“Just, set it down on the bed and slowly walk away. You’re not trained in the ways of the Force.” He put his hands up and approached me slowly. I just laughed at him, but figured I’d played the joke out long enough. I set the lightsaber down and backed away from it. Will dived toward the bed and picked it up in both hands, muttering the whole time.
“Are you talking to it?” I said, knowing the answer.
“Shhh,” he said, stroking the handle of the lightsaber before he laid it back in the box and slowly, oh, so slowly, put the lid back on.
This was going to be fun.
“So do you want to do it before we eat, or after?” Will said as we pulled up at Bea’s. We’d all decided to take our own cars, since we were all coming from different places.
“I don’t know. I can’t think about it right now.” I kept twisting and untwisting my hands and I knew I was playing with my hair as well. I didn’t know why I was so nervous about my friends finding out about Emily. They’d be just as cool about it as Will had been, but it still freaked me out.
It wasn’t every day that you told your friends you had a secret daughter they didn’t know about.
“It’s going to be fine. I swear.” Will gave me a kiss on the cheek and then came to open my door. I was wearing the necklace he gave me, and I’d thought about wearing the roller skates, but Will had shot down that idea.
“It’s going to be good. We’ll have pie, you’ll tell them, they’ll be fine with it, we’ll have more pie. News always goes better with pie,” Will said.
“Everything goes better with pie.”
“Truth.”
We were the first to arrive at Bea’s and she had already pushed several of her tables together to accommodate our group. At least it wasn’t busy, with only two other people, each at their own table.
“Well, hello there Will. Nice to see you again. And Audrey. I’m so glad you’re back.” She showed us to our table and we sat down and waited for the rest of the gang. Stryker and Katie were next, followed by Lottie and Zan, Trish and Max and finally Simon and Brady, who both looked disheveled. Again.
Everyone definitely had a good sex glow going on, and I wondered if I did too. Smiles were on every face, including Trish’s, which was something.
“So how did everyone’s day go?” Lottie said, practically sitting in Zan’s lap.
We all mumbled and then laughed in unison.
“So everyone got some?” Lottie said again.
“Yes” and “hell yes!” sounded around the table.
“Good. Then a Happy Valentine’s Day was had by all.” Bea came over then and handed out menus. I already knew what I wanted, but I looked anyway.
“And today we have a special after Valentine’s Day deal of buy one piece of pie and get a second for your lover for free.” She winked when she said “lover.” There was a ring on Bea’s finger, and she’d talked about her husband before, so I hoped her Valentine’s Day had been good as well, even though she’d been working.
“Free pie is the best kind of pie,” Will said. “Isn’t it?” He reached his hand under the table and squeezed my leg. “Do you want to do it now?” he said in my ear.
“I don’t know. Is it a good time?”
“What are you whispering about?” Katie called across the table at normal volume.
Great.
“We were just talking about the amazing sex we had this morning,” Will said, making Lottie stick her hands over her ears and start singing.
“No, we weren’t. I, um, I have something to tell . . . everyone. As you might know, I’ve had a little bit of a secret and I finally told Will, and I’m ready to tell you now. Okay. This is the third time I’ve told this and it hasn’t gotten any easier.”
Will put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder.
“You can do it. They won’t care.”
I wasn’t sure about that, but I was going to do this anyway.
“Okay, so I guess I should start at the beginning. Remember that guy I ran into at the frat party a few weeks ago? Eddie? And how I didn’t seem to want to talk to him? Well, that’s because in high school we had one drunken night which led to me getting pregnant. I ended up having the baby, a girl named Emily, and my aunt took custody of her. She needs a bone marrow transplant and I had to tell Eddie about her because no one in my family was a match. But he is a match and everything’s going to be okay.” It was a little more smooth than when I’d told Will, but I definitely still needed to work on my delivery.
Silence greeted the end of my speech. I risked a look around and all I saw were open mouths and shocked expressions.
You could have heard a mouse thinking. Bea came back over.
“Is everyone ready to order?”
32
I’d thought Aud would work on a better way to say it, but there didn’t seem to be one except getting it all out at once. I knew a little about that.
“Okay, I’m no mind reader, but it seems like you’re going to need a minute. I’ll be back,” Bea said, smiling and then going back to the kitchen.
“Sooo, yeah. Happy Valentine’s Hangover Day,” Audrey said, smiling.
“Wait. Hold on a second,” Lottie said. Of course she was the first one to break the silence. “You have a daughter? Like, as in a baby? A human that you gave birth to?”
“Yes. But she lives with my aunt. I don’t have custody. Her name’s Emily. She’s sixteen months old. I have a picture if anyone wants to see.”
“Show me, show me!” Lottie clapped her hands together and Audrey got the picture of Emily out of her wallet, where it now lived.
The picture was passed around and everyone else thawed from their frozen shock.
“That was not what I was expecting,” Simon said. “Not even close.”
“That is some impressive secret-keeping, Aud,” Stryker said, passing the picture of Emily to Katie, who squealed over it.
“I guess,” Audrey said, her face turning red. “I’m sorry for lying to you. You’re not mad at me, are you?” Of course she would think that. She tended to see the worst in people as a result of her shitty parents. Man, what I wouldn’t do if I met them. They’d get a piece of my mind and then some.
“Why would we be mad at you?” Lottie said. Exactly.
“Because I kept this huge secret from all of you.”