This time Scarlet had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from laughing. It would be totally inappropriate to laugh, wouldn’t it?
“It’s okay to think that’s funny,” Neera said in a dry tone.
Scarlet finally let loose. She clicked the final few clicks on the order and backed away, laughing as she did. She found Neera watching her, almost carefully, she thought, but she started laughing too when Scarlet did. They laughed until Scarlet had to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes.
“Oh my gosh,” she whispered. “I needed that. I had no idea how badly I needed that.”
Neera nodded. “We both did. My mom keeps saying it’s a brand-new year, time to make new memories, blah, blah, blah, the usual, but maybe she’s right. No one should keep living in the past. Nurturing past wounds never lets them heal. We can’t change who we were with or what happened. We can just make better choices moving forward.”
“Or different mistakes.”
“Better mistakes, I hope. There is such a thing as happy mistakes.”
Scarlet’s pulse thrummed rapidly at her neck. Was Neera thinking about that kiss? The kiss that they hadn’t talked about because for Neera it had been a non-issue? The kiss that wasn’t really a kiss at all? To Scarlet, it was so much more.
She should say something. She should tell Neera what it made her feel. What she was feeling now. She wished she could say that she was only on a dating app because she needed to stop thinking about her. Because she hadn’t stopped thinking about her.
That would be wrong.
It would ruin everything.
“Happy mistakes,” Scarlet whispered instead. “Let’s hope for those.”
Neera couldn’t keep the slightly skeptical expression from her face. She did give Scarlet the double thumbs up, though. “I hope you have a great date tonight. I hope it works out. You deserve to be happy.”
“So do you, Neera.” When Scarlet said it, she meant it, but it was far too easy to insert herself into that picture of Neera she had in her mind. Far too easy and far too wrong.
She blinked. “I think we might be the only people who don’t believe that. About ourselves, I mean.”
“It’s hard to be impartial. It’s easier to give hope to everyone else, I guess.”
“Hope.” Neera thought about that. “I guess if my mom was here, she’d tell us to stop being mopey and get on with it. Plenty of crappy things have happened to her and she’s always got on with it and been cheerful. She would tell me to get my head out of my bottom and apply for more jobs and work hard at what I have and be thankful for it in the meantime, and that everything was going to work out soon enough and be awesome again before I knew it. She’d tell you that you’d rock any date you want to go on because you’re awesome and you’re smart, beautiful, compassionate, and that you have so many gifts to share with someone who deserves you. Then, she’d say something about lattes or cinnamon buns, because what can’t a good coffee fix, and we’d feel so much more hopeful because she has that never give up vibe that rubs off on everyone she meets.”
“That’s very true. Elodie would set us straight.” She’d also kick my butt for even thinking about her daughter in the way I have been. It would be friendship suicide. I can’t risk that.
“I don’t have to wish you good luck then, with your date. I’ll just ask you tomorrow how it was and expect to hear all the wonderful things that you have to tell me.”
Scarlet forced a smile, even though she hoped that Neera wouldn’t ask her about her date. She wanted her to know that she was putting herself out there so that a wall could go up between them and that there was zero chance of anything ever happening that resembled that kiss again. But what if she really wanted Neera to realize that she was putting herself out because she was ready? Ready to move on. Ready to start a new chapter in her life. Ready to have her entire universe rocked by another life-altering kiss.
“For sure.” The words were scraped out from a scratchy throat. “Wonderful things. Yes. Tomorrow.” She needed to change the subject, and fast. “And soon you’ll probably have awesome things to tell me about job interviews and new opportunities.”
They needed that encouragement. It felt good. To be there for each other, talking it out, even if that’s not how it started. Scarlet realized that’s where she was at. Aside from the kiss that kept hovering over her head like a dark cloud of temptation, aside from the whole dating as a distraction thing, she did feel better. It appeared that Neera did too. She went off to the back to finish the order and she seemed lighter, like nothing was weighing her down. Maybe Scarlet was imagining that.
Or maybe they were good for each other, some ways by accident, and in other ways she’d never expected.
Chapter 7
Neera
Dating. Scarlet was dating.
How many dates had she been on with Sarah over the past week? Neera wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to ask. After the first morning, when Scarlet arrived at work glowing and happy, Neera’s heart turned into a rock in her chest. She’d been carrying that rock around with her, wedged behind her ribcage and in her throat, for seven days.
She couldn’t talk about it. She didn’t feel like it was right to ask Scarlet about her new girlfriend, if that’s actually what Sarah was, or about their dates. That was private, and Neera didn’t want to dig. She didn’t want to seem too interested. She also didn’t trust her acting skills at all and it would probably be very obvious that she wasn’t happy about it.
Was she happy that Scarlet was happier? Yes. At least, she wanted to be. Was she happy that it wasn’t her getting to be that source of happiness? No. No, she was not.
It killed Neera to think about Scarlet sharing things with another person. Intimate things. Details of her life. Details of someone else’s life. She was forging bonds that were new and unstable, but bonds that could deepen and last a lifetime, and they had nothing to do with Neera.