The Other Side(51)

“Except the sleeping baby in my arms, yes,” I answer. The irritation from earlier is gone, I’m just happy to see her.

“I’m sorry about earlier. I was jealous and I shouldn’t have been, but I was. I was a little surprised too, but mostly just jealous,” she rambles.

I shift Joey in the crook of my arm so I can free up one hand and touch her cheek because it’s been days since I touched her and I need that right now. Touching her skin makes me feel like I’m not alone. Her head tilts and she leans slightly into my hand like she’s missed it too.

“You don’t need to be jealous. Surprised, yes. Jealous, no. I should’ve told you. I should’ve told you a long time ago.” My fingers have threaded into her hair above her ear, and I’m stroking my thumb softly across her cheek. Her eyes are closed. And my God, she looks so pretty it hurts.

“You should’ve told me, but I should’ve behaved differently—”

“Chantal should’ve behaved differently. She’s never like that,” I interject.

She shrugs. “She just has this deep voice and she sounds older. She sounds mature and confident and…” she trails off then lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry, my self-conscious side is rearing its ugly head and I know how unattractive that is. I tend to compare myself to people, women especially, and I always come up short in the comparison. I’m working on it with my therapist, but I failed tonight. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m sorry too.”

“Listen, Toby, I don’t know what we are to each other and I honestly don’t want to put a label on it because then I overthink everything and I know I’ll mess it up, but I do know that you’re my friend. My only friend and the best friend I’ve probably ever had and I don’t want that to change. Are we good?”

I’m not used to honesty like this. I’m not used to people caring.

My thumb brushes her cheek one more time before I release her and return to a two-armed hold on Joey before leaning forward and whispering, “We’re good,” against her temple before I kiss it. “This whole friendship thing is new to me too and I suck at it.”

Her smile transforms into something dreamier. “Night, Toby and Joey.”

I smile too. “Night, Alice.”



When Chantal arrives home around midnight, I’m so tired I can hardly see straight. She looks sheepish. She never looks sheepish. I know she feels bad about what happened earlier with Alice, but she’s not one to come out and apologize either. We are so similar. Usually, I avoid confrontation, and for the most part I plan on doing it tonight, but I can’t leave without saying something. We do the ritual handoff, and I watch her effortlessly lie him down in his crib without waking him—I still think there’s some sort of motherly witchcraft involved in the process because he wakes up every time I even look at the crib with intention, let alone try.

When she turns and walks back out to the living room, she asks, “Did he cry a lot?”

I shake my head. “Not at all.”

She nods slowly like she’s thinking a lot harder about that than she should, her eyes downcast. “You always seem to calm him,” she says, lifting them to meet mine.

I raise my eyebrows and shrug because this is getting uncomfortable.

And then she changes the subject. “She seems nice.” Her eyes have dropped back to the floor.

“She is,” I answer, solemnly, knowing this conversation has shifted to Alice.

“I don’t know why I acted the way I did. I shouldn’t have.”

Like I said, apologies aren’t our thing. I know this is hard for her.

“You shouldn’t have,” I agree.

Her eyes dart up to meet mine before they drift off over my shoulder, and she huffs like she doesn’t know how to say what she wants to say.

“You don’t have to—” I start to let her off the hook, but she proceeds right over the top of me.

“I do. I’ve never seen you with anyone, but the way you were looking at her, I knew that you’ve kissed her. And that you want to again. And again. Not many people are as guarded as you…”

I nod in agreement.

She continues quickly, “I saw you let your walls down tonight and instead of being happy for you, I got territorial and protective.” She shakes her head, admonishing herself. “I had no right.”

Normally, I would keep my mouth shut but not tonight. “You had no right.”

She sighs like she’s even more disappointed in herself. “I didn’t. I’m seeing someone too, you know?”

This is news to me. “I didn’t know that.”

She shrugs. We both shrug a lot. “He’s come into the diner as long as I’ve been working there and always asks to be seated in my section. A few weeks ago he asked me out. Every Monday he comes in at the end of my shift and we have coffee for thirty minutes.”

“Is he a good man?” That’s all I want for her. It would help put my mind at ease.

She nods and smiles. “He is. He’s a widow, lost his wife to cancer at twenty-four. That was three years ago. He has a seven-year-old daughter, and works as an X-ray tech in the ER at Denver General Hospital.”

This is what she needs. Someone who’s stable, responsible, and has a future. Someone who’s a complement to all of her strengths. “He sounds great.”