“Well, let me share something with you, Rebel girl, that’s friend discussion. I’d known that girl for years.”

I tapped my finger on the counter, staring at my empty shot glass.

Rush filled it.

“And from what I could gather with all the discussion tonight, you got yourself messed up in some serious business thinking you’d find her killer,” she stated.

“Listen, Essence—”

“And you didn’t share that with me either.”

I shut up.

Rush slid the shot glass my way.

I wrapped my fingers around it and stared at it.

“You know,” Essence said in my ear, “Diane was a good girl. A sweet girl. I liked her. She was likable. I was heartbroken she lost herself in drugs. I was heartbroken she was gone. I was heartbroken watching how heartbroken you were, she was gone. And I was right next door and you didn’t say bupkus to me.”

“I thought I was Superwoman,” I admitted. “I thought I could handle it.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have been there to handle my heartbreak if you got yourself dead doing some fool amateur detective baloney,” she retorted.

That made me shoot the tequila.

“Listen, Rebel, and listen good,” Essence snapped in my ear. “You suffer from an affliction most the females in America suffer from, though yours seems worse, so it’s essential you learn this from me now. You aren’t Superwoman.”

“I know. I’m getting tha—”

Essence spoke over me.

“They have a baby, in months they fight their way to a size two again so their husband won’t step out on them. Or their girlfriends won’t talk behind their backs. Or whatever fool thing makes them think they can pretend they didn’t give birth to a child. A woman’s body changes when she has a child. I know. I’ve had three. My hips got wider so I could push them out. My boobs got bigger so I could nurture them. It’s as nature intended. It’s the order of things. It’s the way it is so human beings can remain on this earth, for the Goddess’s sake,” she lectured. “And guess what? All curvy, she looks like a woman. What’s wrong with that?”

I had no idea why she was talking about women having babies, but it was clear she was going on a tangent, probably because she was flipped out (my fault), so I had to talk her down and soothe her flip out.

“I know, honey, but—”

My attempt at soothing failed.

She kept talking over me.

“And if a man steps out on her because she’s had his child and lost what he thinks was her figure, good riddance. I mean, if he has that in him, bad choice from the start, but how would she know? But that happens, she’s better off without him because he’s just a plain old asshat.”

She’d get no argument from me on that.

“Right, Essence, but—”

“She gets a job, and she has kids, she busts her hump to be all she can be at work, then at home, and still she’s probably expected to make dinner and buy all the Christmas presents and wrap them. Topping that, she puts up with the judgment of the women who stay at home and raise their kids. If she decides to stay home and look after her children, she feels she has to be Supermom to prove to the women who decided to work that she made the right decision. ‘Look how great I am, I made a birthday cake in the shape of a tyrannosaurus rex and it’s so lifelike.’”

Oh God.

Now she was talking about T-rex cakes.

Before I could slide in there while Essence let out a disgusted snort, she kept right on talking.

“Who cares? All that matters is that it tastes good. Kids care for about two seconds their cake looks like a stupid dinosaur. Then they want to eat it. The woman made that cake to prove to her friends how great a mom she is. She’s a size two and makes a dinosaur cake and that means she’s a great mom? A worthy woman? It’s ludicrous.”

Okay, she’d clearly been wound up about all this on behalf of womankind for a long time.

Still.

“You’re so right. So, right, Ess—”

“You know who doesn’t worry about all that stuff?” she interrupted me to ask.

She didn’t wait for my answer.

“Men!” she exclaimed.

“Right,” I muttered, grabbing my beer, taking a sip and finding Rush’s gaze.

He lifted his brows.

I gave him big eyes.

He turned his head, but I still didn’t miss his smile.

I took another tug of beer so I wouldn’t throw the bottle at him.

I also settled in.

I bought this. I had to take it.

Even Rush’s amusement.

“You know what’s important to a kid?” she asked.

I had a few guesses.

I still said, “What?”

“That they get love and guidance and time. That’s what’s important to a kid. And Rebel, part of that love you give a kid is you teach them how to self-love. You do not run around trying to make everyone else’s life easier and better and just right without looking after yourself. Women find themselves at a time when their kids don’t need them, and working or stay-at-home, they don’t know who the hell they are. They don’t have any clue where the last fifteen years have gone. They’ve been so damned busy trying to prove that they can do it all, they forgot to do one of the most important things in their life. Live it.”

Okay.

I was beginning to see her point.

Suffice it to say, I’d known Essence a long time. I loved her. I admired how she lived her life how she wanted to live it and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. I knew her children. I knew her grandchildren. Only one family lived close, but they all came to visit her as often as they could. They were great, and even though they’d all chosen more conventional paths, they loved her too.

But I’d never realized she was so damned wise.

She kept at me.

“So little boys go on to be like their fathers who’ve had their wives look after them and buy the Christmas presents and wrap them, and those boys grow up and sit back and watch football. And little girls go on to be like their mothers, busting their booties to be everything to everyone and forgetting to look out for themselves. And it’s not their bad. It’s not their wrong. It’s how their mommas showed them how to be.”

“You’re right,” I whispered.

“You cannot be all to everybody, Rebel. You can’t right all the wrongs. You can’t cushion all the blows. You gotta learn to look after you. And I’m seeing you, especially you, have got to learn to do that and you’ve got to learn it now. You put yourself out there for a friend like you have, when you have a man, when you have kids, all the glory of you will fade to dust.”

I was still whispering when I said, “Yeah.”

She was silent a beat and I thought I could get in there and maybe calm her down and wrap this up, but she spoke again.

And I braced when she did because her voice was again gentle.

“Now you need to keep listening to me, Rebel girl, ’cause I’m gonna tell you something you think you know, but it’s clear you don’t. Murdered or not, Diane died of an illness. Addiction is an illness. People do not get that. They can’t see a mutated cell or a lesion or whatever it takes for them to believe, but as sure as cancer, if you don’t fight it, it’ll eat you alive. It ate her alive, darling. And you and her parents tried to fight it, but it was up to her to wage that war and like cancer, like diabetes, there are just some who won’t win. She didn’t win. And that’s not your fault.”

I dropped my head.

God, God.

I should have walked to Essence’s place and unloaded months ago.

God.

I was such an idiot.

I only lifted my head when I felt Rush’s hand curl around the back of my neck.

He was reaching across to me, his beautiful eyes soft and sweet.

“Okay?” he mouthed.

I wasn’t.

But I had a feeling I was getting there.

Essence was helping.

But it was mostly about those beautiful eyes across the counter, soft and sweet on me.

I nodded.

Rush’s hand gave me a squeeze and he let me go.