Page 57 of Someone Just Like You

I scraped my fingers along the fabric of the comforter. “Nothing really. I just…I was always the solid one, and then I burst that balloon quitting the law. What if it caused stress in their marriage that grew and grew until—”

“Molly!” Jude flipped his legs over the side of the bed and stood. “I know we’re trying out this ‘being nice to each other’ thing, but I’ve gotta say, you’re giving yourself way too much credit here. You had nothing do with your parents’ decision. They grew apart and chose to seek a different happiness for their golden years.”

“You’re probably right, but—”

“No buts. You can’t spend your life taking responsibility for everyone else’s choices.”

I shrugged, not convinced, but I’d let it go for now, choosing to focus on the positive.We’re being nice to each other.

Jude was gathering his things.

“Are you leaving?” I asked.

“I need to walk Yogi.” He slipped his arms through his shirt. “Do you want to come?”

“Please don’t feel pressured into spending time with me the ‘morning after.’ We don’t even know what this is yet.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and began buttoning his shirt. “What do you want it to be?”

I pushed away his hands and took over. He was doing it crooked. And it was easier to answer him without looking at his face. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I like you.” My cheeks burned.

“I like you too. We fit.”

I stopped buttoning, my fingers seeking out the warm skin and soft hair on his chest. “Yeah?” I braved eye contact.

He smiled down at me and tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. “Sure. We’re still Molly and Jude. Except now instead of being at war, we get to bone.”

I resumed my buttoning. “While we’re on the subject…sort of…remember when you got in trouble for breaking my mom’s antique dresser?” Mom had won it in an auction and left it on the driveway for Dad to bring inside through the garage. Before he got the chance, Jude and his friends, in a drunk trespassing adventure, horsed around and accidentally knocked it over, cracking the mirror and chipping the wood.

“Because you ratted me out? No, I have no recollection of not being able to go on the school ski trip as punishment,” he deadpanned.

At the time, Jude was so angry, he threatened to climb my roof, sneak through my bedroom window, and leave feces on my bed. He never clarified whose feces. It didn’t help that his friends had met Derek Jeter and Minka Kelly on the slopes and talked about it for weeks.

I dropped my hands from his shirt. “I know you think I did it to get you in trouble, but you taking the fall was really just a casualty of me trying to break up a nasty fight between my parents. My father kept the dresser on the driveway all night after promising Mom he’d bring it inside. She accused him of being careless and inconsiderate as usual. He called her a shrew and said if it was that important she should have brought it in herself.” Even my music on the highest volume hadn’t been enough to drown them out.

“If he’d kept his promise, the trespasser—you—wouldn’t have had the opportunity to knock it over and crack the mirror. Anyway, I swear it wasn’t intentional. The next morning, you were in your yard, sneaking guilty glances at my parents fighting, and shifting the blame to you was all I could think of in the moment. I’m sorry you missed the ski trip and meeting Jeter.”

“I was more upset about missing Minka Kelly.”

I rolled my eyes. I was sure Jude wasn’t blind to the actress’s beauty, but Derek Jeter was one of the best baseball players of his generation.

Jude raised and lowered his hands. “Fine. As an aspiring baseball legend at the time, I hated not being there. And I blamed it on you, even though I was the one who broke the dresser in the first place.” He rubbed his neck. “I used to think not meeting Jeter was the beginning of the end for me in some sort of weird cosmic way.”

Shame settled in my soul over truths still not spoken. I’d been trying to talk myself out of feeling guilty.Jude is happy! Jude likes his job!But it was no longer only about how Jude felt in the present. It was about what I had done in the past. I grasped the comforter like a life jacket as a tsunami of nerves brewed in my stomach. “There’s something else I should—”

“I really need to get home to Yogi,” Jude said, glancing at his phone. “With my roommates away, he’s been alone all night. Call you later?”

My shoulders relaxed. “Sounds good,” I said, giving a silent thanks to Yogi for granting me more time to come clean with Jude that it wasn’t the cosmos that had ruined his baseball career. It was me.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

From my high-top table at Hillstone a few weeks later, I watched Jude shake a cocktail for a customer at the large circular bar.

Losing my neighborhood watering hole of Tuttles, at least temporarily, was a small price to pay to avoid the awkwardness of Timothy serving me beer while Charley sat at the bar playing jacks with peanuts. He had texted me the day after the party to formally end things and apologize. He claimed Charley was “the one who got away.” Even though he’d worn his lust for her like a facial tattoo and neither of them could act their way out of an open room—not feeling well, my ass—his written confirmation alleviated whatever guilt I had for sleeping with Jude that very same night. Instead, I upgraded to Hillstone. The venue wasn’t as easy on my wallet and the freebies were limited, but seeing Jude in action was a worthy consolation prize.

Esther snorted, pulling me out of my rapture.

“What?” I asked.

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