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  And maybe I could start living and channel Cass all at once. Maybe, just maybe, Joey was exactly the distraction I needed. Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone. Have a little fun and prove to everyone I wasn’t a stick in the mud.

  Maybe Joey would be a willing participant in the New Addi James discovery process.

  Five

  S’mores cupcake in hand, I took a seat at our usual table in the corner of Bite Me! Charlie was working alone, as she always did. She’d talked a few times about hiring an afternoon helper to work the cash register, but she hadn’t done it yet. I told her when she did that I had a few students I’d be happy to send her way.

  I was the first one there, as always, but it gave me a chance to relax for a few minutes. I loved our friends, but after being surrounded by teenagers all day, sometimes I wanted to just go home and sit in silence. Not that our place was silent very often. One night a week I sucked it up though, and connected with my closest friends.

  Sam and I met Mandy and Claire in college. We’d all been assigned dorm rooms close to each other our freshman year. Collectively we packed on the freshman fifteen, and then some, sealing our bond. For years we all struggled with weight, the four of us against the world, it felt like at times. Being the smallest one of the group, my size 16’s were constantly a topic of envy, but I never felt small. I worked hard, but never seemed to be able to lose any weight, even though I had a well used gym membership.

  Mostly I was happy with myself though. I felt good most days and I wasn’t willing to live at the gym in order to lose more weight. A few days a week there was enough for me.

  The bell above the door tinkled and I glanced up to see Lexi and Mike walk in. Lexi and Charlie were the newest in our circle of friends. Another teacher brought in cupcakes from Bite Me! one day and I loved them. Mandy, Claire, Sam, and I would meet every week at Cooler Coffee, but we switched to Bite Me! when we tried them out. We quickly became friends with Charlie, who owned the place, and her best friend, Lexi.

  Lexi was one of those women I never thought I’d be friends with. Her shoulder length blonde hair and piercing blue eyes intimidated the hell out of me, and add in her designer clothes and job as Building Manager at EAAC Pigments, and I was afraid to speak to her for the longest time. Thankfully, Lexi kept coming to our girls’ nights and I got to know her. Once you got past the well put together exterior, Lexi was just as down to earth as the rest of us. Mike wasn’t so bad either, and he adored her, which made him okay in my book.

  “First as usual, Addi. We can always count on you to have our table when the rest of us get here,” Lexi said as she sat down next to me. I cringed on the inside. Was I really that boring? Wasn’t there anything that surprised my friends about me?

  “Well, it doesn’t make sense to go home for twenty minutes when I could just come straight here from school. Don’t you guys come here from work?”

  Mike nodded. “Yeah, we do. I agree. There’s no point in going home, even though I’d rather be out of these clothes a little sooner.”

  Mike’s dark grey pants had a crease down his leg that led to pointy toed black shoes. He had on a crisp white button down shirt and a plaid tie. He shrugged out of his wool coat and hung it over the back of his chair before he sat down. He looked nice, but definitely well-pressed. Mike had been promoted to plant manager a few months earlier and was still getting used to wearing a suit most days instead of the uniform everyone else at the plant wore. I could understand wanting to change into something more comfortable, but for me more comfortable would mean ditching the bra and changing my jeans for a pair of sweatpants. It didn’t seem appropriate for Bite Me!

  “We have a late meeting on Tuesday too, so we wouldn’t have time to run home if we wanted to,” Lexi added.

  “Home,” Claire said as she dropped into the seat next to me. “I can’t wait to get home. Aidan’s working a double today. I get to watch whatever I want on TV and don’t have to flip between my show and ESPN.”

  “What’s wrong with ESPN?” Mike asked, defending his own.

  “Nothing, Mike,” Claire sing-songed. “Unless it’s on 24/7. I’m decorating a home, I need to watch HGTV once in a while.”

  Mike groaned. “Not you too! Lexi tries to get me to watch that with her. You’d think we were decorating a new home with the way she watches that stuff.”

