Page 69 of You Are Cordially Invited

And so I’d run home. I’d played with Cory. I’d showered and changed and had something to eat, all carefully avoiding my mother’s pointed looks. And then when I was finally ready, I found her in the lounge waiting for me. My mother—the harbinger of caustic truth and a sure-fire remedy for my self-indulgent pity party.

“Do you think I’m controlling?” May as well jump right in.

She frowned. “Define controlling.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know exactly what I mean.”

She huffed and pulled me down next to her on the couch which signalled I was about to get one of her talks.Awesome.

“Cameron.”

And there it was, that voice.

“What’s all this about? You’ve been sulking around here like a kid who got caught with his hand in the lolly jar.”

Eerily close to the truth.

I stared at my hands until she tipped my chin up with her finger. “Sweetheart, what’s up?” She dropped her hand, looking concerned in the particular way mother’s had no matter how old you were.

I blinked for a long second and then met her eyes. “I fucked up, badly.” I barely recognised my own voice.

Her gaze narrowed, but the fact she didn’t call me on my language only proved she knew it was serious. “Okay, tell me.” She reached for my hand and tugged it to her lap.

I am not fucking crying.

“I don’t even know why I did it. I um, shit, shit, shit. I cancelled the wedding, Mum. Well, I postponed it, I guess, although I can’t get another date so...” I raised a hand to my forehead and sucked in a shaky breath.

“You postponed the wedding?” She said the words slow and carefully, as if she was checking she heard correctly.

“Yes, dammit. Yesterday.”

“Okaaay. Was that suggested by the doctors? I mean it seems a reasonable thing to consider. What did Reuben think?”

I stared miserably at her. “I... shit, I, um, didn’t ask him.”

She said nothing. She didn’t need to. My mother was rarely silent. I groaned and sank back into the couch cushions, pulling my hand free from hers so I could tear my hair out more efficiently.

“And what decided you to do that?” she asked carefully.

Excellent fucking question. I threw up my hands. “I thought... fuck, I don’t know what I thought, but I did it. And now he’s getting better, and he still thinks we’re getting married, and he’s so excited, and then we had this argument, or discussion, or something about me letting him walk beside me. Jesus, I can’t even remember. Yesterday, it seemed so fucking clear. I thought it had to be done, that at least it would be one thing off my plate. But now he’s okay, and he still thinks it’s on, and I, oh fuck, Mum, I don’t know how to tell him. He’s going to hate me. It was exactly what he was talking about. We pinky swore and everything.” I sighed and smacked myself on the head a couple of times for emphasis.

She blinked slowly which I figured was about the whole pinky-swear thing. I expected shock, frustration, maybe even anger, but all I saw was kindness and sympathy instead, which of course made things five billion times worse.

She was silent for a long time before she finally spoke. “Cameron Delany Wano—”

“Oh fuck,” I groaned, and threw an arm over my face. “Why do I feel like you’ve been waiting my entire life to have this conversation?”

She snorted. “Not exactly waiting, maybe just expecting it at some point.” She pulled my arm down gently. She was wearing a smile, and I felt twelve years old all over again. Cared for.

Safe.

Thesamesafety I felt with Reuben on the few times I gave myself over to him in this way, raw and unsure. And, oh fuck, a thousand bells went off in my head with the realisation. Reuben had been so very right. Hewasthere for me, always, I never questioned that. But it suddenly hit me that I hated the fact I needed him at all. And I hated confessing it even more, the admission rubbing like a hair shirt on my skin, scratchy and uncomfortable.

“You know you should be having this conversation with him, don’t you?”

“I will,” I promised. “But I need to get my head clear about it first.”

She sighed and scooted in beside me. “Sweetheart,” she began in that non-threatening voice she always used when any of us kids were being incredibly thick-headed. The same one that inevitably ended in me feeling like someone had scrubbed my emotional brain with a scouring pad.

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