Fight to the Finish (First to Fight #3)(5)
“Or a vibrator,” Reagan said absently. When both women stared at her, she blinked. “Whoops. Said that one out loud, huh?”
“Nice one, Heels.”
“They are adorable, aren’t they?” Reagan extended one leg to show off her red patent leather Mary Jane–style three-inch heels. “Red is classic. Speaking of classic, you know who has those classic good looks? Graham Sweeney.” She stared hard at Kara as she said it. “The Adonis with a good right uppercut.”
“Do you even know what an uppercut is?” Marianne whispered.
“No,” Reagan whispered back.
“I’m not dating Graham Sweeney. Or any other Marine.” Kara gulped down the wine. Hell, she was kid free and had nowhere to drive tonight. She could go crazy and kill the bottle. “I’m not opposed to dating. I date.”
“Rarely,” Marianne muttered.
“I’m picky. That’s not a bad thing. Not when I’ve got another soul to worry about.” She crammed a cracker in her mouth in frustration. This argument was going to cost her serious calories. “I can’t bring around losers. It’s unacceptable.”
“But why no Marines?” Reagan asked while Marianne shook her head vehemently. “Oh, uh . . . sorry. Ignore the question.”
Kara sighed and waved her longtime friend off. “It’s okay. Henry’s an *. Zach’s father,” she explained to Reagan.
“Sperm donor,” Marianne muttered into her wineglass.
“Sperm donor . . . unless Zach can hear me.” Kara was firm on that. She couldn’t rightly call him a father on a regular basis when he wanted nothing to do with his own son, but she still did her best to keep the negativity away from Zach. “He lives here, we all went to high school together.”
“I’m almost a year younger than Kara, and Henry is a few years older. Just for your frame of reference.” Marianne handed Reagan another cracker and took one for herself. “This one walked in graduation with a secret under her cap and gown.”
“Five months along and nobody knew but me and Henry.” That part made her smile. She’d been so relieved when she’d shared the news with him, and he’d supported her gut reaction to keep the baby. It had taken the pressure off. “Obviously I wasn’t going to start college when I’d be giving birth midsemester, so I took what I told myself was a year off and started working the front desk at one of the gyms here. Henry supported that decision. He supported every decision I made.” That made her grimace. “It took me awhile, and some maturity, to see he wasn’t really supporting me so much as not emotionally investing. It was ‘Whatever you think is best, I believe in you.’ Or ‘You know what you need, so go do it.’ All talk.”
“I can see where that might bolster your self-esteem though. Feed into the relationship.” Reagan nodded. “So you had Zach. What’d your parents think?”
“What parents?” Marianne snorted, and Kara shrugged. “They were done with me when they realized I wasn’t giving the baby up and wasn’t going to college right away. It was my decision to toss my life away,” she added, “according to them. So I had to live with it.”
“Fuck ’em,” Marianne said, holding up her glass in a toast. “My parents didn’t like your parents, by the way. Did you ever know that? They never said anything until after Zach was born, because I think they were hoping once the baby arrived they’d snap out of it.”
“No snapping,” Kara said sadly.
“No snapping,” Marianne agreed. “But you figured it out. Why? Because you’re awesome. That’s why.”
“And because I had a great support system, which included Marianne’s parents. I found another gym that let me bring in Zach and leave him with the child care people, unless they were swamped. Then he went in a sling with me at the front desk. I had amazing shoulders and back muscles that fall.”
“I bet. How hard,” Reagan murmured, “to be nineteen and doing it all on your own.”
“Yeah. Zach wasn’t much help in those days.” She laughed. “I would watch all these yoga mommies—that’s what my manager called them.” She grinned when Reagan’s eyebrows winged up. “You know, the ones who don’t work, and come in carrying an iced green tea from Starbucks, wearing the matching, gorgeous yoga outfits that coordinate with their personalized yoga mats and their kids always match and look adorable, and they do the yoga class because it won’t get them sweaty and then they all go out for lunch together. The yoga mommies.”
“Huh.” Reagan nodded slowly. “I could be a yoga mommy. Just, you know, without the yoga.”
“It’s required. Sorry. I would watch these women go in there, and I would think ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if coming to the gym was my break instead of the main stressor in my life?’ So one day, after my shift, I stayed and did a class. I had no clue what I was doing. I looked like an idiot.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
Marianne lifted a shoulder. “It’s probably true.”
Reagan slapped at Marianne’s knee.
“It’s true. I did. I was never really an athlete like some people.” She shot Marianne a glance. “But afterward, I felt so . . . alive.” That made her feel bad. “That sounds awful. Like having Zach wasn’t living. But this was something just for me. Mine alone. So I kept going back. I was the loser in the back of the studio in the cutoff jeans and gym employee polo—because I couldn’t afford real workout clothes—with the ungainly posture.”