“Ho!” Dad gripes, setting his beer down on the counter, narrowing his eyes at me. “What was that for?”
I grin broadly. “Just enjoying my opportunity to be mannerless.”
Dad smirks, finishing his beer. Setting the empty bottle into the recycling box on the floor he says, “point taken.”
“Wow!” A perky, chipper,way too happy for being in a small town at seven o’clock on a Saturday nightvoice calls from the front. “This place is amazing, Beck!”
Goldie. My best friend since forever. She lives an hour away in the city of Lakeside but promised to visit me in Oakcreek when Jett and I got settled in. Seeing her here now is a surprise, the kind of surprise that you actually like, want, andaren’tcounting down until it goes away.
“Goldie?” I ask with pure happiness in my voice. We meet halfway, Goldie stopping in the living room and me stopping a few paces in front of her.
I don’t know if it’s me being postpartum, my partial depression from the state of my life, or if it’s just good old plain envy but Jesus does she look amazing.
Always trim and fit, she looks exceptional in fitted overalls, one strap down to show off her tiny, perky little breasts held tight by a white tube top. Adidas One-Stars are on her feet and a silver anklet glitters against her tan skin. All of her shiny dark hair is braided in one of those fancy Kim Kardashian-like braids, lumpy and stylish on the top of her head, all the way down her neck.
Goldie has always been bubbly and bright, gorgeous and fun. She looks like she fell out of the pages of a magazine no matter the occasion. I love her for it. And until recently, her beauty didn’t make me insecure.
With my body having changed so much recently, I suddenly find Goldie’s beauty nerve-wracking.
I pull her into a hug, not giving her much of a chance to size me up. Not much to see, anyway. Yoga pants, an off-the-shoulder t-shirt with my college emblem arching across it, bare feet with toes that haven’t been treated to a pedicure in well over a year. My hair is thin and tired looking, so I put it up in a messy mom-wad on the top of my head. Sallow skin with crescents of dark beneath my eyes—Ilookthe part of a tired mom.
Behindtired mom, I’m hidingheartbroken ex-wife, too. But I keep her really fucking hidden; even from my parents and my best friend.
“You look so good that I actually got a little nervous seeing you,” I admit as we share a really long and much needed hug. She smells so good, like lattes, cream rinse conditioner, andsleeping in.
Like happiness and freedom.
I miss all of those smells. But baby smell is pretty awesome.
“Nervous?” she asks with a questioning dip in her perfectly microbladed brows. “Why?” Her hands are soft as they smooth down my arms, neither of us ready to completely part yet.
I shrug, giving a shy and slightly embarrassed smile. “I’m never gonna look that good again. But you look amazing and it’s completely shitty of me to turn you looking good into ame-thing. I’m sorry.”
She wrinkles her nose, and today I can see she’s painted on some freckles. She’s one of those naturally beautiful women that can pencil in freckles and beauty marks, style her hair in a librarian bun, or go out with wet hair and sweatpants and still fucking look good. Seriously.
“You’re more beautiful than you were before Jett.” Her shrug is bigger than mine. “Yourmental mirroris lying to you.”
Ah, yes, mymental mirror.
One night right after my ex served me with papers; Goldie came to my house to help me pack. Even though he’d been the one to want to split, I was the one eager to get the hell out of our shared home.
Goldie came prepared with a bag full of packing tape and three bottles of wine.
Only, I was twelve weeks pregnant and couldn’t drink.
The great thing about pregnancy hormones is how easy it is to converse with and understand drunk people. Goldie drank the wine, and we rode the same emotional, hormonal, disappointed, terrified wavelength that night.
I admitted ugly things because what’s a best friend for if you can’t say theunsayable?
I told her I didn’t want my child to have a single mom, not because I couldn’t do it but because I wanted my child to have a dad like my own–present, engaged, active. Not…non-existent.
I had two great, amazing parents, and that experience shaped me. Made me the person strong enough to walk out on a cheating piece of shit despite the fact his seed was buried in my womb, growing into a fusion of the two of us.
I wanted my child to have what I had.
I cried as I said the ugly unsayables, and she cried as she watched me fall apart. I blew my nose into a tissue as she wiped under hers with her sweatshirt sleeve in between long pulls of wine. Then I’d steered to the lighter fears–that I was truly terrified I’d never meet another man, that I’d ruin my body having a child and never get the happily ever after I’d signed up for.
She sniffled, finished her Chardonnay, hiccuped, and said, “your mental mirror is all fucked up.” Thoughfuckedsounded a lot like fudged. That night she learned how strong cheap wine really is.