Page 128 of Party Favors

I had a lot of good memories of Meemaw and Papaw and how in love they had been, in sharp contrast to my parents’ marriage. My grandparents’ relationship was one of the reasons I believed in fairy tales.

Meemaw was slowly getting to her feet while muttering to herself. “We let her go off to the city and she manages to find a rich suitor but still winds up back here.”

When she’d left the room, I asked my mom, “Does this mean the intervention failed? Since half of it left?”

“You know, I dated your father for a year and I never felt about him the way you feel about Max. Sometimes I think time is irrelevant when it comes to love. We feel what we feel.”

“What I feel is like a total failure.” At love, at my job.

“You didn’t fail. You got fired because of a rule you were unaware of. That kind of thing happens sometimes. It wasn’t because you failed.”

This was the encouraging, supportive mother that I felt like I’d waited my whole life for. “Why aren’t you always like this?”

My mom seemed startled. “Like what?”

“It’s one of the reasons I love talking about royals with you. When we do that, we’re just ourselves and we enjoy each other. But any other time, you don’t ever ask me questions about my life.”

“I do ask you!” she said, sounding a bit indignant. “All the time!”

“No, you ask so that you can tell me what I should be doing differently. I know you love me, but when you do that, it makes me feel really small. I want to be able to talk to you like we are now. Where you listen to me and let me speak and don’t try to constantly tell me what to do.”

She twisted her mouth to one side and I recognized the gesture as one she made when she was trying not to cry, and now I felt worse.

“I guess because I want your life to turn out differently than mine. Meemaw used to do the same thing to me, only worse.”

“Meemaw?” I asked in shock. While my grandmother would make occasional comments, like the earlier one about me going to New York, for the most part she was a really great listener. I’d spent hours growing up pouring my heart out to her.

“She wasn’t always the way that you remember her. But now she’s old and worried about getting into heaven, so things have changed.”

I felt a hint of a smile hovering around my lips. It was the first time I’d wanted to smile in what felt like forever.

“And,” my mom continued, “I want you to be happy. I married someone that I shouldn’t have. He did give me you, and I’ll always begrateful for that, but we never should have been together. I had dreams that I gave up. I wanted to be a lawyer. But after your dad left, I had to find a way to support us. I’m proud of my salon, but it’s not what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve always wanted more for you, my perfect little princess. I wanted you to have a man who would respect you, love you, and be faithful to you.”

“Oh, Mom.” I reached out for her hand and she grabbed on to me tightly.

“I know I pushed you to join the salon. I thought it would be a good safety net for you while you figured out what you wanted to do. But you already knew, and I should have supported you in that dream. You are so much smarter, so much more talented, than I ever was. I want the biggest and the best for you and I’m sorry if I went about that in a terrible way. I would never want to hurt you. I want you to have the life you want. To have the life I never got to have.”

“You can still have all of that,” I told her. “You can still meet someone and have a life with them. You can even change careers if you want to. You don’t have to live through me.”

She held on to my hand with both of hers. “I didn’t mean to try and live through you. And I don’t know about trying to change what I’m doing. Or dating. I think I’m an old dog and don’t have time for new tricks. But I am sorry.”

“You had to be my mom and my dad and I love you for doing that. You always made me feel really loved and I think that’s the most anyone can ask for.”

“I will do better, though. I promise.” She stayed quiet for a moment and then, like she couldn’t help herself, said, “And I can see how much it’s hurting you being apart from Max. And it’s up to you whether or not you want to talk to him. And if you do, it’ll go one of two ways. Either you’ll end things completely and get closure, which will make it easier for you to move on. Or the second option could mean something pretty great might happen.”

Her words filled me with hope. “I know I can’t hide out here forever. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and I know what my next steps are going to be.”

Using the phrasenext stepsmade me think about Max, again. And my heart throbbed with grief.

“That’s good. And I know you’re trying to pattern your life after Kat’s. Just remember what her mom told her when she broke up with Nico. She ran home and climbed into her bed and her mom told her to get back out there and make sure that Nico knew what he was missing out on. Maybe that’ll work for you, too.”

“You’re thinking of the British princess, Princess Caitlin. The one married to Alexander. Kat wasn’t close to her mom back then, and she stayed away from Nico for months after they broke up. But they worked things out.”

That led to a twenty-minute conversation where we discussed royal breakups and how the people involved had dealt with their heartache.

Surprisingly, it made me feel a bit better.

The plans that I had spent the past week forming in my mind were also making me feel better. By day two it had occurred to me that if I was this sad without Max, why was I continuing to be without him? I was going to talk to him. But not over the phone. In person, the way he had wanted to when he was going to tell me that he wasn’t from Monterra.

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