Page 22 of Make You Love Me
“Damn. I’m sorry. Did I interrupt date night?”
“Maybe, but you would have dropped anything for me, as you have multiple times. I was happy to return the favor.”
I smile, knowing we will always be available to one another. Our friendship is like a vine, deeply rooted, durable, and endless.
While we sip on our drinks, I fill her in on everything that happened since our lunch earlier that day.
“When I said to go make friends with Josie, I didn’t mean take over as Jordan’s caregiver,” she says in disbelief. “It was incredibly thoughtful of you, but Nora…”
“I know, I know. What was I thinking?”
“Not about yourself, that’s for sure.”
I let out a sigh and gulp half my beverage. It burns on the way down, but losing control because I drank too much sounds better than losing it over decisions I made stone-cold sober.
“What made you do it?”
“I like her. She’s strong and funny, and she needs me.”
“And this has nothing to do with Jordan?” Sydney presses.
“I didn’t say that.”
“No. You didn’t mention him at all. How’d he react to seeing you?”
“Shocked, grateful, sweet. He thinks he still loves me.”
“He probably never stopped.”
“There’s no way.”
Sydney shakes her head in disagreement. “I saw the way he looked at you at the wedding. Love like that doesn’t vanish because of an argument.”
I finish the drink and jingle the ice in my empty glass at our waiter standing nearby. The mention of what happened between us at Jackson and Emily’s wedding ten months ago kicks my anxiety up a notch. “You don’t know the entire story,” my alcohol-loose brain makes me say, and Sydney slumps back in her seat.
“I’m your best friend. How can I not know?”
“I was too embarrassed to tell you.”
Silence fills the space between us, despite the rowdy scene happening in the rest of the bar, and it’s deafening. My secrets, hurt her, too, and if I could go back in time to handle it all differently, I would. Not only with Sydney, but also with Jordan.
“What happened?” she finally asks.
The waiter sets my second drink on the table, and I clutch it like it’s a lifeline. “He proposed.”
“Oh.” She lets the news sink in, then leans her elbows on the table. “Obviously, you said no.”
“Obviously.”
“I wondered why the fire you two ignited that night fizzled out.”
“There was no slow fizzling going on. It snuffed out the second that ring appeared. And it wasn’t the first time.”
She picks up her glass, then sets it back down without taking a sip. “He proposed before the wedding, and you didn’t tell me then either?”
“It was before you moved back to Richmond, and we reconnected. I’m sorry, but I hated thinking about it then, even more than I do now.”
“So, that’s why you were so short and evasive when he showed up at our girls’ night last fall.”
