Page 177 of Nanny and the Beast

At the sight of my oldest friend, a rush of affection takes over me. Something vibrates in my chest. My heart feels like it has more love than it can contain, and it’s starting to overflow.

“Took you long enough. And why on earth do you even own a cell phone if you don’t—” His words cut off when I wrap my arms around my best friend.

I hug him for the first time in over a decade.

For probably the first time in his life, Alaric is speechless. He holds me back tightly, like this is a moment he’ll never get again.

He’s been there for me when I was at my worst. He’s the only person who never gave up on me.

When we pull apart, I see that his eyes are glistening. He swallows.

“Dude,” he says.

“I know. I don’t understand it myself,” I say. There’s no noise in my brain anymore. For once, there’s only peace.

He looks at me like he has so much to say but doesn’t know how to express it.

“I’m so happy for you, man,” he says, wrapping his arms around me again. “You learned how to open your heart chakra.”

“My what?” I ask.

He pulls away and narrows his eyes at me.

“I sent you a YouTube video about how to heal the seven chakras,” he says. “Did you not watch it?”

“Oh yeah, I watch every sixty-minute video you send me,” I say.

“You should,” he says. “It would make you a more well-rounded person. There’s so much more to life than work. Did you know that when you have an imbalance in one of your chakras, it literally manifests in your body?”

I try to keep myself from rolling my eyes.

Alaric is so quick to believe everything he comes across.

A few months ago, he was trying to convince me to visit this shaman in Bali he met online. The year before, he booked tickets for us to go to South America to attend an ayahuasca ceremony. We went on the trip, but I absolutely refused to let him take me to any ceremony where people get rid of past trauma by throwing up in buckets.

“She helped you heal,” he says.

“Hmm?”

“Emma,” he says. “I don’t know how she did it, but she helped you heal.”

He’s not wrong about that. She helped me when I thought I was beyond the point of help. She looked at the ugliest parts of me and told me that it was okay.

“Yeah,” I say. “She makes me feel like I can be a better man.”

We sit down by our usual spot by the window.

“You’re going to propose tomorrow, right?” he asks.

I smile. “Yeah.”

“You’re actually going through with it?” he asks.

I study him for a moment.

He’s flipping through the menu, but there’s something strange about him tonight.

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

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