“No secrets,” Natalie says. “It gives me seventh-grade flashbacks.”
“We were just saying we hope Rhys can get something out of Tucker,” Sonya says.
“Amen to that,” Natalie says.
It gets quiet for a second while we all privately agree.
Gus sniffs his way up to my knee, then paws it for attention.
“Hey, dude,” I say, leaning down and giving him a nose kiss. He jumps up on the couch, turns once, and plops down, snuggled up against my thigh.
“Look at him!” Sonya says. “He doesn’t usually do that with anyone except me.”
I scritch Gus’s goofy little tuft. “I’d almost forgotten how nice it feels. It’s been almost four months since Milo went to New York?—”
“Milo?” Ivy asks.
“My dog. My ex has joint custody.”
Sonya makes a sympathetic face. “That sucks.”
“It kinda does,” I agree, as Gus sighs and settles his face on my thigh, politely not interfering with my plate so I can go on eating my lasagna.
“Hey,” Natalie says. “I don’t know if you saw, but the Rush Creek firefighters are doing a benefit for the shelter, and there are some ovary-blasting photos of hot firefighters and cute dogs.” She pulls out her phone and passes it around.
When it gets to me, I set my fork down and flip through the photos, not seriously shopping, but…my fingers stop on one. The guy’s not half as hot as Rhys, but the dog is flipping adorable, a cocker spaniel–beagle mix with mismatched floppy ears going in opposite directions.
So. Tempting. But there’s still the problem of Milo being around half the time and not the other half. Reluctantly, I pass the phone back to Natalie.
Ivy is the first to break the silence. “Sonya and I went to your show at Five Rivers. It was incredible!”
“Aw, thank you.”
“It was mobbed, too. The woman who runs Five Rivers says they’ve never gotten this many people at a show before.”
I smile. I’ve been hearing good things from all corners—including from the quilters, who’ve been getting commissions and curated show invitations by the bucketload. It makes me really happy.
“So you run a quilt store?” Ivy asks. “That’s pretty freaking cool. What got you into that?”
“My grandmother was a quilter,” I say. “She taught me.”
“Was?” Sonya asks.
“She passed when I was in college.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. She was a…difficult woman.”
She tilts her head. “Difficult how?”
Every face in the room is soft with attentive curiosity, and I find myself, strangely, wanting to tell them more. “Cold. Withholding. Her only love language was teaching me to sew. And I was a lonely kid. No siblings, father died when I was little, and my mom was—absent. I figured out pretty quickly that being good at sewing would get me the attention and the affection I wanted.”
“Poor kid,” Sonya says. I like the way she says it, acknowledging what I went through but also making it clear that we both know it was childhood pain, so I don’t feel like she’s pitying me. “I’m surprised you ended up liking it so much.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Even once I realized how messed up our dynamic was, it didn’t kill my love of quilting. If anything, it made me want to hold on to it more. Because she did let me down—but also, it was all she knew how to give.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Ivy says.
