Whatever that looked like.
***
They went to the airport at the same time together the next morning, but weren’t even flying on the same airline and had separated before security. He had curved his arm around her and kissed her, and it was about the only thing that gave her a sense of comfort as she walked to her gate.
He hadn’t gone platonic on her just because the trip was over.
But she was stuck on the way they’d had radio silence last time, and she knew the circumstances were different, but still. She worried about it on the plane, and she had to laugh, because here she was, obsessing about a man.
She stopped herself from thinking that. Because she was minimizing her own feelings. The fact that for the first time in her life she was having a sexual relationship without promises. Without parameters. That at forty years old she was having some kind of revelation. A revolution, sexually and emotionally, and she wasn’t going to reduce it by telling herself she was just worrying about a boy. Because it wasn’t that. She was a grown woman, and he was a man she cared about a lot. He had been part of her life for years, and had been instrumental in helping her realize certain things about herself. He was the only person who seemed to know and understand why she felt certain things. Why she did certain things. Not even she had understood them on the level that he did. She was not going to minimize her feelings just because she knew what an article on the internet might say. An article on the internet didn’t know her.
Didn’t understand her experiences.
Now, she wasn’t sure she trusted her own feelings. So there was that. But she wasn’t going to deny them or pretend they didn’t exist. She wasn’t going to push them down and tell herself they didn’t matter.
She never even got her laptop or a book out on the plane, because she was too busy policing her feelings, and then reminding herself not to.
She just needed to stop worrying about him. She was going to go see her son. She was going to focus on him and his new life, and not think about hers at all.
Right now, the idea of just being someone’s mom felt like a relief.
TWENTY-FIVE
She had Whitney and Elysia over to her apartment when she got back home. She didn’t know yet if she and Logan were taking a breather until the next road trip or if she should just invite him over after they left.
She just didn’t know yet. But that was a hallmark of the whole experience.
“So how was this trip?” Whitney asked, bringing a plate of cheese over to the table and having a seat.
“Good,” she said. “Jude is great, and his girlfriend is darling.”
“Did you tell him about you and Will?”
Will?
She couldn’t even think about…about what she needed to tell her kids about Will for a full thirty seconds. All she could think about was Logan.
“I… No. I just told him Will was working.”
She hesitated. But she felt like she needed to share this, not so much out of the friendship obligation or anything like that, but because she was at a loss, and tired of finding wisdom in herself to the best of her ability.
Sometimes she needed a little bit of help. That was another step forward.
Because she didn’t like to admit uncertainty any more than she liked to expose cracks in her life.
But she had kept so much of her messiness to herself, even hidden from herself, and she felt like this was an opportunity to put it out there. On the table.
“I… Things are changing between me and Logan,” she said slowly. “I… I slept with him.”
She wanted to give thanks that Elysia and Whitney didn’t squeal or act excited, or even look at each other in a knowing way. Or owe each other money like there was some kind of secret bet, like they both knew things about her that she didn’t, because that would’ve been unbearable.
“Oh,” Elysia said. “You… Well.”
“Yes. Well. I mean, I slept with him more than once. To be clear. I slept with him a lot of times. That was basically the whole trip, and then also the whole extra week in Miami.”
“What about Will?” Elysia asked.
“I don’t… I don’t know. I mean, I do know. I’m not getting back with him.”
