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They’d given up explaining to people they weren’t together. That they were simply friends. People always took what they wanted away from the situation anyway, so why waste their breaths?
Oh, she still was still adamant about it. But lately, the protests had much less weight behind them. She’s found herself wondering lately, if she should look at settling down, find a guy and start a family. She supposes watching Ryan and Jenny together has made her nostalgic. She thought maybe in the beginning, that Josh was the one, but there was always something missing from their relationship, the spark she’d always read about in story books.
It was something she’d thought about when she was younger, that fairytale life young girls always seem to dream about. Her mothers’ murder had ripped those dreams apart. Her life became about simply existing. Surviving just enough to find her mother’s killer, surviving enough to not let her father fall down the drunken rabbit hole.
But now? Seeing her partner interact with his daughter, makes her want that life. She finds herself wondering what it would be like to go home to family, to have someone call her mom, to lose herself in another person. She always thought it was unattainable, always thought she’d become broken, a shell of her younger self. And maybe that was once true.
But now she had her partner to thank. He’d brought the light back into her life, by sharing his too-smart daughter, by regaling her in the antics of his mother.
His latest scheme was more on his mother’s part, an invite to watch her latest show. He’d planned the entire evening, jazzed up yet not so gaudy that she’d hate it. She forgets that he grew up in this life, full of actors and showbiz, full of snobbery but also down-to-earth actors. Between his mothers’ and his connections, she is able to meet a few of the stars, ones that gushed over his books and her detective work.
When one comments how good they look together, she simply smiles. For this moment, they can be. She’s not going to ruin the evening by protesting technicalities. They certainly look it.
And it’s on the ride home that she lets herself dream again.