“Uh ok, let’s get you inside. All of that laughter is making your stomach twitch in a rather scary way. Just calm down, please.”
Claire laughed even harder at the alarmed look on her friend’s face. Suzy really was priceless. Even though she knew that her friend was hurting, she never failed to make her laugh. She hoped and prayed that Gray knew what he was doing. She didn’t know how Suzy would survive losing him, but the fear in her words had scared Claire. Maybe it was time to see if the pillow talk worked in reverse. Normally when they were in bed at night talking about their day, Jason told her what was going on with Gray or Nicholas. Maybe she could let him know of her fears for Suzy and somehow try to communicate them to Gray without breaking her friend’s confidence.
“Hey Claire, Claireeeeee, come back.”
“Whoops, sorry about that. When you’re pregnant, you tend to zone out a lot.” She grabbed her friend’s hand and led her into the restaurant before Suzy could quiz her about what she’d been thinking.
~~~
Suzy was tired but satisfied when she hobbled behind Nick and Beth into the house. Of course getting around at work had been more challenging with a cast, but it was good to be back in the office again. She and Beth worked well together, and Suzy secretly hoped that Beth would decide to stay for a while.
They had decided to order a pizza since no one was in the mood to cook so Beth placed the order and Suzy went to the bedroom to change into something more comfortable. Having Nick and Beth here now seemed so natural. What would she do if she went back to being alone? People who knew her, even her closest friends, assumed she was a strong, independent woman who needed no one. She’d learned long ago that it was safer to keep that illusion going. It was all an elaborate act of smoke and mirrors. Even Jeff, who she’d spent so many years with, had never known the real Suzy. She’d always held something back from him. Maybe she was afraid that if she gave him all of her, he’d know that she wasn’t good enough. Hadn’t she learned that from her parents?
Through all of her childhood, Suzy put her heart on the line just as Beth had. She remembered how proud she’d been of a Christmas ornament that she’d made in school for her mother. She couldn’t wait to get home with it. She just knew that this would make her mother happy and she pictured her picking her up to give her a hug and a kiss. The reality had been much different. When she’d handed her mother the ornament that she’d wrapped up in notebook paper, her mother had set it aside, scolding her for interrupting her work. When she’d asked her again to just please open it, her mother had huffed and finally pulled off the paper. She’d looked down at her with her usual frown and said, ‘Suzanna, I can see why your grades are so bad, you waste all of your time on such silliness. Now go do your homework and have it finished before dinner.’
Suzy had run to her room with her heart shattered and cried until there were no tears left. That was the last time that she tried to reach out to her mother. Her heart had frozen that day and it had never truly thawed until she met Gray. She’d loved Jeff in her own way. They had a comfortable relationship and he had seemed fine with the part of her that she was able to give him. When he had cheated on her and moved out, it had shaken her. A part of her had said, ‘see there? You were right to hold back because he doesn’t want your love either.’
Gray was different, though. He plowed through every line of defense that she had and refused to let her put her barriers back up. She’d managed fairly well while he had been based in Charleston, but she knew that it was all over the minute she found out he was moving to Myrtle Beach. She was helpless to hold back with him. He saw a part of her that no one other than Claire had. Her heart was his and she didn’t know how she’d recover if he broke it.
“Youuuuu whoooo, Suzy, helloooo. I’ve been calling and calling you. You’re not barbequing alone in there, are you?”
Suzy jumped at the sound of Nick’s voice on the other side of the door. With a roll of her eyes, Suzy yelled back through the door, “What’re you talking about, barbequing alone?”
“You know, the two finger twirl, the solo mambo, the five finger shuffle.”
Suzy jerked the door open and clapped her hand over his mouth. “Oh geez, please stop. You’re such a pervert. If I was doing any of the above, which I wasn’t, you would be the last one to know.”
Nick threw an arm around her shoulders and said, “We’re all family here, babe, no need to be embarrassed.”
Just when Suzy was trying to figure out how to use her cast to trip him, Beth walked in from the deck asking, “What’s taking you guys so long, the pizza is getting cold.”