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Phil left the bar angry and embarrassed by Vili’s treatment. She felt like that had been her default emotion for far too much of the last eighteen months. Finding out people you trusted, who you thought had your back, thought so lowly of you was tough on the self image.
Phil rapped loudly on Maeve’s door, pushing through her uncertainty about her welcome. She really should have stayed here instead of going along to the engagement party. She still wasn’t entirely sure where she stood with Maeve. She’d promised Gia she’d be there for Maeve, and she had been. Hell, she’d promised Drew she would, in the only non work related conversation they’d had before he’d packed up the kids and left town. She and Maeve had fallen back into their easy friendship. Phil had made sure she was around whenever Maeve might need her, as a sounding board, a distraction, someone to do chores with, eat meals with, bitch about work with, or just sit quietly after group therapy sessions or lawyer sessions or financial adviser sessions. Phil admired the work Maeve had been putting into getting her life back on track. Drunk Maeve had been entertaining and mischievous, at least initially, but sober Maeve was bright and kind and thoughtful. Phil knew only too well that she still struggled, was picking her way past dark times and urges, but there was a lightness to her on occasions now that Phil was glad to see, not the manic energy she’d displayed last September, but a calmer, more grounded gladness to still be in the world.
Now Maeve unlocked the door, greeting Phil’s pouting with understanding before pulling her towards the TV, her enthusiasm for the horror movie she was watching was infectious. As they settled on the couch shoulder to shoulder, Phil let herself relax. This, between them, might be undefined and best left so for the meantime, but it still felt better than the dumb decisions she’d been making at the end of last year. Including shagging Hendrix (that had been in such bad taste, as well as stupid to believe him when he’d said he and Poppy were over, she’d have been so much better off if she’d gone into town and picked up a random stranger). Of course the judgemental Shortland Street gossip mill was more inclined to apportion blame to her than to the actual cheating party, at least until he’d turned out to also be a murderous one. And kissing Drew, what had she been thinking with that? Not her finest moment to be sure. She’d been so desperate for some kind of resolution between them, that’d she’d let herself get caught up in whatever he’d been imagining. It’d would have been a disaster if it went further and she didn’t need Vili to tell her so.
She shuddered at the mayhem on the screen, and checked in with Maeve. “Is this helping?” Maeve put her arm around Phil and affirmed that it was. Phil could live with that. Wasn’t the first year of sobriety supposed to be accompanied by no new relationships? Where their previous fling - more fuck buddies than anything serious, no matter how Phil might have hoped for more at the time - sat in relation to that Phil did not know, but she could see how it would be good for Maeve to not deal with relationship drama on top of everything else, after all she was still processing the breakdown of her marriage. She knew she herself had ended up being celibate for large parts of last year, after Harper. Not completely, but she’d just been so much less interested in relationships or casual sex than had been her norm previously. Time, Maeve needed time and Phil would give it to her, and be the best friend she could be in the meantime, even if Vili would always be convinced all her friendships had ulterior motives. What did he know anyway.