“Thanks, Libby, for everything. And it’d be great! If Sarah has time, I’d be so relieved.” Sarah was Libby’s aunt and owned a pharmacy in town. A colorful, local persona with even more colorful hairstyles, which she changed every three months. Single at the age of sixty, she gave free relationship advice to her niece and anyone who would listen. “I had my little share of romance, but observing everyone else’s mistakes has made me an expert,” she often said.
“I’ll talk to her and let you know.”
Hope placed a pair of folded pink pants on top of a similarly pinkish pile. “Are we meeting tomorrow?” Their Mondays’ start-the-week-on-the-right-foot evenings were a lifeline.
“Don’t kill me, but everything has been so crazy until now, and Luke and I have hardly had a chance to spend time together.”
“I won’t kill you, and neither will Roni. We totally get it! You two should take the time to be with each other after all these years. I’m kinda relieved, because I don’t think I can leave the girls with a babysitter again tomorrow evening.”
She was genuinely thrilled for Libby, though she couldn’t help but notice that, for the first time since the divorce two years ago, being the single one in their trio bothered her. Up until now, just the thought of a relationship was repugnant to her. It was funny, if an alien had met the three of them, they would probably think that Roni, with her flighty attitude, was the single one. But Roni was the constant one, despite having a mini marital crisis a few years back.
Libby had had a few and far between short relationships, but Luke was her endgame.
As for herself, for four years out of the six that she had known her friends, she had been in a marriage whose crumbling she had first refused to admit, and then she had become a two-year divorcee, licking the wounds of failure. Although her wounds didn’t hurt as much anymore, her taste in men required a serious reevaluation.
Only after the divorce had become final, her friends had dared to reveal that Eric had been nicknamed “Eric the Douche” in high school. Meeting him when he had attended college in her home state of Minnesota, she hadn’t known that. She had found out the hard way.
Recently, the craving for a relationship began taking more headspace, which could explain Josh. Or maybe it wasn’t headspace as much as it was further south than her head, which could explain her reaction to the eldest Delaney sibling.