Page 63 of Love Fast

“Yeah. But I gave it up. I shouldn’t have. Mom isn’t going to support you, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply to college. And you have nothing to lose. The worst that happens is you apply and don’t get in.”

“But Mom would be so mad.”

“She won’t ever have to know.” I remember something Byron said to me. “Let’s not borrow trouble. I can help you apply and then we can see what happens.”

“You’d help?” There’s a lift to her voice.

“Of course. And we have some time,” I say. “Deadlines are nine months away. Why don’t you go back and see the guidance counselor at school? I bet she’d help you, or knows someone who could. I can help you put together a plan and we’ll keep it between the two of us.”

“Mom won’t find out?”

“Believe it or not, she’s not a mind reader. You need to make sure you don’t tell the others. Keep it to the two of us.”

“But what would happen if I actually got in somewhere? Would I just move away?”

“You were ready to come stay with me.”

“Mom would kill me.”

“Not if you went out of state. You’d be too far for her to reach.”

“But she really does need the money.”

I swallow. There’s no doubt Mom doesn’t have a lot, but that isn’t Marion’s fault. There’s no reason Mom can’t get a job and start supporting herself. The realization that I own the trailer dawns on me. I need to find a way to transfer it back to Frank. It was a wedding present for a wedding that never took place. I can’t possibly keep it. “I know she doesn’t,” I say. I want to tell Marion it’s not our responsibility to financially support our mother, but I’m not even sure I believe that. “If you got a great degree at a fancy university, imagine what a great job you’d get. You’d be able to support her much more in the long term.”

“That’s true,” she says.

“But you gotta keep this secret. And don’t tell anyone you spoke to me either.”

Marion agrees she’s going to research who can help her identify scholarships and colleges, we say our I love yous, and hang up.

I’m exhausted. I gaze up. It’s a Colorado sky I’m looking at, not an Oregon one. But Oregon feels closer to home than it has since I got here. Darkness settles over my heart like a cloud passing across the sun. I left Oregon in a wedding dress because I didn’t want to get married, but what I really escaped wasn’t Frank—it was my mother.

All the cuts and bruises from a lifetime there have been brought back by my conversation with Marion. My body aches. I feel the bruises on my soul. But this Colorado air is helping them heal.

Maybe helping Marion will help me too. I might have gotten out of Oregon, but there are some things I need to face before I can truly escape.

The first is transferring the trailer back into Frank’s name. I just don’t know how to start the process.

Probably with a call to Frank.

It feels like I’ve kept Oregon at bay for as long as possible, and now it’s seeping in at the sides. I need to face it—clean up the mess I left. Be the adult I’ve been waiting to become.

TWENTY-FIVE

Byron

I’m not often nervous, but showing my three best friends around the Colorado Club is as close as it gets.

“Now that’s what I call a money shot,” Fisher says as we come down the stairs into Blossom. “You’re just above the trees.”

“Right,” I say. “That was the plan. So we get the view into the valley.”

“It’s really beautiful, Byron,” Worth says.

I push my hands into my pockets.

“Not so much the mountain-man look,” Fisher says, nodding at my jeans and flannel shirt. “Are those… steel-toed boots?”

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