Page 21 of The Exception

After a minute of unsettling silence, her mom shook her head and sighed.“Are you sure y’all aren’t getting back together in a week or two?”

“We. Are. Done,” Sonya confirmed, punctuating each word with finality.

“I always thought Marcus was a good man. He was stable and he took good care of you. I’m not even going to go into how nice he was to look at and those hugs he gave, but I thought he was the type of man to give you what you needed. I shouldn’t be surprised that he turned out to be messy.”

To her mom, messy meant unnecessarily complicated, and Marcus waiting to tell her he didn’t want to get married on their elopement trip put him firmly in that category. Her mother had warned her to stay away from messy men because they’d break your heart ever since she was old enough to like boys, and she’d managed to find one anyway.

“He wasn’t always messy.” It came out a little defensive and her mom was going to make herself dizzy if she rolled her eyes any harder.

“Baby, they never are. He said y’all aren’t in love enough? What does that mean?”

“It means we both deserve better.”

Her mother pursed her lips and hummed. “That man knows damn well he’ll never find anyone better than you. You didn’t give him the ring back did you?”

Sonya frowned. “Of course I did. I don’t need a reminder of this… fiasco. I just want to be done with it.”

“Well, what’s your plan for moving forward so you can be done with it? You’ve already wasted some of your prime years on Marcus, and it could take a while to find someone else, you know.”

Sonya shook her head. Getting involved with another guy was so far at the bottom of her to-do list that it was practically five years into the future. “Finding someone else is not in my plan right now. I think I’m just going to take some time to focus on my career and that’s it.”

The corner of her mother’s lip tilted up in a smirk. “You’ve been focusing on your career ever since you were in middle school.”

“You’re the one who taught me to always have my own.”

Cassandra nodded. “That’s right and you got it. Maybe now it’s time to focus on your life outside of work because that’s the area in need right now. ”

Her mom meant no harm, but she didn’t understand that focusing on work was the only thing keeping Sonya from dissecting every minute of her relationship with Marcus to figure out what went wrong.

“Thanks a lot, Mom,” she mumbled.

Cassandra rounded the counter and draped her arm over Sonya’s shoulders. “I’m just saying, don’t let Marcus be a stumbling block to what you want. What did I used to tell you when you were a little girl and upset about having to move?”

Moving had been a constant of Sonya’s childhood due to her dad being in the Air Force. They’d moved every few years until he finally got out when she was in high school.

“The destination isn’t changing, just the scenery along the way,” she said.

“That’s right. You know what you want, Sonya. Now it’s time to…”

Sonya knew the words that would come next like her own name. The words she’d scribbled on every notebook she had throughout high school, college, and grad school, and the words that had gotten her through every tough moment where things didn’t go according to her plans.

“Reflect, regroup, revise, and refocus,” she recited, as her mom pulled her into the kind of hug that only a mother could give. It felt like sunshine and comfort food, and exactly what Sonya needed.

“And rebuke the very memory of that trifling ass man,” she said, adding a fifth R to the Pope family mantra.

Sonya’s laugh tumbled out of her. “I’ll add that one to the top of my list.”

Her mother swept a few stray braids behind her ears and cupped her face in her hands just as she’d done when she was a child. “Are you okay?”

Sonya nodded. “I’m upset of course, but I’m okay. I haven’t cried or anything. Maybe I’m broken.”

“No daughter of mine is broken. I think deep down, you know he wasn’t the one.”

Her mom was right and she’d hit the thing that had been bothering Sonya the most since the breakup. Because shehadknown. And she still wasn’t sure why she’d let it go so far.

Cassandra continued, “You deserve the world, baby. Don’t let this stop you from getting it. Now. The rest of the family will be here soon and we can’t just say y’all broke up.”

“What do you want to tell them?”

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