Page 71 of Summer Romance

She’s not really buying this. “Name one thing you learned.”

“Well, I learned a lot about what I wanted. I mean at first I just wanted to be back in the group, but when they came around and I was suddenly cool again and Hillary Epstein was ostracized, I realized I didn’t want friends like that. I learned that I like people who make me feel safe.” I hear my own words in my chest, and I want Ethan to call me and tell me he’s never leaving.

Greer doesn’t say anything, so I go on. “So when you’re back with them or when you find a new crew and everything’s going your way, you need to remember this and decide who you want to be. You’ll have a chance to do this to someone else, and that’s when you find out who you are.”

“A joke,” she says under her breath, like it had to come out, but she didn’t know where to direct it.

“A joke? What’s a joke?”

She’s dismantled her lobster roll without having taken a bite and is now picking at the coleslaw. “Me, Mom.”

“Greer.” I say her name like a prayer, like it’s an affirmation that will steady her. “You are not a joke.”

Then she’s crying again, and it all comes out. “I just keep thinking of them getting my texts when they’re all together and then laughing about it. It’s so humiliating. And Fancy’s gone. And no one even notices what’s happening in my life, and Dad—he only cares about us when we’re playing soccer. It’s like I’m going to wake up one day and every single thing will be gone. No Fancy, no parents, no friends.”

“Of course you still have Dad. And you definitely have me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Barely.”

“What does that mean?”

She’s going to say something but doesn’t. She forks a piece of lobster and stares at it. “You’re here. And you’re happier lately, but for a while it was like you were gone,” she says.

This hits me in the chest. “Since Fancy died?” I ask. Because, sort of.

“Well for sure since then. And then Dad left and I thought you’d be sad or angry but you weren’t. Like you agreed with him that we weren’t worth staying for. And now—” She puts her fork down and looks me right in the eye. “I’m with Dad a lot, and I’m sort of seeing how he is. He talks about you like you’re a problem. Like you’re a joke. And I think that’s how he’s always talked to you, and youjust took it.” Big thick fresh tears pour down her face, like her mother being a doormat is the actual thing that’s breaking her heart.

I reach for her hand and she pulls it away. “That’s between Dad and me, and I agree I was too quiet for too long. But that’s not for you to be sad about.”

“Well now that it’s my turn to be treated like a joke, I guess I’ll just take it. That’s what we do, right?” There’s an angry bite to this that I’ve never heard in her voice before. I am horrified to think how long it’s been waiting to get out.

“It’s not,” I say.

There’s more, and the words keep pouring out. They confirm every suspicion I’ve had about how she’s been hurting and how deeply I’ve let her down—including my never setting Pete straight and allowing him to be so absent all these years. I was so worried about what Ethan might think seeing the way Pete treated me. He wasn’t the one I should have been worried about.

“Oh, Greer,” is all I can say. I want to roar my fiery mother breath on myself.

She mops up her face and takes a bite of her lobster roll. As if releasing that demon has freed up her appetite. I want to believe that the tirade is over, but there’s still tension in her face that tells me it’s not.What else?

“What else?” I ask. “I swear I can take it.”

“This summer has been nice, with the house and the flowers and everything. You seem more like you, like the person I think of as my mom.”

“Yes,” I say. “I do feel more like myself.”

“But this thing with Scooter.”

It comes out of nowhere, and his name feels like a blow. “What about him?”

“Iris and I both think you have a crush on him. She doesn’t really care, but I do. He’s not staying, Mom. Just like Dad, just like Fancy. It’s going to be the same thing again.” She’s wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Her soccer ball charm is wet. “I don’t want you to disappear again.”

And just like that, in the way only our children can, she has held up a mirror to my biggest fears—that I’ve set myself up to fall apart again. Ethan is going to be gone and I am going to be in my sweatpants watching the paper pile grow out of the sink. I’m going to let my kids down.

I have been dancing on the edge of this cliff, just a breath away—or eight days, to be exact—from a huge fall. It was a fall I was warned about, big orange cones marking the danger. I climbed up anyway.

“It’s been a great summer,” I say. “And it’s been fun getting to know Scooter, learning to skateboard.” The word catches in my throat, and I don’t know why. I take a sip of my water to buy myself a second. It’s been a summer of learning to take risks and trusting myself not to crash and burn. And yet, as they say, here we are in the flames. “But fall’s coming, and I promise you’re going to get through this—with or without these girls.”

Greer blows her nose into her napkin. “You think I’ll have friends again?”

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