“Nah, I’m not really planning on moving for the weekend. I’ll still be here when you get off of your shift.”
Alone. She’d be doing it all alone, was the unsaid part of that answer. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she sniffled before pinching off another piece of cookie dough and eating it.
“Wow.” Finn’s eyebrows went up. “And I thought rooming with Frankie had been questionable.”
Ignoring that dig, she took another deep inhale of her comforter and settled down for another night of chest-aching misery. Finn just shook his head at her and made his way to the door to go to work. As soon as he opened it, she heard three very familiar voices say hello, followed by a “bye, Finn.”
Then, Tess, Lucy, and Gina walked into the living room armed with grocery bags. They took one look at her and did a group grimace.
“Oh, honey,” Tess said. “You’ve got it bad. You tried to do your makeup.”
One sympathetic group hug later, it was down to business.
“We come armed with liquor, ice cream, and movies,” Gina said, flopping down onto the couch beside Fallon. “Tonight’s selection includes Wonder Woman, Rogue One, and The Silence of the Lambs. What kind of kick-ass heroine are you in the mood for? One who kicks ass and lives, one who kicks ass and dies, or one who kicks ass and becomes a serial killer’s best friend?” She glanced over at the blanket-covered TV and then back at Fallon with a huh-so-that’s-how-it’s-been look. “We’ll have to take that off.”
If Fallon wasn’t ready to cry before, she was now. Her girls were here, not because she’d asked, but because they knew she needed them. She really did have the best friends in the world. She was about to tell them that when her mom walked in.
“I came as soon as Finn texted.” Her mom took one look around the room, her focus settling on Fallon. “Are you wearing eyeliner? On only one eye?”
“My other eye kept itching, and I must have rubbed it off.” Okay, she had cried it off as she was trying to apply it, but no one needed to know that.
Tess’s eyes rounded, and she sat down in the chair closest to Fallon’s spot on the couch. “Oh, this is serious.”
“It’s not serious,” she said as they all looked at her like she had three heads instead of one broken heart. “It was just an impulse buy at the drug store when I stopped in and got the cookie dough.”
Gina reached over and snagged a pinch of cookie dough. “You never wear eyeliner.”
“And now we know why,” Lucy said.
Her mom made a tut-tut sound and sat down on the coffee table in front of Fallon. “I’m not buying that, young lady. Tell me everything, and Lucy, please make me a Jack and Coke—a double.”
Where was she supposed to start? They already knew all the horrible details of
the fight with Zach (thank God for group texts that eliminated the need to have the same horrible conversation multiple times). Today, she’d gotten off of work, stopped by the drug store, and scrolled Ice Knights news while she was standing in the world’s longest line. That had been a mistake. The ache in her chest combined with her crying-induced stuffed-up nose didn’t do a lot for clarifying her thought process.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said, letting out a shaky breath. “I was reading all those stories about Zach while I was waiting in line, and I know I shouldn’t, but I scrolled down to the comments, and I guess they got to me. I had a moment of weakness and grabbed the eyeliner.”
“So you’re saying other people’s judgment got to you, even though you know it’s bullshit?” her mom asked as she accepted the Jack and Coke from Lucy.
Fallon nodded, understanding beginning to beat against her skull.
Her mom set down her drink and went on: “Sort of like how Zach told you specifically not to tell his secret and you did anyway because you thought his reason of being embarrassed because of others’ judgments was wrong.”
Oh, ouch. That hurt—probably because it was accurate. “It’s not the same. One is eyeliner. The other is his life. It was all about his pride.”
“Oh, honey.” Her mom took Fallon’s hands in hers, giving them a comforting squeeze. “You’ve always been so very fierce. You’ve known who you were and what you wanted from the beginning. Your first word was ‘no.’ You are a warrior for others; it’s why you became a nurse—to take care of them and fight for them. I love that about you so very much, but it does not mean that you get to take away someone else’s right to make their own decisions, to fight their own battles in the way they want, even if it’s some eye-rolling testosterone BS that they’ll eventually work out.”
“But I was right.” It was a weak argument even to her own ears.
“That may be,” her mom said. “But it still doesn’t give you the right to supersede someone else’s wishes about their own life and how they want to live it. If Zach wanted to let his parents spend the rest of their miserable lives telling lies, then it was his call to make.”
The truth of it all landed like a solid punch to the gut that made it almost impossible to breathe. She pressed her palm to her belly as emotion clogged her throat.
“Shit,” she finally managed to croak out. “I really fucked up.”
“Yes, you did.” Her mom took a sip of her drink. “Also, watch your language.”
Her mind blank and her heart aching, she looked around at the smartest women she knew. “So, what do I do?”