I shrug one shoulder. “Not necessarily. Sometimes it can be worse to be stuck with the wrong people.”
After a minute, she looks up at me. “Did you ever see the movie Matilda?”
“The girl who could move stuff with her mind, right? Liked to read a lot? Born to a family of morons? Yep, I saw it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have said the family of morons part, but I related to her more than anyone when I was a little girl. We had an old VHS copy of it and I would hide out in the basement and watch it. That’s actually why I started reading. No one in my family did, but I watched this movie with this little girl who didn’t fit into her family either, who got pushed around and made fun of by the people who should be taking care of her, and I thought, ‘hey, that’s me.’ So, Matilda didn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself. She went out and discovered the world on her own. She found her own place since she didn’t fit into the life she was dropped into.” She smiles now. “I loved that.”
“Did you follow in her footsteps?”
“Well, my path was a little less dramatic, but she started my journey. My house was always unpleasant and it made me feel depressed to be there, so as often as I could, I would go to the library after school. I would go on the computers there, peruse books and magazines. I expanded my own horizons. I learned about life outside of my own tiny window of experience. I learned to look at things from other points of view. I met new people—people more like me, sometimes. People completely different. It didn’t matter. I read everything that caught my interest. I fell for roguish heroes, befriended young women facing troubles I would never encounter in my lifetime, read beautiful poetry written by the saddest women, went on boring fishing trips with fictional old men. My world grew and grew, and no one even knew. I could live hundreds of lives in the space of a year, and everyone thought I was just boring old Moira.”
I reach across the table, catching her hand and twining our fingers together. “There’s nothing boring about you.”
Her eyes sparkle with mischief. “I know that, but it was my little secret.”
“I’m in on it now,” I inform her.
She grins. “That’s okay. You and Sebastian are allowed to know every inch of me, just no one else.”
It’s strange, hearing Moira describe a self-imposed prison of her own. Hers was nothing like ours, but it was a prison all the same. I’ve been there; I recognize her description of the invisible bars. “Did you have many friends?”
Shrugging like it’s insignificant, she says, “Not many. When I was young, I kept to myself. When I got older, the girls didn’t like me. The guys did. That made the girls like me even less.”
I nod my understanding. “It usually does.”
“I always had Gwen,” she offers. “Gwen didn’t fit in either, but as you may have noticed, she’s much more take-charge. Much more assertive. She was the lion and I was the lamb. I liked my peace and quiet. I avoided what I hated and surrounded myself with what I loved. Gwen fought tooth and nail and wore herself out. Our teen years were really hard for her. Lots of fighting, lots of tears. I tried to convince her of the virtues of pretending to roll over and play dead, but she didn’t have it in her.”
Since she’s been dancing around it, I ask, “What were your parents like?”
It takes her a minute to come up with an apt response. “Comfortable, I guess. Not for me, but with themselves, even when maybe they shouldn’t have been. You know how you said people who don’t struggle don’t have to experience growth? They just rest on their laurels? Well, my parents did have struggles, but they still never grew. They blamed everyone for everything instead of facing their own faults. I think you missed a crucial part. The struggle isn’t enough to change people. If there’s going to be any profound change, you have to accept responsibility. Otherwise you can fuck up your whole life and never learn a damn thing.” She meets my gaze plainly. “That’s what my parents were like.”
Her words are so much softer than my worldview, than Seb’s, but in a lot of ways, we believe the same things. It’s strange how we traveled such different paths and wound up in the same place.
“Is that what drew you to Seb?”
She cocks an eyebrow, not quite understanding.
“I’ve never met a more accountable man,” I state. “I’ve strived to be like that since I met him. I guess he shaped me a bit, in that way.”
Running her finger over my thumb, she says, “I think if we’re doing life right, we learn something from everyone who is important to us.”
It was partially trying to be accountable that landed me in the hot water I’m currently in, actually. I haven’t really talked to her about the problems popping up with my divorce, and I figure this isn’t the right time.
Luckily, she answers the question I asked a moment ago and saves me from considering it further. “I don’t think any one thing drew me to Sebastian, though. It was everything. His whole package. After spending my childhood fending for myself emotionally, I met this incredible, dominant man who gently wrested control from me and kept it in his pocket. He led me around like he already knew exactly where I wanted to go. It was a relief. He took so much pressure off me. He gave me the break I didn’t even know I needed. I’m human, I didn’t always make the best decisions, but he did. It was the strangest thing. He always makes the right call. I’ve never met someone and trusted them so quickly, but he was so capable, how could I not? It was like the entire world was his own personal yo-yo, and he wanted me.”
The look on her face now is exactly why I call them newlyweds, even after years together. She’s still so impressed by that lucky bastard; she gets hearts in her eyes just talking about him. I get it. He struck me as someone to watch as soon as we met, and he was little more than a kid, then. Now he’s a man full-grown, and I can see why he impresses the hell out of his wife.
Moira goes on. “As for what first drew me to you…”
“Seb,” I answer, since that’s easy to guess.
But she shakes her head. “No, that wasn’t it. That came after. First it was your strength. I could feel it. It rolls off of you in waves, the same way Sebastian’s dominance rolls off him. You have the look and feel of a man who could walk through a natural disaster carrying a person over each shoulder and never miss a step. He controls everything, but you… you don’t have to. You can survive anything. You’re smart and strong and capable in your own right, but more than that, you’re loyal. You could take on the world by yourself, but you choose to stick by Sebastian. You take care of your own. You love each other. You take care of one another. I love that.” Her smile warms and she squeezes my hand. “I love you. I love you both. I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”
A little smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “Seb says that all the time, that he’s the luckiest guy in the world.”
“He is,” she says, her tone teasing. “He has us, doesn’t he? Now we’re the luckiest threesome in the world.”
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