Page 45 of My Best Friend Prince Charming

“I hope you know how proud I am of you for finishing that book. I have to admit that when you told me you were planning to write a book in two months, I thought you were taking on too much, especially right at the end of your senior year. But you’ve far surpassed my expectations. I couldn’t be more impressed. But I’m still concerned about you. Despite how happy you’ve been to finish your first book, you seem sad at times,” Mom said. “What’s been going on with you?”

I shrugged, looking down into my cup.

“Does it have something to do with the reason Ryker never comes over anymore?”

“He and I aren’t really friends. We had a little bit of a falling out.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but I wasn’t sure I wanted my mom to know what had actually happened. It was easier to paint a picture of a big breakup. But the truth was, I couldn’t explain why we weren’t together. Every time I tried to understand it, my brain didn’t want to acknowledge the thought. I usually ended up distracting myself by picking up my phone or working on my fan fiction.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

I took a deep breath. It was a struggle to open up at first, but before I realized it, I was pouring out my heart to my mom about Ryker and had filled her in on everything that had happened between us. It had been a long time since I’d had a good heart-to-heart talk with my mom, and it felt great. I’d been holding everything inside.

“I think I’m scared Ryker will end up leaving me just like Austin did. Just like Dad left you.”

“Austin and Ryker are two very different people. Ryker is one of the good ones.”

“I know he is.”

“Then what’s stopping you from being with him?”

“That’s what I can’t figure out.”

Mom sighed. “When your dad left, I tried to protect you as much as I could from what I was going through, but now I see that maybe I should have opened up a little bit more with you. Because I stayed quiet, you ended up in a relationship with a guy who treated you like your dad treated me. But when you get a divorce, everyone tells you to never badmouth the other parent because it’s hard on the kids. I thought that meant I couldn't talk about what happened at all. I didn’t know how to talk about the level of abuse he put me through without shedding a bad light on him. But now I’m wondering if that was a mistake. I wanted you to grow up carefree and fun.”

“But I was in the situation, too,” I argued. “I saw the way Dad treated you. I heard him tell you he’d been with another woman. You didn’t have to badmouth him. I saw it all on my own.”

Shock registered across Mom’s face. “You heard him telling me he’d cheated?”

“Yeah. I’ve known the entire time. I know Dad’s a scumbag. But I thought that maybe you guys should have worked harder. I blamed you for a long time because I thought that if you’d just tried harder that he wouldn’t have picked another woman, and then he wouldn’t have left.”

“You blamed me?” Mom’s face went white.

“I did. I decided that I was going to try my best to work things out with Austin. That’s why I stayed with him for so long. I wanted to do what I thought you weren’t doing right. I wanted to prove that I had what it took to keep a relationship together.”

“And what did you learn?” Mom asked.

I laughed bitterly. “I learned that there was nothing I could do to change Austin. No matter how sweet I was to him, he would still mistreat me. After a while, I started to hate him. But I stayed with him anyway because I kept holding onto that hope that I’d figure out what it took to fix the relationship. But it never happened.”

“And when he cheated on you with Tabby, you decided you’d had enough.”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“And then Ryker came along, and you recognized what you were missing.”

“Well, Ryker was there the entire time. I just didn’t understand how he was getting me through it all. But when he started getting all the attention from the girls, and I saw I was going to lose him, I kind of woke up. And eventually, I realized I’ve been in love with him the entire time.”

“Why aren’t you with him now?” Mom asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t make sense of it.”

“You know what I think?” she asked.

“What?”

“I think you don’t believe you deserve a guy as good as Ryker, so you’re self-sabotaging. You had Austin’s behavior modeled to you by your father. I’m not going to dig too deep into what happened because he still is your father, and I want to respect your relationship with him, but from an objective perspective, I can still see that he had a big impact on you and your self-worth.”

“So, I think I deserve someone like Dad who thinks it’s okay to cheat on a woman.”

“You said it, not me,” Mom said with a smile. I could see a dam of emotions built up behind her eyes. How much had Mom been keeping from me about what she’d gone through? I was just glad Mom had been able to go to a therapist and talk it out.

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