Page 29 of Give & Take

“What?” Chris laughs.

“When Mac wouldn’t return hercalls because he ran out without his phone.”

Chris presses her hands to her forehead. “Oh my God.”

“When I told her what happened,” I continue, “she said ‘Can’t a pregnant woman sit on the goddamned toilet without her phone without her husband running to the hospital to find her?’ Verbatim. Full volume. There were stares.”

Now Chris is snort-laughing.

“I tried to physically restrain Mac but you know. Giant human vs. smallish one.”

I feel better now, having shifted the attention from what’s been consuming me.

“Plus my back hurts,” I complain. “I’m too old to be waitressing, Chris. Please tell me you’ll be a dirt bike champion before you turn thirty so you don’t have to serve beer in your forties.”

Chris sets her fork down on the table with a forceful clack. “First of all,” she begins. “Sometimes racing pisses me off.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Is it The Asshole?”

“Yes. He came out of fucking nowhere again today and tore the shit out of the track again!”

Chris races dirt bikes semi-competitively. It’s not something she has grand aspirations to, but a pretty all-consuming hobby. But recently she’s complained of some asshole who’s been using the track she trains on. She prides herself on being the first one there in the mornings, and he’s started showing up before her. “But he never turns up at any of the races!” she complained to me and Shelby the other day.

But now Chris waves a hand. “Never mind. That’snot the point. The point is youknowI have things to say about what you just said.”

I narrow my eyes and cross my arms, but inwardly, I’m smiling.

Because this is what I actually sat down here for, isn’t it? Chris may be over a decade younger than me, but I can always count on her for the best pep talks. Even if it’s not strictly for the topic I’m telling her about.

“Being a champion is overrated,” she says as I sit back in my chair, ready to soak it in.

“Being a winner in your own eyes is what’s most important. But I digress.” She points at me. “You, Lana, are here by choice. You could have kept your cushy lawyer job in the city. But likeyoualways say, then you’d still live in the city.”

“And I’d still be a lawyer.”

“Exactly. You could have taken a lawyer job here,” she reminds me.

I grimace. I didn’t hate being in law. I didn’t love it, either. I did it because I wanted to make my mom proud. She was a waitress, and she always wanted more for me. She had me when she was a teenager. She dropped out of school, her parents disowned her, and she raised me on her own, making ends meet through a job in a diner while I was in daycare. Mom always swore I could do anything I wanted, even though all I wanted was to be a waitress like her. In my eyes she was a star.

“Anyway Lana, you love it here. And we love you.”

She’s talking about the Rusty Dinghy. “You’re right,” I say. She is. When I’m serving, I get to be this cheery person bringing people delicious food. I make peoplehappy, just like Mom did. Even if sometimes my body aches.

Chris somehow knows I’m thinking about Mom, because she asks, “When’s Lori back, anyway?”

“September,” I say, sighing. I fill Chris in on Mom’s latest adventures.

When I quit law, I was most concerned about disappointing her. But when I finished my speech about transitioning to a life where I could spend more time with the girls and rediscover who I am after my divorce and a life in law, she wasn’t upset. She was inspired. At 52, she went back to school to become a midwife, and is currently doing a year of midwifery work in Canada’s most underserved communities in the far north. I’m proud of her, but damn, I miss having her close. And 3500km away from here is kind of as far as she can get.

“She’s been gone forever,” Chris says. “I could use a Lori hug.”

“Me too,” I say. And some Mom advice.

Because suddenly my stomach swirls almost to the point of nausea. My hands take up their shaking again.

It’s not my back. It’s not work.

It’s the man I have to make a decision on today. Today, on the final day of Raphael’s trial week, I have to decide if I can deal with these raging hormones around him when everything else is, frankly, perfect.

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