“Pilates.”
I laugh then look her over. She’s gorgeous and always has been. And she’s never flaunted it. “You’re ridiculously hot for any age.”
“That’s because I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with being fifty and sexy. You only live once. Make the most of it. Be beautiful. Be your best beautiful self.” She smooths her hand over her napkin. “But why were you so worried if I was making a play for Leo?” Her question drips with curiosity. “Are you making a play for him?”
It’s my turn to scoff. “Please.”
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility.”
“Tabitha.” I use her first name to make it clear I don’t want her to go there. I can’t go there because of the past, and I can’t go there because of the present.
“Seriously, Lulu. I always did like him, but I’m not merely talking about his looks. He has a good head on his shoulders.”
“He does.”
She taps her chin. “For a fleeting second at the table, he looked at you like . . .”
She trails off, but I pounce on her statement. “Like what?”
“Like you were . . .”
Again, she doesn’t finish. But she needs to finish. She must. I have to know how he looks at me. I’m wildly compelled, and I don’t even understand why. “You’re never at a loss for words. He looked at me like what?”
“Like there were years in his eyes.”
“You mean stars, right?”
“I know the saying about stars in their eyes. I meant years.”
The word burrows into my cells. Years.
There are years between us. A whole decade of friendship, challenges, sadness, and now, new hope in a new era of friendship. But I don’t think she means it that way. Trouble is, I don’t know what to make of how she means it. “That’s insane.”
“I know you’re friends, but I swear there was something there. I swear, Lulu.” She studies my face for a moment, humming. “And I saw how you looked at him too.”
“And how exactly did I look at him?” I challenge her.
“Like there’s something there that wasn’t there before.”
“Did you just go Beauty and the Beast on me?”
She laughs. “I suppose I did.”
I shake my head, like I can dismiss these crazy notions in a single gesture. My dismissal works as a shield too. “And you should know, it’ll never happen with him.”
She arches an eyebrow. “People say that, and then it happens.”
“Seriously, you need to just stop talking.” I stick out my tongue at her, deflecting. The ideas she’s presenting are . . . dangerous. “Because that’s not going to happen.”
The more I say it, the more it’ll stick with me.
“Your lips say one thing, but your eyes say another.”
Exasperated, I toss up my hands. “He’s good-looking. There’s that.”
“Who’s good-looking?”
My shoulders straighten, and my face feels like it turns every shade of red as Leo returns to his seat.
Undeterred, my mom arches a brow at him. “You. She meant you.”
A grin hijacks his face. “Well, thank you.”
He doesn’t seem to stop smiling, not as we eat, not as we talk, not as we laugh and catch up and my mom shares stories of her new students and her boyfriend and the life she’s living so richly now.
As she’s always done.
Even when her life turned upside down when she was pregnant with me at eighteen, she never stopped pursuing her dreams. And she’s never stopped encouraging me to live my best life.
Right now, right here, this is the closest I’ve come in a long time to feeling like I might be on that path.
Something else occurs to me too. Even though we’ve never done this before—dinner with Leo, my mom, and me—it feels like old times. Like good times. Like no one is waiting for the other shoe to drop at the end of the night.
When the evening ends, my mother says good night and heads home. Leo takes the subway with me then walks me to my apartment.
As we near the stoop, time seems to mock me.
I want to stop the clock. To live in this moment where everything feels possible. Where the evening won’t need to end.
