Page 52 of Mostly My Girlfriend
She leaned back in the chair and looked at me. “Do you know I almost divorced your father?”
My eyebrows shot up because I didn’t. I couldn’t even imagine it. They were always a matched set in my mind. Which was what made him being gone so difficult to understand. How was my mother going to do this? Live her life without him? How did anyone?
“It was after you left…I was so mad at him. I thought he’d been too stubborn. Too rigid. That he’d driven you away by trying to control you. Even though I knew I was just as much to blame.”
He’d been both those things and he had driven me away. But she didn’t need to hear that now.
“But I wanted you home with me so bad that I didn’t fight hard enough for you. We were suffocating you. I knew that. But there was a time when you were so fragile… Anyway, he convinced me not to leave. He told me he would fix it and that someday you would come home. He was wrong. He didn’t fix it.”
“Mom, I did come home.”
She sighed. “You came home because Julia told you it was the right thing to do. That was the one thing your father got right. Finding her and making her see that we were human. That we loved you. Because you loved her so much, you were willing to see us through her eyes. That’s why you came home.”
I squirmed in my chair and took a sip of coffee.
Mom reached out to squeeze my empty hand. “Don’t be afraid to love, Ethan. I know it’s frightening. I know you’re looking at me now thinking this is the worst thing that could happen. And of course it is. It’s soul crushing and I don’t know how…”
Her voice cracked and I linked my fingers between hers, holding on to her so she would know thatIwas thehow.I would let her suffocate me with kisses and ice-cream sandwiches for the next thirty years if that’s what she wanted to do. If that would ease her heart even a little.
She swallowed. “But it’s not the worst thing. Not really. The worst thing would have been if your father and I hadn’t had all these years together.”
I tried to pull my hand away, but she held it tighter. Her expression nearly desperate.
“You think you’re not worthy of love because the woman who gave birth to you gave you away and she didn’t treat herself right when she had the gift of you inside her. I’ve never known that gift, and it’s one of the many reasons I’ve always hated that bitch. But you deserve to be loved, Ethan. For you. Your father and I tried…and yes, we made mistakes, but not Julia. She’s loved you just for who you are all these years. You have to see that. Now, in this horrible, horrible moment. You have to see that.”
I leaned forward and kissed my mother on her forehead. I needed to get away from her, but I didn’t want her to know how urgent my need was. I couldn’t handle the surge of emotions in my chest. It hurt in a way that I couldn’t breathe properly. Shallow, tiny breaths were all I could manage.
I couldn’t go back to my room where Jules was sleeping, naked and soft under the covers. I didn’t trust myself not to climb back into bed with her.
“I’m going to go for a walk. I need some air.”
“You’ll be back?”
I hated that there was a question in her voice. I hated that she was right to ask because if I could have…I would have run away.
“I’ll be back.”
* * *
New York
Julia
I opened my laptop and tried to focus on my email. There were more than enough urgent matters that should have been able to capture my attention, but it felt like I was underwater and the only thing I was truly focusing on was breathing.
Ethan had been gone when I woke in his bed this morning and part of me had been grateful while another part of me…
I could tell myself a hundred things about what last night was. Justify, quantify it. Put it in a box and put the box away. But it would be a lie. I knew it, and I thought, maybe, he did, too.
Which was why, this time, we were going to have to talk. Really talk about what happened. And it scared the crap out of me.
Of course, there was another option.
He and his mom were at the lawyer’s office right now, reviewing the will. I could pack my bag, head for JFK, and get a flight to Seattle today. The truth was it might be the kinder thing to do for him. He was emotional, he was grieving. Last night had obviously been an anomaly. If I left quietly without having the conversation, then maybe we could pretend…
No. I couldn’t pretend. Not anymore.
I’d lied to him the first time it happened… God, did I tell him about that? No, I couldn’t. Not under these circumstances when I could sense what it was costing him to keep control over his emotions.
