Eternally Yours by Cynthia O'Malley

Author:Cynthia O'Malley [O'Malley, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Published: 2020-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6: September

“So of course, I had to eat the whole thing!” Gabe finished his story as everyone at the table laughed (some groaning at the same time). Liz grabbed another tortilla chip and scooped up the last of the guacamole. They’d gathered for Mexican food to celebrate Gabe’s birthday, and just as she put that last chip in her mouth, she saw the wait staff coming out with desserts. Fried ice cream with candles for Gabe, of course, and everyone chimed in singing Happy Birthday. Luc and Ollie had a contest to see who could sing it the loudest, and Liz felt her heart thump a little when Andrea started offering breath control tips to Lucas. After all the desserts had been delivered and Gabe blew out his candles, Andrea asked, “So, if it’s okay to ask, Gabe, which birthday is this? Are we celebrating a milestone today?”

“Well, I don’t know, is forty-three a milestone? I don’t even think forty-five is, really.”

Liz nodded. “I didn’t count thirty-five as a milestone, so why would forty-five be? Forty was a kind of important one, though, and this year’s turning out pretty good for me.” She smiled at Andrea and was rewarded with a squeeze on her thigh. “How about you? March nineteenth, right? Are you looking forward to the big quarter-century marker?”

Andrea raised her eyebrows comically high. She glanced around the table quickly and then back to Liz, somehow looking sheepish and amused at the same time. “Um, I’ll be twenty-four in March, not twenty-five.”

Oh. Now it was Liz’s turn to be surprised. She stammered in response. “I’m not sure where I got the idea you were already twenty-four. Sorry, am I an awful girlfriend for not knowing your correct age?”

“No! Of course not!” Andrea leaned over to punctuate her reassuring words with a kiss. “Besides,” she grinned, “I’d be an awful girlfriend if I held forgetfulness against you at your age.”

Liz’s jaw dropped in mock indignation. “You are so mean!”

They all laughed together and Gabe chimed in, “You should’ve known you’d get backtalk when you decided to rob the cradle.”

Andrea raised her nearly-empty sangria glass and protested over the laughter, “Why is it always blamed on the older person? Maybe I’m robbing the grave? You ever think of that?”

The laughter paused, then burst out again as Liz leaned against her in the booth and whispered quietly, “That’s exactly why I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

* * * *

Andrea kept having moments of déjà vu, and couldn’t help noticing it happened more frequently around Liz than it ever had before. Some little part of her mind whispered that maybe she’d known Liz in a past life. Maybe they’d been best friends in the 50s and gone to sock hops together, or maybe they’d been hopelessly in love in the 1800s and one of them died in a war or something. She sometimes got a little lost in those ideas, even almost mentioning it out loud once, but Lucas interrupted to suggest a board game and she put it out of her mind again.

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