The subject changed so fast I was suffering from conversation whiplash. “What?”
She was all business as she explained, “You said you’re not sure if his donation is a good thing or a bad thing, but if he won’t try and take over, what’s the downside?”
Oh, okay. Now I saw what was going on. As someone who always needed to have the upper hand, I recognized this one-eighty as a power move. I tried not to grin at the knowledge that I’d knocked the unflappable Harmony Briggs off-balance. It was kind of hot and a lot adorable.
“Control,” I rasped, not able to disguise the gravelly husk that only Harmony inspired in my voice. “I need to be in control. Always.”
“Oh,” she breathed, before announcing loudly and a little too brightly, “That makes sense. Well, it’s late. See you later.”
With that the door flew open, Romeo jumped out and in a flash she was waving at me from her front porch and then disappeared inside before I’d even got the words, “See you Monday,” to form in my head.
I wasn’t exactly sure what had just happened between us, but it was something. Something I would be investigating soon. Very soon.
Chapter 17
Harmony
“There never was a horse that couldn’t be rode, or a rider that couldn’t be throwed.”
~ Loretta Reed
“At least I have you,” I cooed as I continued running my fingers through the hair of the only man in my life. Or, I guess, more accurately…fur.
Romeo snuggled up closer to me on the couch. Leaning down, I kissed the top of his head that was settled on my lap. Sitting back up, I tried to focus on my favorite movie. But even Julia Roberts telling Sally Field that she would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful, than a lifetime of nothing special wasn’t enough to cheer me up. Not that Steel Magnolias was really a cheering up kinda movie, but usually I was able to lose myself in it.
Tonight that wasn’t happening. Julia and Sally weren’t distracting me. The pint of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked I’d inhaled had been disappointingly unsatisfying. I’d even gone the bubble bath and candle route, but unfortunately Calgon hadn’t taken me away.
In a Hail Mary pass, I switched over to my second favorite movie. This time it was a comedy that never failed to pull me into its world. After about thirty minutes I had to admit defeat. Not even Rupert Everett showing up and pretending to be Julia Robert’s fiancé, hilarious as it was, could capture my attention.
It was my birthday. A beautiful, summer Saturday night. I was at home, alone (present canine company excluded), eating ice cream, in my pajamas, on my couch, watching a chick flick. Which you would think would be the reason I was upset, but none of those things were actually what was bothering me.
Cara, Destiny and I had spent every birthday together for the last eighteen years. Even when Cara was in the hospital, if it was one of our birthdays we always spent the entire day together. Just the three of us. As we got older our tradition evolved into more of a pizza and a movie, dinner and drinks, drinks and dancing, or some other activity that the birthday girl chose.
This was the first time in all the years we’d been friends that we weren’t all together for one of our birthdays. I wasn’t so na?ve to believe our tradition would last forever, and I was fine with that. When Destiny had called earlier, half asleep, and said that Delilah was fussy and she would have to make it up to me, I hadn’t blinked an eye. But, when Cara had called and said that she wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t make it, the words had hit me like a punch in the gut.
Last week in the hospital, I’d noticed that Cara had gotten really tired, really fast. Here it was, just over a week later and she was calling to say that she didn’t feel up to hanging out. On my birthday. Which was very un-Cara-like. She was the reliable one. The sentimental one. The one who valued all of our traditions the most. That was a red flag in my book.
When she’d been diagnosed with a rare strain of Leukemia when we were twelve, I’d known it was bad, but I had no idea how bad. Now, I knew.
I’d been by her side while the disease tried, and thank God, failed to kill her. I’d been by her side when the treatments seemed like they were trying to kill her. I was there when she had no appetite but the doctors forced her eat. I was there when she couldn’t keep down the food she’d been forced to eat. I was there when they gave up on that and had to feed her through a tube. I was there when she was too weak to walk. I was there when she would cry in her sleep because of the pain. I was there to see the flash of terror in her eyes when the doctors would deliver bad test results.
I was there…
Last summer Cara was declared cancer-free after being in remission for five years. As exciting as that news had been, we all knew it wasn’t a lifetime guarantee. As I sat watching My Best Friend’s Wedding, I was trying to silence the worst-case scenario voices that were screaming every negative outcome possible through megaphones in my head.