Chapter Twenty Eight

“W hy would you tell her to leave?” Magda struggled into a sitting position on the couch.

“You’re taking this whole ‘your best friend’s crushing on a woman’ thing pretty well,” Cordelia said.

“Yeah, well, just at the moment I’ve got slightly bigger problems if you haven’t noticed?” Magda grumbled. “Like the fact that I’m quite literally so full of another human being that I might pop at any moment.”

“You can’t go into labor now,” Cordelia grinned. “You don’t like getting your hair wet.” The rain was bouncing off the pavement outside, coating the windows.

“It gets all frizzy,” said Magda. “Now can we go back to the subject at hand?”

“Me being gay or Lydia moving to the Outer Hebrides?”

Magda sighed. “Waymouth isn’t the Outer Hebrides. It’s a two hour drive. Three at most. And you do know that bisexuality is a thing, right?”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know enough to know that you don’t just turn gay because you meet one woman. You’re allowed to like both, it’s a valid choice. You loved Hunter, now you love Lydia, see?”

“No one mentioned love. ”

“Did they not?” Magda asked, shifting position again. “Because I’ve known you a long time, Cordelia Beckett, and I think I’ve got a pretty good read on you. You don’t let just anyone inside that cranky exterior, so if Doctor Lydia has been granted access to the soft interior, something pretty special must be going on.”

Cordelia groaned. “You’re actually making things worse.”

“How?” The wind blew and rain clattered against the window. “You think I’m making things worse because I’m pointing out things that you actually already know but don’t want to admit to yourself. You like Lydia and you like her a lot. There’s nothing shocking in that for me. She’s a nice woman, she’s pretty, she’s great at her job. What’s not to like?”

“My problem isn’t liking her.”

“You deserve someone, Cord. You’ve been alone for a long time now and you’ve been sad for a long time now. Don’t think that I don’t know that.” Magda studied her for a second. “And don’t think that I don’t know that me being pregnant hasn’t helped matters at all.”

“Hey, I’ve been nothing but thrilled for you.”

“I know,” said Magda gently. “But it’s been hard too, and that’s okay. You see something that you think you could have had and you’ve missed out on. That hurts, and it’s okay to hurt. Just like it’s okay to love. Is Lydia good for you?”

Cordelia rolled her eyes but the question echoed in her head. Was Lydia good for her?

For the first time in what felt like years, she woke up in the morning without heaviness in her heart. For the first time in ages she actually wanted to be around someone. Lydia made her smile. With all her irritants and shoulds and everything else, Lydia somehow made her life seem better.

“She is good for you, Cord, I can see that,” said Magda.

“Not everything is black and white,” Cordelia said. “I can like her and not like her at the same time, you know?”

“Sure,” said Magda. “But at some point, one of those sides is going to have to outweigh the other. ”

“Do you want more coffee?” Cordelia asked. “Or some water?” Anything to escape the scrutiny of Magda’s analysis.

“Water, I suppose. Although it’s only going to make me wee again.”

Cordelia went to Magda’s small kitchen.

She was right about this, she knew she was. Or she thought she was. One or the other. She poured water into glasses. How could she stand in Lydia’s way? If Lydia got her dream job, how could Cordelia be the one to stop her taking it? That wasn’t something you did to someone you… liked a lot.

She wasn’t prepared to use the word love, no matter what Magda thought.

“So why did you tell her to take the job then?” asked Magda as Cordelia brought the water back.

So much for hoping that they might discuss something else.

“Listen, there’s not much excitement in my life right now,” said Magda, seeing the look on Cordelia’s face. “I get to lie on the couch and wait to explode. I’m living vicariously through you and your torrid love life.”

“There’s nothing torrid about it.”

“Oh yeah? Because you’re all glowy and that tells me that you’ve been laid in the last week. Sure there’s nothing torrid going on?”

Given the choice between discussing sex with Lydia and Lydia leaving, Cordelia came down very firmly on one side. “This is her dream job, I can’t tell her not to take it.”

“Of course you can’t,” Magda said, reaching for her water. “But you can make your feelings known, let her know that you’re not just sending her away, that her going will impact you. Otherwise she’ll just think that you want her to go.” She sipped some water. “Do you want her to go?”

“No.” She didn’t even think about that.

Magda growled. “Then why are you being so stubborn?”

