My eyes were puffy because Tyra and Lanie had come over with dinner last night to join Elvira and me and they’d stayed awhile. They’d been sweet and supportive in a genuine way that I regrettably had little experience with, which was also why I didn’t quite trust it.

Still, I’d given it to them. Everything.

Althea dying.

Aaron asking me out in high school, and since he was rich, cute, and a good football player, my acceptance, catapulting me into the popular kids, a place where I’d never really felt comfortable, but I’d stayed.

Mom dying.

The gossip that said Aaron had had sex with my supposed best friend Marley when we were juniors, doing this because I wouldn’t put out. But he’d stuck with me for some reason, even though I didn’t put out until the day before he took off to Massachusetts to go to college.

I also shared I ignored that gossip.

And I told them that, when he was still in the dorms his freshman year and I’d gone to visit, I’d overheard his friends snickering about a girl named Katie and how they had a plan to keep her away from Aaron while I visited.

I shared that I ignored that as well.

I also told them about Aaron saying he couldn’t live without me our first summer back, so against my father’s wishes, I quit UC, moved to Cambridge, got a job at The Gap and an apartment with four other girls. I tried to get into a school out there, but between struggling to pay rent and Aaron, I didn’t succeed.

I further told them about the time when Aaron was in graduate school and he broke up with me for three months and dated a fellow student.

I then shared that he’d come back on bended knee, ring and everything, and we’d gotten married in a huge wedding that Aaron’s mother decreed we must have that my father paid for but clearly didn’t enjoy. And this was not because he was giving away his little girl but because he wasn’t a big fan of who he was giving her to. Then I’d gone back to my job, now manager of The Gap, while Aaron finished law school.

And I’d shared we’d moved home after he graduated, home being a house that was waiting for us to move in to, seeing as his parents had given it to us for our wedding.