Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Fiona

It had taken three days, but Fiona was done crying.

She was done making excuses—for others and for herself.

She was done trying to be a tougher version of herself. Really, one Fallon in the family was enough. Plus, that asshole Dixon was right about one thing—she sucked at trying to be anyone other than Fiona Muriel Hartigan.

Dry-eyed and, fine, with a nose that was dried out and red from all the Kleenexes she’d used over the past three days since that awful last date with Dixon, she looked over at the worried faces of Faith and Hadley and smiled. “The big jerk was right.”

Faith rolled her eyes while Hadley uttered a single word. “Bullshit.”

“No, he was. Today I spent my lunch in the kindergarten class for story time because Alyssa’s paraprofessional had a doctor’s appointment. She was reading them a story about the importance of being happy with you. I sat in the back of that room, and I started crying because I was Benny the Blue Button.”

Hadley did her Hadley thing where she just sat and waited and gave Fiona that look that usually led to Fiona spilling every secret she’d ever had.

Faith—the Hartigan that she was—didn’t have that ability. “I’m not sure I want to know the answer to this, but how are you like a button?”

“Like Benny, I was scared to trust myself, to listen to my instincts. I kept trying to be the person I thought I should be instead of myself.” She let out a shaky breath. “Dixon’s a dick, but he never lied to me—but I sure lied to him. And when I agreed to be his date for that stupid bet, I should have been up front about wanting a favor for Nana. Instead, I was too obsessed with pretending to be Fallon or someone who hated dogs or who didn’t tip because I thought being a new Fiona was more important than being true to myself. It was the worst thing that I let Cheating Chad the Assbag do to me. I let him make me doubt myself and think that every person out there was just like him so I might as well be, too.”

The realization during story time had burned, like having an internal flame thrower shoot from her shoulders all the way down to her toes. When it came to her friends or her family, she had great instincts about what shenanigans they were getting into. When Hadley had come back from her sister’s wedding, Fiona had known right down in her belly that it was going to work out with Will. The two were meant to be together; it was just so obvious.

And when it came to her own non-romantic relationships? Sure, she had some misfires and trusted the wrong people occasionally—who in the hell didn’t?—but for the most part, her gut feelings were spot-on. It’s why she had asked Hadley in the first place to help her get an appointment with Beckett Cosmetics. She believed in Nana’s skincare line, she’d seen how happy the other retirees in her active living neighborhood were with it, and she knew potential when she saw it. God knows she saw it every day in each one of her students.

Reaching up, she stroked the gold heart, not because Dixon had fixed the clasp but because when her mentor had given it to her, she’d told Fiona that the most important thing was seeing with her heart. As long as she did that, everything else would fall into place.

“The truth of it is, I fucked this up with Dixon. He reacted like a third grader kicking a chair in misplaced anger at the theater, lashing out with all that hurt, but that’s what internalized trauma can do to a person.” She held up her hand when Faith looked like she was ready to throw down. “I know, he was a total dick, and I’m not excusing it. I guess I’m just saying that in a way, I can understand it.”

“Yeah, whatever, he’s a rich jerk,” Faith grumbled. “How hard could his life be?”

“We all carry weights no one else sees.” If teaching had taught her anything, it was that every student who walked into her classroom came in each day fighting a battle. The adults out in the world weren’t any different.

Hadley gave her a quick shoulder-squeeze hug. “That sounds like Old Fiona.”

“Right.” She let out a deep breath, at peace for the first time in practically forever with exactly who she was. “It’s who I am. I give second chances. I offer loans to people who I probably shouldn’t. I trust and sometimes end up burned, but that’s okay. I’d rather be me than anyone else. And now, if I can ever manage to put myself out there in the dating pool again, I won’t be dragging all my self-doubts about who I am with me into a relationship. I’m just gonna be me.”

It wasn’t exactly what Dixon had been saying when he said she went to bat for others but not herself, but it’s the lesson she was taking from Benny the Blue Button because it applied. Life was hard; a person had to be kind to themselves.

“So how can we help?” Hadley asked.

“I can give Frankie and Finn his address so they can go pay a visit,” Faith suggested.

“Not Ford?” Hadley asked.

Fiona and Faith looked at each other and burst out in laughter again, sinking back against the couch. They’d shared a womb with him and knew him better than anyone with the exception of maybe his wife, Gina. While Ford would move heaven and earth for those he loved, he was a cop and wasn’t going to break the rules for anyone. Well, maybe he had for Gina—at least a few regulations; no one had been able to confirm it—but he wasn’t going to cross the harbor to beat up a billionaire.

“Oh, God no,” Faith said. “Our brother would turn himself in on the way there.”

Fiona nodded in agreement. “Thank you, but no. Please no. Dixon won his bet. He got what he wanted. Now I have, too—he’s out of my life forever.” She took a drink of the cheap wine and let it coat her tongue with the acidic aftertaste. “I learned a painful lesson, but believe me, it’s sunk in. I’ll never make that mistake again. But I’m gonna be okay, just me as me.”

Hadley launched herself off the coffee table at the same time as Faith leaned in and pulled her sister into a side hug. Hadley squeezed into the space between Fiona and the couch’s side, wrapping her arms around her best friend in a bear hug that just might dislocate a rib. Part of Fiona wished she didn’t need it, but the truth was she did. She was a soft-hearted, glass-half-full kind of woman, and in truth, she never wanted to change that. She was a sap, and she was okay with that.

“I just feel bad about Nana,” Fiona said once the hug broke up. “This whole thing was supposed to be about making her dreams come true, and I fucked that up by falling in love.”

Faith landed a sisterly jab in Fiona’s ribs. “Nana is going to be more worried about you than her skincare line.”

“We all are,” Hadley said, putting her feet up on the coffee table next to Fiona’s and Faith’s.

“I’m gonna be okay,” she said, resting her head on Hadley’s shoulder. “I mean I wasn’t, but things look different today.”

“That’s what happens when you’re out of raw cookie dough,” Faith said, sounding a lot like their sister Fallon in nurse mode. “Your gastrointestinal system stops sending out SOS signal flares.”

As if. Fiona side-eyed her sister, who was so wrong, she was almost right. “Cookie dough has never done me wrong.”

“Unlike that asshole Dixon Beckett,” Hadley grumbled.

“Well, he’s gone for good.” They all clinked juice glasses to that. “There’s no way in hell I’ll ever see that man again. It’s not like our worlds are even remotely the same. I’m not gonna run into him at Trader Joe’s getting Everything But The Bagel seasoning.”

And if she did see Murphy parked outside in the pickup area, she would definitely be taking her weekly shopping elsewhere. Even though she’d be curious. Even though she was still so pissed at him, she wanted to scream right in his face. And then hear him apologize, preferably from down on his knees. Then they could kiss and he’d scoop her up and carry her out to the car and he’d keep kissing her all the way back to her apartment—possibly scandalizing Murphy, but she doubted it; that man was made of stern stuff. Eventually, they’d get back to her bed and they wouldn’t come out for days.

It was a pretty fantasy. One she wanted so desperately to come true that she could practically will it into existence. If only.

“Are you okay with never seeing him again?” Hadley asked.

Fiona nodded. “One hundred and eighty billion percent.”

Yeah. She was definitely the liar this time.