  “We might be one day,” Lexi argued. “I like to get ideas. Plus, combining our stuff into one place is not easy.”

  “That’s why you still have your own place. You won’t combine your stuff with mine.”

  “I have, a little bit. We just need a bigger place. It doesn’t make sense to have two people in a one bedroom apartment. If we’re going to move in together we should have more space.”

  I felt the pin drop in the room. Lexi was intimating at something bigger than sharing space, and we all knew it. Claire’s cupcake hovered in mid-air, a few inches from her lips. Mike’s face fell, devoid of all laughter that had been there moments before. Lexi crossed her arms over her chest, amplifying her generous breasts and showing her defiance. She wasn’t backing down.

  “Fine. Is that what you really want? A new house? What about a ring? I suppose you’re going to start hinting for one of those too. You want to get married?”

  Lexi’s face started to fall. She wasn’t ready for that. Anger mixed in with an offer of marriage? Throwing it in her face? Maybe Mike wasn’t who I thought he was. And I was afraid Lexi was having the same doubts.

  Then he dug in his pocket. Lexi’s arms fell to her sides. She gripped the edges of her chair as Mike pushed his out of the way. He knelt on the floor in front of her. “More space, room to grow, and a wedding? Will that do it? Will that get you to move in with me? So I can wake up to you every day and hold you close each night while I sleep.”

  “You’re not serious right now, Mike. You can’t just drop to one knee and say these things. You don’t even have a r-“

  The word froze on her lips, clasped inside when her hands slapped over her mouth. A stunning ring sat in the little black box. A large square shaped diamond was front and center with smaller diamonds all around it. The band looked like it was two strands woven together, both encrusted with more diamonds. The thing had to weight ten pounds! It was beautiful and elegant and suited Lexi to a T.

  “I’m not down here because I like being on the floor, baby. I’m down here because I’ve been carrying this thing around for two days trying to figure out how to ask you. It’s been burning a hole in my damn pocket. I don’t care about a new house. I don’t care about how much space we have. I only care about having you by my side for the rest of my life. What do you say? Are you in?”

  Lexi nodded, unable to say anything around the tears that covered her face and hands.

  “Yes, you’re saying yes? Hell yeah, she said yes!” Mike said as he scooped Lexi out of her chair and into his arms. He kissed her like a man full of promises, like a man who wouldn’t let her go ever.

  Claire leaned into me, resting her head against mine. “So romantic. I wanted to punch him for a minute, but that was sweet. I can’t believe Mandy and Sam missed that.”

  “We didn’t miss it,” Mandy said as she sat down next to Claire. “We were too stunned to speak so we just stood there and watched the show. Congratulations you guys!”

  We all stood and congratulated Lexi and Mike. My head was spinning, but I was so happy for them. When we first met Lexi she told us all about Mike. It was hard to believe they’d come so far from their friends with benefits relationship, but they were perfect together.

  “I can’t believe you did this. How did you keep this from me?”

  Mike smiled a sly grin. “Remember that lunch meeting I had with Harry? Yeah, not so much. I snuck out to pick this up. It was worth it to see your face. Oh, and I’ve already been in touch with a realtor. She’s expecting your call within the week. Harry and his wife used her when they bought their house. I remember you saying how much you loved it.
I figured she’d be the best one to help us find something perfect.”

  “You’re perfect,” Lexi cooed, kissing her fiancé.

  “Perfect for you,” Mike answered when they finally pulled apart.

  “Awww,” we said collectively, reminding them they weren’t alone.

  “This calls for a celebration,” Charlie said, finally joining us with two bottles of wine in hand. We poured out the bottles and passed around coffee mugs full of wine then toasted, “To Mike and Lexi. And the new house!”

  We all laughed and watched them kiss again. Sam was right. I wanted that. I wanted someone who wanted nothing more than to spend his life with me. Someone who understood my need to make other people happy and avoid conflict. Someone who wouldn’t take advantage of it. Someone who thought I was perfect for him, not someone who wanted to change me, like everyone else I knew.

