“Bix!” Arizona and Fia shouted.
“Also, you could do it the old-fashioned way,” Bix said. “The King men are good in bed.”
“Should I see myself out?” Arizona asked.
“Are you squeamish?” Bix asked, smiling.
Bix and Arizona were both edgy, badass women, and watching them go toe-to-toe would normally amuse Rue, but right at that moment she just wanted to crawl under the couch and make herself as flat as possible.
“You’re making some assumptions about all the King men being good in bed,” Fia said dryly.
“I’m just assuming they all share a genetic predisposition,” Bix said. “Besides. I can’t commiserate on the biological clock. I’m twenty-two.”
“Shut up,” Fia said.
Bix grinned. “I’m just saying. It would be practical. He’s a good man, you like him.”
“I’m not... I’m not having Justice’s baby.”
It made her stomach turn over, made it feel tight. Because... just that whole thought sounded intimate. And Bix could talk about turkey basters all she wanted, but it was still his... It would be his baby growing inside of her.
She felt vaguely clammy.
“No,”she said. “That isn’t how I want it anyway. I want a family. Because I didn’t have one. And what I want more than anything is a chance to have that.” Her eyes started to fill with tears, because she had always imagined raising her kids in her grandma’s little house. The place that had become so dear to her.
“Hey,” Arizona said, patting her on the back. “It’s okay. It sucks. It just does. And there’s no jumping forward and making it better.”
“I want to, though.”
“I get that,” said Fia. “And I may not be the best person to give advice either, because I spent a lot ofyears hanging on to my secrets. I’m not sure that I dealt with my anger in the meantime. I just kind of deferred it.” There had been a lot of bitterness between Fia and Landry and nobody had known why. It had all been about the secret pregnancy they’d had when they were teenagers, and Fia subsequently giving their child up for adoption. She suddenly felt uneasy. Both Fia and Arizona had forgiven men that hurt them. She really hoped that wasn’t what she was supposed to do, or what they were about to counsel her to do.
“I don’t want to forgive Asher,” she said. As soon as she said it, a few things felt a little bit lighter. A little bit clearer.
“Oh, of course not,” Arizona said at the same time Fia said, “Why would you?”
Bix was just sitting there holding a cheese knife, looking thunderous.
“Well, it’s just that you forgave Micah,” she said Arizona. “And you forgave Landry for making a really difficult time in your life even harder by not supporting your decision. I was worried that—”
“Neither of them cheated,” Fia said. “And listen. Everybody has to make the best decision they can for themselves. I’m not saying there’s not a scenario where I don’t understand why somebody would make the choice to forgive a cheater...”
“I wouldn’t,” Bix said. “I’d give him a vasectomy with the nearest sharp object.”
That was basically how she felt. “I told him I don’t want to see him again. And I don’t. You know, I think the thing is I can’t actually ever look at him again and not see him looking at me and telling me that he lostsight of everything to have sex with somebody else. Because it was just so exciting and thrilling, and they had such amazing chemistry. I can’t...” She shook her head. “It’s the stupidest thing. It makes so much more sense to be crushed about a canceled wedding, about the fact that I’m not moving into the stage of life that I thought I was, but the biggest, rawest wound that I have right now is this painful feeling that I’m never going to find anyone because I’m not, I don’t know,sexyenough. Like maybe something is broken in me because my parents were so crazed over sex with each other and sex with other people, and it was used as a weapon, and they lost their heads in a way that I never wanted to. Maybe I’m screwed up because the most stable environment I lived in was with my grandma, who told me that good girls needed to wear modest clothing and not let boys get to second base.”
“First of all,” Bix said, “this is the most patriarchy. Thathecould make a mistake and somehow make you feel like it might’ve been yours. I reject it. And I hate him for it.”
Arizona and Fia made noises of agreement.
“And second of all,” Bix continued, “your past doesn’t mess you up forever unless you choose to let it. Believe me. If it did, I wouldn’t be here. If it did, I might as well give up. Because I got turned into a petty con before I could ever make the choice. Because I coasted down that road and I made a lot of my own mistakes for years. Then I met Daughtry and I fell in love with him.Acop. I fell in love with a cop. It doesn’t make any sense. But I wanted it. I wanted him. So I did all the rearranging inside myself that I needed to do tobe with him. I had to unlearn a lot, but it wasn’t stuck learned inside of me forever. I was able to fix it.”
“Maybe that’s what I need to do. Maybe I need like, sex therapy.”
“Why?” Arizona asked. “Is there something you’re scared to do?”
She suddenly felt uncomfortable. She’d never talked about sex in detail with anybody before. She didn’t even talk about it with Asher. They’d just had it.
“No. I mean I don’t think so. Nothing that he asked for that I said no about.”
