Page 12 of Fearlessly Us
“Bless you.” Sarah says, snatching up the Reese’s Pieces and tearing open the bag. “I didn’t have time to stock up before we drove down here, and if we’re going to talk about all the good sex I’m not having, I really need chocolate.”
“Are you having bad sex?” Maya asks.
Sarah rolls her eyes. “I’m not having any sex, and that’s the problem. Fuck, I miss sex,” she says with a sigh. “There’s only so much a vibrator can do, you know?”
“I don’t know,” Maya says. “The night before we came here, I went on a date where the guy told me this long, meandering story about how he got pantsed during a flag football game and then spent over an hour telling me about how small his dick is. I’m still not sure how those two things are related, but regardless, even the worst vibrator would be better than suffering through the horrors of wading through the dating pool to find someone to fuck. It’s dark out there.”
“Seriously?” Maddy asks, shaking her head. “That absolutely did not happen.”
Maya scoffs. “Shows how little you know. That’s not even my worst dating story from that week.”
“You deserve better,” I tell Maya, nudging her leg with my foot, and it’s the honest truth. Maya is one of the best people I know. A hopeless romantic down to her bones, she’s always sure her soulmate is just one date away, which means she goes out on a lot of dates—most of them terrible. If I were her, I would have stopped looking hundreds of dates ago, but I’m not a bright side person. I’m more of a see things for exactly what they are kind of girl. “At the very least, you deserve the polar opposite of whatever you call a guy who spends an hour talking about the size of his dick.”
Maya sighs, her lips turning down in a frown. “I’m not sure there are any of those left. You guys got lucky.” She waves a hand at Sophie and Maddy.
“Seriously.” Shaking her Skittles bag again with a frustrated huff, Emmy finally dumps out a handful of the candy and starts separating out the red ones and putting them in a little pile on my comforter. Reaching back into my nightstand drawer, I hand her a small glass bowl I brought up here for this exact purpose and watch as she scoops up the red Skittles and tosses them into the bowl. “Maddy meets the love of her life during what’s supposed to be a one-night stand—no names necessary—and it turns out Sophie’s soulmate is actually her lifelong best friend. How does it feel to be god’s favorites?”
“Pretty damn good actually,” Maddy says with a laugh.
“What she said.” Sophie points to Maddy, the bracelets on her wrist clinking together cheerfully. “Thanks for these, by the way,” she says to me, holding up her bag of jelly beans. “You didn’t have to go candy shopping for everyone. I know how busy you were last week.”
I shrug, like I didn’t buy all this candy at a twenty-four-hour drug store at two in the morning the night before we came to the lake because I was so swamped at work last week that was the only chance I had. “It’s no big deal. Besides, sexy stories require chocolate. Or, in their case, gross-flavored jelly beans and seven Skittles because that’s all the red ones that come in a bag,” I say, waving at Sophie and Emmy.
“It’s so stupid.” Emmy makes a face at her bowl of red Skittles. “Red ones are the best. Everyone knows that. There should be more of them.”
“You know you can buy just the red ones, right?” I ask her.
She nods. “I know, but I like the way the red ones taste when they come in a bag with all the other colors. I just don’t like to eat the other colors.”
“That’s insane behavior, Em,” Sarah says. “You know that, right?”
Emmy just shrugs. “I am who I am.”
The way Emmy says I am who I am so matter-of-factly makes me weirdly jealous. Looking around my circle of friends, I think, not for the first time, that they are all unapologetically who they are and I’m…not that.
I’m not ashamed of who I am. Mostly. I like the parts of me that get shit done and graduate second in my law school class and do really fucking good lawyering and give myself kick-ass pedicures. But am I unapologetically who I am? I think to be that I would have to confess a whole bunch of things to my friends and the other people most important to me. And the thought of what happens once I do—the way they would close ranks to help and the looks of pity and the overwhelming displays of assistance and love—makes my stomach hurt.
I have no idea when I became a person who doesn’t know how to let other people help, but I’m way too far down this road to turn back now.
I guess in that way, I am who I am too.
And I guess aside from the pedicure thing, maybe I don’t actually like myself all that much after all.
“You okay?” Sophie asks me. “You went quiet all of a sudden.”
I nod. “I’m fine. I was just thinking about work. Before I fell asleep after breakfast, I was dealing with a client emergency.” It’s not the truth, but it’s a truth and that’s enough for me.
“Are you talking about the Beretti trust?” Emmy asks with a grimace. “Why are you working on that at the lake? The lake is for the opposite of work.”
Emmy and I are both associates at the firm my mom owns with Tyler’s, Sophie’s, and Maddy’s moms, but that’s where our similarities end. Where I do everything as far in advance as possible and am allergic to procrastination, Emmy treats procrastination as an art form. It’s an ironic fact of life that both of our work products are impeccable, mistake free, and always on time, because I’m the kind of lawyer who stresses for weeks, and Emmy pulls an all-nighter the night before a deadline and manages perfection.
“Because it took me a million years to draft the first trust, and this one is so much harder on account of an entire second family, a wife who now hates him and is yelling about divorce, and kids who won’t speak to him. It’s a huge cluster-fuck, and when I told the moms about it, they just laughed and said Your problem.”
“What’s your problem?”
We all turn as my mom, Hallie, and her best friends Julie, Emma, and Molly appear in the doorway of my room.
I roll my eyes. “The trust from hell you decided to wash your hands of and dump on Em and me.”
