Chapter 8
Two days later, Amanda and Kim are talking to Lena about her past. Kim is happy that her boyfriend is back home with her. The girls are having coffee at Amanda's apartment. Lena says that she might go back to her old apartment to relive memories.
"So, Kim, are you happy that your boyfriend's back home?" Lena asks.
"Yeah, I missed him so much." Kim replies.
Kim is no longer eating her feelings since her boyfriend is back in New York. She says that she was hoping that he would come home safely. Amanda is looking at a party planning book. Lena asks if Amanda's still planning her wedding and she says that the wedding planning is done.
"We're actually going to plan my dad's birthday." Amanda says.
"That sounds like fun. Is he like my dad?" Lena asks.
"No, he's a good man and he owns an Italian restaurant." Kim replies.
A few minutes later, the girls go to the Italian restaurant and they plan for Tony Rollins' birthday. They make arrangements to have the food ordered and the place decorated for a party. They get a cake that says 'Happy birthday!' and then they leave the restaurant.
"You should meet my dad. We told him about you." Amanda says.
"Okay." Lena says.
The girls return to Amanda's apartment and they have iced tea. They sit at the kitchen table and they feel that it's time to talk about what happened on the night that Lena got drunk. Lena feels ready to open herself up for what happened that night.
"What happened that night?" Amanda asks.
"I saw Nate at the bar with a girl that he's now seeing and his friends and they were talking about me and how he told them that I've been drinking a lot and popping pills and it was the same thing that he told his mom. He told his friends that on the night that I was supposed to have pizza with him, he was with this girl." Lena replies.
"So, he cheated on you?" Kim asks.
"Yeah, he cheated on me. The next day, I found him in bed with this girl and we had a fight. He told me it was over and that he was seeing someone else and I left his place in tears without my stuff so I came here." Lena replies.
Amanda and Kim have just learned that Nate cheated on Lena. She says that she caught him cheating on her and it broke her heart. Amanda now knows that Nate is a player and that he sleeps with different girls at a time.
"Let's have a girl's night out." Kim says.
"Okay." Lena replies.
Amanda, Kim and Lena go to a bar where they order chili cheese nachos with lemonade. They feel that a girl's night out can ease depression. The girls talk about relationships and how they can be good and how they can be bad. Amanda and Kim are in good relationships but Lena isn't in a relationship with anyone.
"I'm not ready to be in a relationship anytime soon." Lena says.
"Give it some time." Amanda replies.
Kim and Amanda tell Lena that even though their father had a gambling addiction, he never neglected his daughters and he was very depressed when their mother took them away from their father. They tell her that they spent every Christmas with him because that was the holiday that they always spent together. Amanda says that if they wanted hugs and kisses, their mother would tell them to go to their father.
"I wish that my dad was like yours." Lena says.
"Well, you can't have everything that you want." Kim replies.
Lena tells the sisters that her father would yell at her for no reason and Amanda tells her that her mother would yell at her for no reason. As they discuss their family lives, they eat their nachos and drink their lemonade. Lena tells the sisters that she has been seeing a therapist about her depression and she's hoping that everything will work out.
"My therapist said that if I start to feel depressed, she wants me to go to rehab to get help." Lena says.
"Rehab helped my dad when he was dealing with depression and my rape kit being negative." Amanda replies.
Amanda remembers that her depression started after her attack, after her father went to rehab and when Sam Reynolds told her that her father had killed himself when he was really at a rehab facility in another state. She remembers that her father had to take care of her after she was raped. He never wanted another man to hurt his daughter. Lena tells Amanda that she wishes she had a good relationship with her father just like Amanda has a good relationship with her father.
"I was a daddy's girl when I was growing up so we have the best relationship ever." Amanda says.
"Mama took us away from Daddy after the divorce but we got to see him on the weekends even though we couldn't live with him." Kim tells Amanda.
The girls finish the nachos and the lemonade and they head back to the apartment. Amanda and Kim show Lena the home videos that they were in with their father as they were growing up. As they watch the videos, Kim and Amanda are curled up together in a blanket and Lena joins them. They show a home video of Amanda and Kim with their father on Christmas Day when they were 6 and 8 years old. They show a home video of each of the girls' birthdays and their father is with them. They look at pictures that the girls are in with their father. Amanda decides that there should be a slideshow with pictures of her from the time she was a baby to now when her father sings a song to her after the father of the bride speech.
