Page 127 of All the Ugly Things

“I don’t know what you’re so nervous about,” she said. “It’s just a meal.”

“It’s Thanksgiving. A holiday meal. That makes itmore, I don’t know, important?”

“Psssh. That’s ridiculous. Maybe if you haven’t already met them, but you work for Brandon and see them all the time, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s Thanksgiving.”

It would be my first Thanksgiving with a family since I’d had time to be with mine—seven years. And even when we had family Thanksgiving dinners, it was proper and morose. My father’s parents as equally stern as my own dad and my mother’s family who rarely came at all—probably for their severe dislike of my dad and what he’d done to their daughter and sister over the years. And for seven years, I ate on plastic trays with plastic silverware. Where I scarfed down soggy dressing and bland turkey. Gravy from a can and burned rolls.

I already knew dinner tomorrow, the entire day, would be drastically different than anything I’d experienced. It was equal parts excitement and nerves swirling like a wildfire in my stomach.

It was the way he behaved earlier that gave me pause.

“I think… I think something’s going on with Hudson,” I admitted, despite my fears and promise to keep it to myself. I had to be reading into things. Wasn’t I?

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, exactly.” I finished painting my little toe and recapped the nail polish. After setting it on the coffee table, I fell against the back of the couch. “He’s been distant lately. Or quiet, I don’t know how to explain it but he’s not himself.”

Especially with wanting to spend time with me. Maybe we’d spent too much time together? Maybe he needed the break? After he texted me to come spend the night with him last week and gave me that toe-tingling orgasm, I was certain we’d broken through whatever was holding him back. Since then, it seemed he’d reinforced whatever wall was keeping him from taking things further, at least physically.

“Who knows,” Angie said. “Boys are strange. I’ve never understood them.”

She’d been on three dates in the last month. None of them made it to the second one, for the most ridiculous reasons like one breathing too heavy during a movie.

None of it explained Hudson. He pursued me. He made it clear from almost the beginning he wanted more than friends. So what was that final step going to take?

And why was I waiting for him to take it?

“What is your family doing tomorrow?” I asked, changing the subject. We spent way too much time talking about boy problems.

“We all help out with the meal, even Josiah comes out of his cave and then we spend the day cooking and baking.”

I switched my feet propped on the coffee table to paint the other one. “Sounds like a relaxing day.”

“It’s one of the few days of the year none of us have to work, so we enjoy it. But hey, if things go tits up with Hudson tomorrow, you’re welcome to come to our place.”

“Thanks.” I laughed and uncapped the nail polish bottle. While I began painting, I said, “I’ll keep that in mind. You’re a good friend, Angie.”

I had a real friend for the first time in years. And I’d chosen wisely.

“Listen, I know I said I wouldn’t and you dropped it, but if you ever want me to talk to your brother, I will, you know.”

“Yeah?” Hope lightened her voice.

“Yeah. I still don’t think you can change him unless he wants it, but maybe it’s not too late. And more people trying to help isn’t a bad thing.”

I wished Josh would have had that, people who gave a damn about him.

“Thanks, Lilly. You’re pretty great too. So, tomorrow… you okay now?”

Still reeling from the revelation of the fact I had a good friend, all the other things I was thankful for fell like dominos.

It’d been a long time since I had anything good to smile about but this year, I had a lot. People in my life who believed in me.

People who were giving me a chance.

I was one semester from a degree, mostly likely a job lined up and a future on the horizon that finally wasn’t dark and aimless.

---