Twenty-One
Everyone settled into different spots around the living room, with Jake and Ally sitting in adjacent chairs at the table. When James moved to join them, Mandy snagged his belt loop and shook her head.
“Why don’t you stay over here with me?”
The look on James’ face was a mixture of irritation and resignation. “I can’t even sit at my own table?”
Mandy pressed her lips together, her eyes glinting. “Don’t you want to be close to me?” She batted her eyelashes coquettishly. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
“How?”
Mandy leaned in, whispering so only he could hear.
“You have an absolutely filthy mind,” he said. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“Get us some pizza.”
After everyone was seated and eating, Mandy asked about their day.
“We took a load of stuff out there,” James said. “It just doesn’t seem like enough.”
“Well, what else can we do?”
James shifted his gaze to the table where Ally and Jake were chatting amiably. “Jake says that I’m looking too hard to fix things that I can’t fix.”
“Maybe you don’t have to fix things,” Mandy suggested. “Maybe you just need to make them better.”
“And how do I do that?”
“We’re going to figure out something,” Grady said from his spot on the floor. “I can’t just sit here and ignore it either.”
“It made me really sad,” Finn said. “It was like … .”
“Like you were guilty because you somehow escaped that happening to you,” James finished for him. “I know.”
“You shouldn’t be guilty,” Mandy protested. “You can’t wish worse upon yourself to lift others up.”
James knocked his head against hers lightly. “I know. You just don’t understand what it was like out there.”
“I understand wanting to change things,” Mandy said. “We can still change things. We may not be able to make them perfect – but we can change them.”
“You know, sometimes I think you’re an optimist and sometimes I think you’re a pessimist,” James said. “I can’t decide which one you really are.”
“She’s an optimist with a pessimistic streak,” Ally informed him. “She’s got both tendencies – just like you.”
James leaned back on the couch so he could see his sister’s face. “You have an answer for everything.”
“I’m one of the great thinkers of our time,” Ally agreed, winking. “That’s why you always come to me for sage advice.”
“Do you actually think your advice is sage?”
“Who fixed you and Mandy when she went off the deep end?”
“I said we’re not talking about that anymore,” James said. “She feels bad enough. We’re now referring to it as the misunderstanding, and calling it a day. I don’t think making fun of her because she was hopped up on medication and recovering from being blown across a parking lot is exactly fair.”
“We’re calling it the misunderstanding now?” Grady asked. “Is this like us calling what you did to her after that first night the incident?”
“Pretty much.”
Mandy was busily studying her empty plate. The shame she felt for her meltdown was profound. She’d never thought of herself as the kind of woman who had low self-esteem when it came to her romantic entanglements. She still wasn’t quite sure how she’d fallen so far off the wagon.
James slapped another slice of pizza onto her plate. “Don’t let it get to you, baby,” James said. “Ally is just trying to irritate me. She doesn’t care that she’s hurting you in the process.”
Ally’s mouth dropped open. “I’m not hurting her.”
“Take a look, Ally,” James said, his tone chilly. “Does she look happy to you?”
Ally searched her friend’s face. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Mandy said, avoiding the pointed gazes in the room. “I’m the one who had the meltdown.”
“I’m fairly certain we had the meltdown together,” James countered. “I don’t want to dwell on it. It was eighteen hours of horror, and we’ve put it behind us. Ally needs to stop bringing it up. I think that would make us all feel better.”
“I was just teasing her.”
“So, let me get this straight,” James said. “Your best friend was almost killed in an explosion. She could barely walk. Her body was a walking bruise. She was on medication that alternately made her sleepy and sick to her stomach, so she wasn’t eating. She had a few rough days, which I wasn’t exactly helpful with because I was doing every wrong thing I could possibly think of in an attempt to do everything right. And you think, given all of that, making fun of her is the best way to go?”