“Because I won’t be left again.” There. The words were out there. She’d said them and they sounded just as stupid as they sounded in her head .

Magda looked at her with wide, sad eyes. “Fucking Hunter.”

“What does he have to do with anything?”

“He broke your heart, that’s what he has to do with it. He broke you and left you scarred and scared and now you’re letting him ruin this nice new thing that you’re building.”

“He has nothing to do with this.”

“You’re so afraid that Lydia might choose to leave you, that you might have to feel the way you felt after Hunter, that you’re willing to tell her to go just so that you get to make the decision this time. That’s fucked up, Cord.”

Cordelia breathed. “It’s not like that.” It was very much like that.

“What does Lydia want?” asked Magda.

“She wants the job, obviously. It’s what she’s always wanted, it’s the perfect position, it’s what she’s worked so hard for.”

“I wasn’t asking about her career plans.”

Cordelia bit her lip. “She wants to work on this long distance.”

“So she doesn’t want to break up at all?”

“Does it matter?” asked Cordelia. “It won’t work. Nothing that far apart can work. Not when we barely know each other.”

“You barely know each other yet you already have feelings for her,” said Magda. “You apparently know her well enough to start making career decisions for her.”

Cordelia put her glass down. “I came here for a little support, you know?”

“You’re being stupid. Why would I support you in being stupid? I’m your best friend in the whole wide world and I love you to bits. But I’m not going to sit around and let you be a martyr to yourself and the stupid hurt that Hunter left you with.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“How can I ask her to stay? How can I interfere at all? I like her, Magda. I like her a lot. So how can I put her in a position where she has to choose between her dream job and me? That’s a terrible thing to do to someone. It’s just putting all the responsibility on her.”

“Except that’s not the problem, is it?” Magda asked quietly.

Cordelia was silent, the rain pattering on the glass, her feelings roiling inside her. Finally she shook her head and looked at Magda. “What if she doesn’t choose me?”

Magda leaned forward, grimacing at the ungainliness of it, but getting close enough to take Cordelia’s hand. “That’s the risk you’ve got to take, isn’t it? But that’s the risk we’ve all got to take in everything we do. Protecting yourself is all very well, and it’s important. At some point though, you need to lower the gates enough that someone can get in. If you don’t, you have to stay all alone in your castle, watching everyone else live the life you could have. Is that what you want, Cord?”

Cordelia could feel tears prickling in her eyes and she refused to cry. She blinked rapidly, sniffed, and pulled her hand away from Magda’s. “You’re sitting here brewing a human and here I come whining about my silly problems,” she said.

“They’re not silly.” Magda leaned back again, her bulk sinking into the couch cushions. “But I’ll tell you something for nothing, this part of the process isn’t anywhere near as fun as the beginning part.”

“I don’t need to hear about you and Oliver making the two-backed beast, thank you very much. Where is he anyway?”

“Business trip,” said Magda. “But he’s on constant alert and can be here within thirty minutes, so no need to worry.”

“Mmmm. I worry anyway.”

“I’ve got at least three weeks yet,” Magda said. “And everyone always says that first babies are late.”

“First implies there will be others.”

“Yeah, well, let’s see how this one goes first, shall we? I wouldn’t mind a biscuit if you’re getting up.”

Cordelia hadn’t been getting up, but she did now anyway and went through into the kitchen to fetch the biscuit tin.

What was she doing?

What Magda said sounded right, sounded logical and sensible. Yet Cordelia didn’t think she could do anything about it .

The truth was that Lydia had made decisions long before they’d met. And those decisions culminated in a job like the one she had just got. Years and years of sacrifice and hard work came down to one prize, and Lydia had won it.

So how could Cordelia say anything but go?

Long distance was all very well, but Cordelia knew herself. She knew that she’d only just got to the point where she could have someone in her life, someone in her house. She didn’t think she could handle more than that.

She didn’t think she could handle the long times alone where all she’d have was the voice in her head telling her that this could never work out, that Lydia couldn’t feel the same, that Lydia would leave at the first chance she had.

So the only decent option, the only right thing to do, was to tell Lydia to take the job and leave.

“Are you eating all the biscuits in there? Because I’m too fat to do anything about it if you are.”

Cordelia sighed, picked up the tin, and went back to Magda.