Forever Never

“So, you and Brick,” Audrey said, wrapping her hands around the Michigan: The one that looks like a mitten, you moron mug.

Remi glanced her way as she poured her own cup. “Yeah. Me and Brick. After you and Brick.” She fished out the creamer he’d stocked for her and poured generously.

There was a long silence.

“This is weird,” Audrey confessed. “And I feel like he’s just lurking in the hall, waiting to see if he needs to call for back-up.”

“Poor guy. Want to go into the studio? We can crank the music and scare him even more.”

“Good plan.”

Remi led the way, waving to Brick, who was indeed standing in the hallway looking a little nauseated and a lot scared.

“He should have told you,” Remi said, closing the door. “I should have told you.”

Audrey shook her head, making her tiny earrings jingle. “Neither of you owes me anything,” she insisted, perching on a tall stool. “In fact, if there’s any apologizing to be done, it should be me.”

“You? Why?” Remi asked.

Audrey adjusted her glasses, a gesture that brought Remi right back to high school. “I wanted what you had. And when Brick started paying attention to me, I felt like it was my chance to finally be the special one.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Remi said, hopping up on a paint-splattered work table, letting her feet dangle.

“You were always the bright light. The one everyone was interested in.”

“I was a walking disaster. To this day, people still expect me to shoplift candy bars or jump off the roof of the fudge shop.”

“You were interesting,” Audrey pressed.

Remi was getting real sick and tired of other women telling her how “interesting” she was.

“I just did what I wanted to do. Without thinking about consequences. It’s not exactly admirable,” she pointed out. Consequences, it turned out, were a vital part of the equation when it came to decision-making.

“You might not think so, but to those of us who are a little less brave, it is. You didn’t bend to meet anyone else’s expectations. You were you, and that was enough. Maybe the rest of us wanted to be like you. I knew how you felt about Brick, and when I had the chance, I took it.”

“That’s between you two,” Remi said, shifting uncomfortably. “Your relationship has nothing to do with me.”

Audrey sighed heavily. “It had everything to do with you. From beginning to end. I thought what you thought, that he didn’t see you. That he didn’t feel that way about you. So when he started paying attention to me…” She shrugged. “It was almost intoxicating. I was fresh out of college and had no idea what I wanted to do yet and he was just so…”

“Brick,” Remi said, understanding completely.

Audrey nodded. “Exactly. I felt special. I felt like I’d won the prize. Like I’d been named Homecoming Queen.”

“Uh, you were named Homecoming Queen,” Remi pointed out.

“Yeah, because you refused to accept the nomination. That’s not a real win.”

Remi took a swallow of hot coffee and sat with what Audrey was saying.

“When you were off-island, it was different. Brick saw me, and I saw him,” Audrey continued.

“You don’t have to explain,” Remi reminded her. “You don’t owe me anything. And who wouldn’t fall in love with the man who just walked past the door twice trying to figure out what we’re talking about?”

“I spent so much time in my teenage years wanting to be you that when the chance arose, when Brick asked me out that first time, I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I jumped at it. And I did that without wondering if my feelings for him were real or if I just wanted him because you wanted him.”

“You loved him. You still love him,” Remi pointed out.

“He’s a hard man not to love. But it was never right between us. We were never right. Neither was cutting you out of my life. You came home after art school with all your big dreams and a job offer for a gallery in a city I’ve never been to. And I had no plans. I’d gotten my accounting degree that my parents insisted on and was no closer to figuring out what I wanted than when I was sixteen.”

“I never meant to make you feel like you weren’t enough or didn’t have enough,” Remi said.

“I know you didn’t. You loved me for who I was. The woman I couldn’t see because I was too busy comparing myself to you and everyone else.”

“You invited me to the wedding, and I didn’t go.”

“I didn’t even tell you we were dating until we’d gotten engaged,” Audrey countered. “That’s when it started to gel for me. I realized I wasn’t in this for the right reasons. I wasn’t putting on that white poufy dress for Brick and me. I was doing it to prove I was the special one. That I’d earned something you hadn’t.”

Remi said nothing.

“Then I realized something even worse.”

Remi wrinkled her nose. “What?”

Audrey’s smile was sad. “He loved you. He’d always loved you. He’d already given his heart to you. I never had a chance. And to be honest, he never had a fair chance with me either.”

“Maybe this is a conversation you should be having with him,” Remi suggested.

“We’ve had it. At least parts of it. I left out the petty parts that made me look bad. But you deserve to know. He was a great husband. He was attentive. He did my laundry. He never complained about my taste in movies.”

“You do have horrible taste,” Remi agreed.

Audrey grinned. “He’d take me out on date nights and buy me flowers. But it was your name he whispered in his sleep.”

Remi looked down at the freckles of paint, the mess she’d made. “I’m so sorry.”

“I put myself in that position. And I’ll be honest. I doubled down. I tried for a while to be better than you. To make him forget about you. But it was never going to happen. Especially not with me pretending to be someone I wasn’t.”

“So you felt like you had to leave Mackinac?”

Audrey shook her head. “I set us free. I started interviewing for jobs on the mainland, and when I got one at a design firm, I took it without even talking to him. Sure, we went through the motions of discussing whether I’d commute or he’d move with me. But we both knew it was the end.”

Remi blew out a breath. “How are you now?”

Audrey shrugged, then grinned. “I’m happy. I love my job. I work with interesting people. I date men who have never met you.”

Remi winced. “Mean.”

Audrey flashed her a wink. “The thing I need you to know is I was a jealous, petty, shitty friend, Rem. You never did anything that deserved that, and I still made it my mission to beat you instead of love you. That kind of jealousy made me a worse person, and I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to apologize.”

“I’m sorry I made your life difficult,” Remi said.

“I made my life difficult,” Audrey corrected. “You didn’t put me in your shadow. The sun was shining just as brightly on me. I just didn’t notice it. It took all that for me to find the right path, my own path, to realize I was already standing in the sun.”

Remi blew out a breath. “You know, I never felt special. I felt different.”

“Girl, that’s what special is.”

“Well, I ran away from it. I ran away from who I was and tried to be someone else.”

“It looks like you found your way back,” Audrey observed.

“I guess I did.”

“Now, as the lovable ex-wife, I need you to hear this. Don’t play with him, Rem. He’s been waiting so long for you. If you’re not all the way in, if you’re just going to pick up and move on when the wind blows, do him a favor and walk now.”

“Things are…complicated right now,” Remi admitted. “We haven’t talked about the future.”

“Well, you should at least be thinking about it. Don’t hurt him if you can help it. He’s one of a kind, and I really don’t want to dislike you for something real.”

“Message received,” Remi said, feeling just a little unsteady. She caught a glimpse of Brick’s face at the window again and fell just a little harder in love. “So what are you doing here?”

“My brother told me you and Brick finally hooked up. I figured it was time for me to do some apologizing.”

“And scare the hell out of Brick? I’ve never seen him that pale before.”

Audrey’s grin was sharp. “His face when he opened the door looked like he’d just stepped on a trapdoor. He’s probably out there wearing tracks in the hardwood as we speak.”