Page 6 of Love Out Loud

“I’m fairly certain it was only a few weeks ago that you were coming out here for my thirtieth-birthday-slash-divorce party. Devin was eight. Eight, Lennon. Second grade.” Her voice wobbles on that last part, as if she’s on the edge of breaking down again.

“She was a spitfire. She sassed me the whole time I was there.”

Lark sniffles again. “She’d still sass you. You know, if you ever came out here again.”

I don’t miss that not-so-subtle dig, but that’s not the issue here, so I ignore it. Instead, I jab her right back. “Just like her mama.”

That was not at all the right thing to say based on Lark burying her face in her pillow and shuddering.

“Oh no. I’m so sorry,” I groan, rubbing a hand over my face. I’m not winning at much today. “I meant that as a compliment.”

Her shoulders shake for another minute as I internally kick myself for picking the wrong time to throw out my sarcasm. I watch as her short blonde hair falls over her cheek, fully obscuring her face from me.

Finally, she turns to the camera. I fully expect to see more tears glistening down her face, but she’s smiling and her blue eyes glitter with mirth. “You’re the worst.” She chuckles.

“I don’t know why you put up with me.”

“Habit, mostly.” She sighs heavily and shifts so she’s lying on her back and holding the phone above her face. Even swollen from crying, she’s beautiful. She always has been, like a bright light in the darkness.

The mood has shifted, and the worst of it seems over, so I risk asking, “What’s going on, Songbird?”

She turns her big blue eyes away from the camera, staring at her ceiling. “When did I get old, Lennon?”

I reel back a bit, then fall against my own pillows. “Nope. Nuh-uh. If you’re old, then I’m old, and I’m not old, so…”

Lark rolls her eyes, then glares at me as best she can through the screen. “We’re forty.”

“I’m forty. You’re still thirty-nine.”

“Close enough.” She pauses, and her gaze falls as if she’s lost to thought again. “This isn’t exactly where I saw my life going.”

She doesn’t let herself admit it very often, but getting pregnant with Devin changed the entire course of her life. Not in a bad way, but she had her sights set on professional acting after college, and once Devin was here, that was off the table for a while. Her parents would have helped, but Lark is so fiercely independent that she refused to ask. Plus, between school and work, she wanted to be home with her baby as much as she could. Throw in a divorce and a pandemic that shut down theaters right around the time Devin was old enough for Lark to get back into it, and she never really got the chance.

But one thing I know for sure about Lark is she always feels worse when she lets herself admit that Devin interrupted her plans. The guilt of wishing, even for a second, that things had worked out differently pulls her deeper into her sadness for days at a time. I won’t let that happen if I can help it.

“Well, you’re not dead yet.” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I give myself a mental facepalm, and I backtrack. “What I mean is you have a lot of life ahead of you. Devin is graduating, and you’ll have time to do whatever you want.”

Her lip wobbles again at that. “I’m going to miss her,” she whispers, as if even giving it full volume could keep her from what’s coming.

“I know,” I say, because I do.

A few more tears slink down her cheeks, and she squeezes her eyes shut against them. She rolls to her side and takes the phone with her. I imagine us both lying next to each other in the same bed, not two thousand miles away. I put my hand against the other pillow on my queen-sized bed, wishing her hand were there so I could hold it until this passes.

Lark clears her throat, and I can practically see her zipping up that part of her sadness and packing it away for later. “It’s not like I can just jump back into acting anyway,” she says, changing the subject. “Who is going to hire a forty-year-old woman who hasn’t been onstage since undergrad?”

It doesn’t matter that Lark is still an absolute knockout, with her blonde ringlets and big ocean-blue eyes. This industry sucks for women over a certain age, and there’s no use trying to pretend otherwise, no matter how gorgeous she is.

She was the most beautiful girl in our high school, and that’s an objective fact. Everyone loved her. Why she settled for that asshole, Richard, is completely beyond me. She could have had any guy she wanted. And no small part of me blames him for Lark’s current state. He couldn’t even step up to be enough of a partner in raising his own daughter for Lark to have time to pursue her passions. He never thought acting was a good enough profession for her. I remember him telling me that she’d grow out of it eventually once when we were all home for the summer. Which was after he more or less told me to get lost for her sake at the end of our senior year.

“Well, one thing I know, Lark Caspian, is that you are the most determined woman I’ve ever met. Not everyone can get a master’s degree while caring for a newborn and land a job as a professor at a university—”

“Community college,” she corrects me.

“Tenure track, though,” I counter right back.

She screws her lips to the side, conceding. Point goes to me, because I’m right. It’s a coveted position no matter how you slice it, and she got it while balancing Devin on her hip.

“Regardless,” I continue, “if there’s anyone who can figure out what to do next, it’s you. The curtain’s not closing on the show; it’s just the start of the next act.”