
I watched as he looked at the different choices he had, finally selecting one, a big white daisy, which he plucked and then carefully carried over to us. He held it out to Allie. “This is for you,” he said.
“Why thank you, Declan.” She took the flower from him. “This one is really beautiful. I’m going to go put it in some water, okay? And then whenever I look at it, I’ll think of you.”
He smiled and looked deeply pleased.
And as we walked back over to our yard, he looked at me, that smile still on his face. “Hear that, Dad?” he said. “Miss Allie said she’s going to think of us.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Allie
I put the daisy that Declan had picked for me in a thin vase I had found in the back of the cupboard over the refrigerator, and I put the vase in the middle of the kitchen table.
And I did think of him when I looked at it, and how much worse having a kid involved made a breakup. I wasn’t in love with Declan, obviously, but I did love him, and though I supposed it would be possible for he and I to continue to have some sort of relationship, it didn’t really make sense. What were the rules for this sort of thing, anyway? There didn’t seem to be any rules, or at least any that I was aware of. Cole and I hadn’t been together for that long; it’s not like I’d been raising Declan since he was a baby, and he thought of me like a mother or something. It hadn’t even been a full two months, which felt hard to believe.
I just had to remember what my mother had told me: It wasn’t going to feel like this forever.
After work on Wednesday, Amy caught up with me as I was walking to my car.
“Hey,” she said. “You have plans now? I think we need to hang out.” I was about to say that I even though I didn’t have any plans, I didn’t really feel up for going anywhere, but she spoke first, as if she could read my mind. “We don’t have to go out anywhere, if you don’t want to; we can just go to my place and get some takeout or something.”
And what could I say to that? Really, my only plan had been to go home, hope that I wouldn’t run into Cole, while simultaneously also hoping that I did run into Cole, all the while trying to make myself feel okay about the fact that we weren’t together.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll follow you to your house.”
Amy wasted no time in breaking out the Pinot Grigio, and I accepted a glass, though I told myself I wasn’t going to have more than two at the most.
“You need a rebound,” Amy said.
I shook my head. “I think I’m all done with dating.”
“No, it doesn’t have to be a date. A rebound is just... a person to make you feel better, someone to get you out of the breakup funk.”
“Is this person aware of it? Because that sounds kind of awful.”
She smiled. “Well... I might actually have someone in mind.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It might really help...he’s cool. He’s friends with my cousin, his name’s Jay, and he’s not looking for anything serious, but he’s a lot of fun. You don’t even have to sleep with him if you don’t want to. But you can’t let one breakup completely destroy your life, okay? You just can’t do that. You’re not allowed. Here, I’m texting him right now.”
I started to protest, but then stopped. Maybe she was right—maybe this was what I needed to stop feeling like this. And really, at this point, I was willing to try almost anything.