Page 95 of Love Thy Neighbor

They were right.

“Don’t hide behind him now, Caroline,” Momma Kira teases. “Come say hi.”

Caroline comes around the bed, taking the spot next to me, setting her own cup of coffee down, and cozying up at my side until we’re both in the frame.

“Hey, Mommas,” she says, giving them a shy grin. “I’d say it’s nice to see you, but…”

They chuckle.

“So how long has this been going on?” Momma B asks, not wasting any time jumping to the twenty questions I’m sure are going to follow. “Oh no.” She gasps, her hand flying to her chest dramatically. “You two weren’t having sex in our house when you were here last Christmas, were you?”

“Momma!” I chide, and Caroline smashes her face to my shoulder, hiding from the camera. “No. Nothing like that. It’s…new.”

“How new?”

“A few weeks now.”

“Four,” Caroline answers, grinning against me, then finally looking at the phone. “We’ve been official for four weeks now. Well, almost four.”

She’s counting.

I fucking love that she’s counting.

“Wow. A month and you didn’t tell us?” Momma Kira sounds a little hurt, and I’m not surprised. I usually tell them everything.

“I didn’t mean to lie. It’s just—”

“It’s my fault,” Caroline interjects. “It’s all such fresh territory and I didn’t want to tell anyone, not knowing what was going to happen. We have too much history with each other and our families to bring anyone into it. I wanted to be cautious.Just in case.”

My moms exchange a glance, and it’s one of those talking-without-speaking kind of moments.

I’d know—Caroline and I have them often.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s… It’s just…”

She pauses, chewing on her lip with uncertainty.

Momma B tilts her head, encouraging Momma Kira to talk.

She clears her throat.

“We just want you kids to be careful, you know? You’ve been best friends for a long time. Relationships are hard as it is, but adding in the fact that you two have known each other for so long… Well, we just hope you aren’t rushing into anything and that you’ve really thought this through. Things are different now.”

“Wedodefinitely kiss a lot more.”

The moms laugh.

“I’m sure you do,” Momma B says. “Just…be careful. Be open. Communicate more now than you ever have. It’ll save a world of hurt because there are things at stake now that weren’t before.”

“The heart,” Momma Kira provides. “That’s what’s at stake now.”

I want to tell her the heart was always at stake, but I understand where she’s coming from.

Just in the last month, Caroline’s come to mean more to me than she used to. Hard to fathom, because she meant a whole hell of a lot to me before we started all of this.

Now though…I can’t even describe the way she makes me feel. It’s on a whole different level, and I’ve certainly never come close to feeling like this with anyone else before.

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