***

I didn’t find Tori at home. She was at work, and when I walked in, it wasn’t just her. It was Dee, it was Ruby, and in the middle, like a girl gang ready to beat the shit out of me, was Tori.

“You slept with Holst and didn’t even tell me?” Tori accused.

“Hang on—”

“No, no, no! You’re supposed to tell me these things!”

I might have misjudged my bestie and her potential for being a bitch. But I had to assume this was the baby talking.

“Give me a fuckin’ break.” I smiled, bringing my own skills of deflection to the conversation. “I just got out of bed, like, forty-five minutes ago.”

“Nice,” Dee chimed in with a wide, knowing smile.

“Yeah.” I smiled back in agreement and announced dramatically, “It looks like I’m entering into a relationship with Holst.”

“You make it sound…so formal,” Dee commented.

“I’m new at this. Cut me some fucking slack,” I countered, but again, I did it with a huge grin. “Can I steal Tori? I’m not trying to leave you ladies out, but it’s kind of…”

I hated to be a bitch, and maybe I shouldn’t have stormed into Tori’s shop and put her on the spot in front of our friends, but I was…I couldn’t narrow it down to one feeling since I was experiencing so many at the same time.

“Go,” Dee said gently.

“Come on, whore,” I beckoned my bestie.

“Who are you calling a whore?” she said and moved past me, grabbing her purse and shoving sunglasses onto her face. “Call me if ya need me, Rubes.”

“No worries,” she said back.

“Hey,” Tori said as I followed her down the steps to Pacific Coast Highway, Coastal Ink and Bear Claw just below us. “I know this great little coffee place that just opened and—”

“Keep walking.” I chuckled. “Beach. Sand. Then we’ll eat. I haven’t had lunch, and since you’re eating for two now…”

“Oh, ha, ha, ha,” she laughed, but this was us. We always had a good time, she was my girl, and I was hers, but when I spilled my guts about my past, I didn’t know how she was going to react. Therefore, the beach was a better option.

Twenty minutes later, Tori was staring at the surfers, and I’d just finished telling her everything…from the man who destroyed me, to the man who wanted to give me the world. He hadn’t said it, but I knew he intended to do whatever he could to make me believe in happily-ever-afters.

“Kath…”  She said my name long and drawn out, like that one syllable was too painful to utter. “Your parents have no idea?” she asked.

“I didn’t have any friends, I was a straight-A student, and my dad was a dick. I think they just thought I was an introvert. They didn’t even ask where I was going or what I was doing.”

“I need to do some fact-checking on this, but I’m pretty sure that what he did to you…age of consent and crap like that…”

“It doesn’t matter now,” I told her, looking out at the waves.

She moved and knelt right in front of me. “He took something that wasn’t his to take, Kath. He made promises he had no intention of keeping. I remember what it was like to have a big crush at fourteen, how intense those feelings are to a teenage girl. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, but I wasn’t being groomed by some pedophile to pick up the slack when my dad was an asshole. He knew everything about you, and I think he took advantage of that.”

“Holst pretty much said the same thing,” I told her, holding back tears, because I didn’t really want to start crying. Again. “I needed to let him go. I get it; I know what he did was wrong and only started coming to that conclusion myself after things with me and Mark ended. I know I was too young to have that kind of relationship, and, if anything, he should’ve waited until I was old enough to deal with it when it ended. But that’s not what happened, and I can’t just go back and change it. It’s done.” That sounded convincing, even to my ears.

“I kinda think…maybe…” she began.

Edgewise, sideways, or on the freaking moon, I couldn’t let her get a word in. She knew I wasn’t someone who shared, and I needed to get this all out. So she did exactly what I needed her to and didn’t speak another word.

“This thing with Holst…I mean, it’s been, like, five minutes, but if it works out…I know it’ll be bigger than what I had with that man. If it goes bad…” I shook my head and looked her in the eyes. “I drank and fucked my way through my twenties, just enough to dull the pain, to make me forget, but it’s been getting harder. When I had you…”

“Kath,” she whispered.

“Honey, I’m a grown woman. It wasn’t and isn’t your job to distract me from reality. I don’t care about the shop failing or my dad being pissed at me because I invested in it. I mean, I do, of course. But none of that’s gonna matter if, for the first time since I was twenty years old, I let a man into my heart and it fucks me up.”

“He won’t.” She smiled. “Dee hears everything from her kitchen. And since she ended things with Frodo—”

“She is nuts,” I interrupted.

“We’ll get her head screwed back on right. Anyway, he called you…My Katherine.”

“My Katherine,” I whispered.

“Yeah, like proper proprietary Mr. Darcy style.”

That’s when I started crying and admitted, “I thought I’d already had the great love of my life.”

“Kath.”

“I thought he’d come back for me, Tor.” She held me as I let it all out, a mess of snot and emotions. “I asked him, point blank, if he’d ever come back. ‘If I said yes, you’d spend your days waiting, not living.’ Then he was just…gone. I lied to everyone. I had no friends at all, because I couldn’t and keep seeing him.”

“Come on,” she prompted and pulled me up by my hands

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you to the great distraction of tacos and huge iced coffees before I need to get back to work.”

“Honey,” I said, gripping her hands tight to keep her at my side. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It wasn’t you, Tor. I just needed to come to it in my own time, and, apparently, that time is now.”

“I know,” she said, giving me a huge hug. She was going to be a great mom, great at the listening, the hugs, the reading stories, and rocking them to sleep, so I told her exactly that.

“You’re gonna be a great mom, Tor.”

“I know.” She giggled. “And you, someday, are gonna make a great wife, Kath.”

I didn’t argue with her. I just smiled with sand between my toes, the sun on my back, and my best friend at my side.

Holst

My BMW had belonged to my mother. She now lived on a new estate, with her new husband, and new BMW.

She gave me the car for free.

After being a single mom for years, living with my grandparents in San Clemente, she began dating again, and, about ten years ago, she met Alan. He was a farmer, they met online, and when I met Farmer Alan, I did not expect he was going to be “Al” of “Alpaca Orchards.” His company was part of a citrus co-op, struggling at the time, but when my mother suggested a small side business of candied fruits, preserves, and lemonades in fancy jars and packaging, he felt she was on to something big, and now, Alpaca Orchards was international.

Mom was quite proud.

Alan offered to help Chelle and me when we bought our house. He also offered me a job, but I wanted to be my own man, which meant working my ass off. Somewhere inside me, whether it was possibly to prove I was nothing like my father—the jury was still out on that one—or simply to see if I could, I wanted to achieve as much as I was able without asking for help.

But I never felt at ease. Something in my prior relationships was never quite right. I was an affectionate man, sometimes too intense, according to Chelle. That became a part of me I denied and quelled through being active. But from the moment I met Katherine, I did not hold back. She responded positively to it, and that was when I knew, I’d found the right woman at last.