firm would be alive with gossip as long as both she and Ethan continued to work there, sure. But Maya didn’t have to indulge in any of it.
She didn’t have to talk about her misfire of a wedding at all if she didn’t want to.
It was almost frightening how easy it was to imagine. She could lose herself in the work the way she always had, because there was always more. She could quietly request of her managing partner that she not be put on cases with Ethan, but as that hardly ever happened anyway, there was almost no point in asking. No one would want them working together anyway, as their personal issues were neither good for the clients nor billable.
And didn’t that say everything there was to say about the life she’d so meticulously and carefully built? That she could have a fiancé, then lose him, and it would make so little difference?
That she could get jilted on her wedding day, run off on her honeymoon by herself and have yet to truly mourn what she’d left behind?
Maya tried to find it in her to grieve the loss of her life with Ethan, but she didn’t seem to have it in her. Maybe that was why, when she couldn’t avoid it anymore, she finally allowed herself to think about Lorraine.
Fickle, reckless, messy Lorraine. Maya could come up with all kinds of words to describe her best friend. Or former best friend, she supposed, given what had happened. And all the words she’d choose were true.
But she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that she loved Lorraine anyway. She always had and that was the part she didn’t want to admit to herself. Because that didn’t just disappear overnight. She’d caught herself picking up her phone to shoot Lorraine a text or send her a picture more than once since she’d come to Italy. It was second nature after all these years.
Her heart hadn’t caught up to reality yet.
Lorraine had been so much work. There had never been room for too many other friends and never close ones, not with Lorraine there to take up all of Maya’s emotional energy. And maybe there was a part of Maya that had taken a certain pleasure in doing that work. In turning herself inside out for her friend, again and again, with no expectation of return.
Friendship isn’t about measuring everything to make sure it’s equal, she had told Ethan when he’d complained about the Lorraine situation—because there had always been another Lorraine situation. Friendship is about love. The end.
She’d believed that. She really, truly had.
But here in this faraway place that still felt like a fantasy despite the hard, cold stone she sat on, she wondered. Maybe there had been a part of her that had gotten off on loving Lorraine despite everything. Lorraine had been her opportunity to take care of someone else when no one else in her life required it. Her parents took care of themselves with a ruthlessness that was only surprising to people who’d never met them before. Melinda had never needed anyone to take care of her. She took care of everyone else and had made it her calling. It was why she’d become a doctor. Ethan, too, had needed very little in the way of maintenance. Their issues were all in the scheduling, or so Maya had thought. But they hadn’t needed each other.
The only person who had ever needed her—often desperately—had been Lorraine.
Maya had been raised to take care of herself and trained never to expect anyone else to provide something for her if she could do it herself. Lorraine had been the first person she’d met, at eighteen years of age, that she could care for.
Was it her fault? Had it always been leading here? Maya blew out a breath where she sat, then brushed a few stray crumbs from her pastry from her leg. There had been a part of her that had pitied Lorraine. So broken, she had always thought. So lost and lonely. Had that been nothing more than the worst sort of condescension all this time?
Had she done this to herself, one patronizing offer of help at a time? She’d never meant to condescend to Lorraine. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t.
She didn’t mean to do it, but one second she was sitting there fiddling with her empty espresso cup, and the next she had her mobile in her hand again.
It wasn’t until the line started ringing in her ear that her stomach dropped and the reality of what she was doing kicked in. But then it was too late. Even if she hung up, the phone would record the call.
Maya shut her eyes, tipping her head forward as if that could ward off the foolishness of what she was doing.
She heard Lorraine pick up, though there was nothing but silence. One beat, then another.
“I didn’t think you would call me. I didn’t think you would ever speak to me again.”
Lorraine didn’t sound quite like herself. She sounded distant and shaken, maybe. Or maybe that was more wishful thinking on Maya’s part.
She lifted her head in the piazza and watched the clouds move in above the bell tower of the ancient church that commanded the far side of the square. “I haven’t decided.”
“Is that what you’re calling to tell me? That you haven’t decided whether or not you’re ever speaking to me again?”
“Ethan had his chance to explain.” Maya was proud of how cool she sounded. How unaffected. Thank God Lorraine couldn’t see how she shook where she sat. “Of course, some of that was lost in the unfortunate business of canceling our wedding an hour before the ceremony started. I think there was an explanation in there somewhere, but to be honest, it’s a blur. And I’ve known you a whole lot longer.”
Another long pause. The Lorraine Maya knew would have been weeping, because she was always weeping. Anything she felt, she cried out in great sobs, tears tracking down her cheeks in rivers.
But maybe all of that had been an act. It was entirely possible she’d never known Lorraine at all.
“We didn’t mean to hurt you,” Lorraine said, just when Maya was starting to think she wouldn’t say anything else.
“But you see, you must have meant to hurt me,” Maya said. Softly. Very, very softly, the words were coming out of her, though she had no idea where she was going—which was counter to everything she had ever learned about the art of argument in law school. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Because if you didn’t want to hurt me, you wouldn’t have. It’s that simple.”
“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t...”
Maya waited. But it didn’t seem as if Lorraine was going to speak again. Or maybe she was fighting the same wallop of regret and self-recrimination, guilt and fury, that Maya was.
She could feel that stinging at the back of her throat again, like a scream that had nowhere to go. And then something far bigger than a scream rolled into her. Through her. A grief so big and wide and impossible that she wondered it didn’t tear her apart where she sat.
The rain started then, little drops that felt like a tickle, but she didn’t move.
She remembered their first day at university. When all the hubbub had subsided, they were left alone in the room they were expected to share for a year. Maya could see Lorraine as she’d been back then as if she was standing before her all over again. Lorraine had been almost gangly then, though Maya could see that only when she looked at old pictures. At the time she’d thought Lorraine was
