The Life That Mattered (Life #1)(54)

I honestly felt as if Graham and Lila didn’t care at all. Feeling like I’d lost my two best friends felt like its own death.

“I love you, Evelyn.”

I laughed. “No. You don’t. You’re just proving a very important point about my marriage. You see … I’ve never said I love you to Ronin and he’s never said it to me.”

Graham’s eyes widened a fraction.

“Shocking, right?” I continued, “We missed the opportunity to throw that phrase out there like the next step in our relationship. And by the time we felt the desire to say the actual words, it was too late. We’d become so much more than a common and overused phrase. And you just proved that point. You throw it out there like it can solve every problem. But after a while, people build up this immunity to those words. They lose their effect. They become a crutch when you’re too lazy to go the extra mile and actually show someone how you feel. Show them how much you love them.

“I’m immune to your empty words, Graham. I’m immune to your money. I need more from you. And if you can’t give me more, then we don’t have anything left to say.”

After a heartbreaking silence settled between us, Graham left my bedroom. I heard a few indecipherable mumblings in the other room, then the front door clicked shut. Several seconds later, Ronin stood in the doorway to our bedroom, holding Anya as she yawned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“I know what you’re going to say.”

Ronin cocked his head to the side as Anya grabbed his cheeks, rubbing her hands over his stubble. “You do?”

“You’re going to say I was too hard on them.”

“I was going to say you stood up for yourself and your emotions, and I’m incredibly proud of you. I was going to say if they are truly your friends, they’ll come around and see how inconsiderate it was of them to not be there when you needed them. Then I was going to say we should make cookies with the kids.”

Didn’t see that coming.

“I think I just lost both of them.” I frowned.

“I think time will tell.”



That night we put Franz to bed, and Ronin rocked Anya to sleep while I called Lila. Screw Graham. Really, I had no feelings left to spare for him. But Lila was family. It would have broken my mom’s heart to hear our friendship had been severed over something so undefinable. Also, calling her was a test. I wanted to see if she’d answer her phone, if I meant enough to her, if she held any regret.

“Hey,” Lila answered in a solemn tone.

She answered. That was all that mattered to me. It meant something. A big something.

“Hey,” I replied on a sigh. A little relieved. A little sad.

“Evie, I don’t know what you said to Graham, but he’s visibly disturbed by it.”

“I don’t want to talk about Graham. I want to talk about us.”

“You don’t know what my life is like now, Evie. You don’t understand that my lack of being there for you isn’t because I don’t want to, it’s because I have so much pressure on me every single day. And it’s not an excuse for not doing more when you told me about your mom, it’s just my truth.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know your truth or understand how much pressure you have on you because you don’t talk to me. And if you’re really too busy to have a conversation with your best friend, then you need to give something else up before you lose yourself completely. That should worry you more than losing me. And if Graham doesn’t see it, then you need to make him see it. I worry you’re losing yourself in this new role, under the high pressure of being a Porter.”

“It’s just … I think it’s just the extra everything that comes with him being the governor. Once it’s over, things will go back to normal.”

“Normal? What is your normal? I’d love to have lunch with my best friend some time to get to know her again, to get to know this new normal. I have a new normal too. Do you ever wonder how my life has changed since I got married and started a family? I realize our lives have gone in two very different directions, and there’s not much relatability anymore between our lives, but there’s history and friendship. There’s this comfort in feeling like you can confide in this person because they know you better than anyone else. Don’t you miss that? Don’t you miss having that safe zone where you can truly be yourself?”

Silence took its turn on the line. It was hard to say everything because some things weren’t definable. My reaction with Graham was a culmination of feeling the loss of my friends mixed with the extreme toxicity of my mom’s situation. Maybe … maybe I didn’t hate Graham, but I hated the situation. And … well, he should have shown the fuck up for me. Just once, I needed something from him that money couldn’t buy. I needed him to give me back my Lila.

“Tuesday afternoon. Lunch. I’ll come to you. Graham will be gone all week.”

I laughed a little. “What if he weren’t? Can we not have lunch when he’s in town?”

“Evelyn …” Lila sighed. “I’m trying. I want this. I’m sorry that my life isn’t as simplistic as you’d like it to be. But … I’m trying.”

Simplistic sprinted out the door when cancer attacked my mom’s brain. Lila was right; gone were the days of spur of the moment lunches, giggling over guys, and shutting down the bars because we had nothing better to do.