  “How was ski club yesterday? You were already in bed when I got home,” Sam asked, pulling me back to reality.

  I groaned inwardly thinking back to my day. “Let’s see, I haven’t skied in years, I ended up falling on my ass in front of our liaison, then skied into three bushes, again in front of the liaison, then I sat back and observed because I was too sore to move. I’m lucky I survived.”

  “Wait, how did you get roped into ski club? You hated skiing when we were in college,” Mandy asked.

  “Hated is a pretty strong word,” I argued.

  “Yeah, ‘despised’ might fit better,” Claire laughed. “Seriously, it was pretty much the only sport you had no interest in. Why are you doing it?”

  “Wait, don’t tell me. They asked nicely. Or no, no, no, you got cornered.”

  “No, I’ve got it, they didn’t give her a chance to say no.”

  “It had to be a situation outside her control.”

  They continued spouting off the many excuses I’d given over the years for getting roped into something I didn’t really want to do. It’s how I started coaching tennis, and lacrosse. It’s how I became the advisor for the science club a few years ago. And how I got ski club duties.

  I couldn’t ever say no.

  And everyone knew it.

  Jesus, all my friends thought I was pathetic, too. They needed to form a club with Cass and my mother and talk about my many shortcomings. They’d have enough fodder to last forever. Especially with this latest one.

  “Come on guys, give Addi a break. The teacher who was supposed to be involved fell and broke her leg or something. They really didn’t give her a choice,” Sam defended me.

  They all laughed.

  “It’s true. It’s not like she had anything going on this winter, so ski club works. Lay off a little,” Sam said harshly.

  Everyone stopped.

  “What’s going on?” Claire asked for the group.

  “Nothing’s going on,” I blurted before Sam had a chance to share with the rest of them. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “You know saying it twice doesn’t make it any more true,” Mandy sniped.

  Damn. Sometimes I hated having best friends. I couldn’t hide anything from them. They all knew Sam wouldn’t defend me like that unless there was a reason. And I certainly wasn’t going to defend myself. I’d proven that.

  “She got into it with Cass over the weekend. Cass accused her of being boring and having no life. It got ugly,” Sam explained.

  Everyone jumped at once.

  “That’s not true.”

  “She’s insane.”

  “You have a great life.”

  “Don’t listen to her.”

  I held up my hands to silence them all. “It’s okay. I know it’s the truth. And I know you all think so too. I’m boring and predictable and I don’t put myself out there. But that’s the old Addi. I’ve decided I’m going to change. Cass is setting me up on a date this weekend with someone she knows. I’m going to start being more like her. She thinks I’m so… blah. I’m going to prove her wrong.”

  Stunned silence met me. They all looked from one to the other, no one really knowing what to say. I’d never seen the group of them speechless. It was slightly terrifying.

  Lexi found her voice first, “Addi, don’t try to be someone else. It’s not worth it. There’s nothing wrong with who you are.”

  “We just sat here and talked about how predictable I was always being the first one here. Nothing I do throws anyone off. Not like Mike’s proposal. I’d never do something that spur-of-the-moment.”

  “You go out for drinks with Mel and I like that,” Sam tried.

  “After school, with you and Mel, always to Janey’s. It’s not that unpredictable.”

  “You’re a teacher. You have to be organized,” Claire said gently.

  “True, in the classroom. I’m not going to have my students suffer, but I need to change. Cass was right. I’ve been stuck taking care of her for so long that I’ve neglected myself. If I ever want to have any fun, I need to change. So I am. Guys, I can’t even tell you the last time I had a date, let alone had any real fun. I think my vagina just might shrivel up and die from lack of use. If it weren’t for tampons every month it probably already would have.”

  Mike groaned.

  “Oops, I sort of forgot you were here, Mike.”

