“Come on sit down, Tina will talk to her, it’ll be ok.”

Just then Tina came walking out of the office

“Jo she wants to see you.”  As she walked passed Tina whispered in her ear “Take the rest of the day off, you two need to talk.”

“Thank you Tina, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Tina sat down with the rest of the girls

“God I’m starving, lets eat.”

“Are you kidding me, you’re seriously not gonna tell us what just happened here.”

“No, I am going to eat my lunch, spend some time with my friends and beautiful wife and then get back to work.”

“This sucks.”

The group of friends all laughed at Alice’s pout.

Jo knocked on the door.

“Come in”

“Hi”

“Hi”

“You sure you don’t want me to leave the door open, will make it easier for you to runaway from me again.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“So I kinda thought that our meeting would go something like this.”

Jo turned her back to Helena, she turned around slowly again

“Helena, oh my god, I can’t believe it’s you.  You look amazing.  Care to give an old friend a hug.”

Helena laughed at her friend, she always had managed to make her laugh, she missed that.

They both embraced and let out a big sigh at the same time.  This she had missed most of all, Helena had always felt protected in her arms.

“That’s more like it”

They parted but held each others hands

“It’s really great to see you.”

“You too, I’m sorry I ran, I just panicked.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”  Helena guided her over to the couch  “The last time I saw you, you were stood at the airport waving me off.  You were crying and I hated knowing that I had caused that.”

“Helena that was 16 years ago, we made the choices that we thought were right for us at the time.”

“I know, God I missed you though, why did you stop calling.”

“I called you, left a ton of messages on your answer machine, I just assumed that you wanted a clean break.  Then I spoke to your mom, she told me that you were out with a girlfriend and I just assumed you had moved on.”

“You spoke to my mother, she never told me and I never got your messages.  God I would kill her if she wasn’t already dead.”

“She died? Helena I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you, but I’m not, she was awful.  She told me once that you weren’t good enough for me, that I could do better.”

“Wow, now I know why she was so frosty with me.  I just thought she was a snob.”

“Oh she was that too, I do miss her sometimes though.”

“Of course you do, she was your mom.  So what happened with the foundation.”

“Oh it’s still going.  But it’s a long story.”

“Well Tina has given me the afternoon off, what do you say we go grab some lunch and we can talk, catch up.”

“That sounds like a great idea.”