Page 132 of This Could Be Us

“Nonexistent.” I force a laugh, sorting a box of dusty books into keep and donate piles.

“What about that guy Hendrix mentioned at Christmas?” Lola asks. “Anything develop with him?”

Nayeli straightens from the stack of old vinyl records she’s sorting. “Is this the one who prosecuted Edward?”

“He didn’t prosecute Edward,” I correct. “He was the accountant who uncovered the embezzlement. We, um… we’re figuring it out.”

“You’re dating and you didn’t tell us?” Nayeli asks, her voice tinged with hurt.

“We’re not dating. We’re…” I shrug, tired of hiding and trying to explain things to make anyone, including myself, more comfortable with it. “We started sleeping together, but—”

“Hold up!” Lola walks over and drags an empty crate to sit on beside me. “You can’t just plow right past that. This is the first man you’ve been with besides your trifling-ass husband in almost twenty years.”

“How was it?” Nayeli whispers, like our parents might hear in the next room.

“Was it good?” Lola asks.

“Best I ever had.” I split an impish look between them. “Oh, my God. How did I not know it could be like that?”

“For real?” Nayeli’s voice holds wonder and curiosity. “Like what?”

I turn to her, meeting her eyes squarely. “Like multiple orgasms, like eating me out foreverand making me come with just his—”

“Damn!” Lola laughs. “I rarely even do dick anymore and you make me want one ofdem.”

We fall into a laughing heap, and it feels like high school again, the three of us sharing secrets, sharing ourselves, unburdening. It’s one thing to connect over FaceTime, but being together in this house again, surrounded by the memories that made us—it’s priceless.

“So if you got it like that,” Lola says after more squeals and revelations, “why did you call your love life nonexistent?”

My laugher dries up as the complexity of our situation hits me again. “The girls, especially Inez, are still adjusting to the idea of the man who put their father in prison dating their mother. And I’m not ready for a relationship, but he’s in love with me and would prefer to wait until I’m ready to be with him fully. So technically we aren’t together, no.”

I don’t look up, even when I feel their stares, but flip through a tattered copy ofWaiting to Exhale.

“Forget the girls for a minute,” Nayeli says. “Let’s say they come to terms with you dating Judah. How do you feel abouthim?”

I’m not prepared for that question. Not talking with Judah or seeing him the last two weeks has been hell. Things seem to be leveling out with my daughters. Lupe gave Inez a good talking-to, apparently. Inez apologized and we hugged it out, but we haven’t discussed Judah again. Yasmen and Hendrix continue to ground me and make me feel supported and loved. I have a thriving online community. A whole army of women who are dating themselves and figuring out a lot about what they will and won’t accept in the process. It’s amazing.

And yet… there is this ache, not a hole. It’s not that part ofmeis missing. I feel whole on my own. Not an ache inside, but an acheby my side. That’s where the hole is.

“I care about him,” I finally reply. “I miss him so much it hurts, but, you guys, what if I make the same mistakes I made before? It hasn’t been that long since my divorce. Don’t I need more time?”

“You’ve taken time,” Lola says. “And you’ve done a lot of work on yourself. When are we ever done working on ourselves? I believe wholeness is not a destination, but a lifetime process. Something that instead of waiting for, you could be living for.”

“Hey.” Nayeli touches my shoulder, prompting me to look at her. “If he makes you happy, be happy now. You deserve it.”

I cover her hand and smile up at her. “Appreciate that, Sis.”

“Okay. Back to work. If we gonna sit around chatting all day, we’ll never get this done,” Lola says. She stands and walks over to her phone, which is resting on one of the sealed boxes. “Music makes everything go faster.”

Cherrelle and Alexander O’Neal’s “Saturday Love” blasts from Lola’s phone, ushering in memories of Saturday mornings cleaning this house under Mami’s watchful eye. She loved this song, and I can’t help but laugh remembering her dancing around the kitchen while dinner was cooking. We’ve reached the Sade stage of the playlist, with “Smooth Operator” crooning over us, when I find one of Mami’s leather-bound journals with her initials engraved on the front. There’s nothing more than loosely tied string protecting its secrets from prying eyes. I glance up, checking to see what my sisters are doing. Lola walks a box out to my Pilot, which is parked in the driveway.

“Quick potty break,” Nayeli says, rising and rushing back into the house, leaving me alone with Mami’s leather-bound memories.

I glance around the empty garage as if someone might catch me pulling the curtain back on my mother’s inner thoughts from years ago.

“Fuck it,” I mumble, and crack open the journal.

For the most part, it’s mundane stuff, literally a record of life events. She wrote about things we achieved, like Lola getting on the honor roll and Nayeli winning first-chair flute. Me making cheer captain. She wrote about petty office politics at the library where she and my father had met and both worked—a stream of consciousness veering from the lofty to the base and banal, encompassing her everyday and her daydreams. On the rare page, she wrote abouthim, Lola’s father, whowas a mystery in shadows most of my life. But more than anything, she wrote about herself, revealing things that I’m not sure I ever knew.

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