  “Well, that was unpredictable,” he teased.

  “I don’t want to die alone. It sounds stupid, but I need something in my life. I need to make some changes to-”

  The sound of a phone ringing interrupted me. It was Cass’s ringtone, something I never heard during daylight hours. Sam and I exchanged a glance as I dug my phone out of my bag.

  “You need to come over here right now. I need your help,” Cass said loudly. She didn’t sound drunk, but she definitely wasn’t happy.

  “Where are you?”

  “Where do you think I am? I’m home. And you need to come over here now.”

  She hung up the phone.

  “What did she say?” Sam asked.

  “She needs me to come over. Now.”

  “Are you going to go?”

  I sat up straighter. The old Addi would have dropped everything and run right over. But the new Addi thought twice. She wasn’t going to do everything everyone asked her to do. She was going to do what she wanted to do.

  “No,” I finally decided. “I’m going to finish my cupcake first.”

  Six

  After I defiantly finished my cupcake, and ignored Cass’s three other calls, I drove to her house. I really didn’t want to deal with her drama, but I knew she’d keep calling if I didn’t show up eventually. What I didn’t expect to find was my mother’s car in the driveway.

  Immediately worried that something was wrong, I rushed out of my car, barely turning it off before bolting for Cass’s front door. Without bothering to knock I let myself in. Cass’s house was always picture perfect, but something felt off as soon as I walked in. I couldn’t exactly place it, but I could tell something had changed. Following their voices, I found my mom and sister sitting at her kitchen table, a sleek glass and metal thing that never would have worked in my house, but was perfect for Cass’s modern home.

  “What are you going to do?” Cass asked Mom as I sat down next to her. I glanced from one to the other, unsure exactly what I was walking in on.

  “Well, he’s got another thing coming if he thinks I’m just going to roll over and play dead. He’ll see how easy he had it with me doing everything for him,” Mom said. “Hi honey, glad you could join us.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, wondering what in the hell they were talking about.

  “I’ve left your father,” Mom declared, holding her head high. She looked at me as though she expected me to say something, but there weren’t words. Nothing came out. Maybe a squeak, but certainly nothing that resembled the English language.

  “And she’s moving in with me,” Cass added.

  My jaw hit the table and my head ping-ponged between them like the greatest tennis match on the planet. “Whoa, wait a minute,�
�� I finally said, “back it up. Start from the beginning.”

  Mom sighed like I’d just asked her to recite the Declaration of Independence then sipped from a wine glass I hadn’t noticed. Mom never drank. And she certainly never drank without dinner.

  “Your father never understood me. He wanted me to be someone I’m simply not, and we’ve finally just had enough of each other, I suppose. We argued tonight, and I told him I’m not going to sit around and have him make me miserable any longer. Then I left. He didn’t try to stop me so I guess he thinks this is for the best.”

  I did my best imitation of a fish and tried to formulate a response. Cass simply raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me. She’d clearly had time to digest all this and it still didn’t make much more sense to her than it did to me. Mom left Dad? And he let her?

  “What happened tonight, Mom?”

  Cass snorted, “Don’t even try. She’s not talking. She’s planning the rest of her life, a single life, mind you. Starting with moving into my guest room and helping me find you a man.”

  “Excuse me? On what planet do you think I want either of your help finding a man?” I blurted out.

  “But at Thanksgiving you said Cass could set you up with one of the guys she knows. I figured I can help her narrow down the choices. You know, make sure she’s not saving the good ones for herself and leaving you with some loser they paid to tag along.”

  I shook my head to make sure I heard her correctly. “You think the only way I can get a guy to go out with me is if Cass pays him? Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom.”

  “That’s not what I said at all, Addison. And here I am trying to help you,” Mom mumbled. She got up and rinsed her glass, then busied herself with wiping down the counters. Cass tried to get me to look at her.

  “Help me,” she mouthed when I finally gave in.

  I shrugged. “How?”