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I was. I really was, for the first time in far,fartoo long. “Thanks for your help tonight.”
“Anytime. Let me know when you get home, okay?” He stuck out his hand, and I took it. He pulled me into a hug. “I’ll miss you. Find that group of pals I saw you with. Be happy.”
“Thanks, Mike. You too.”
Mike waved as he walked back toward the dorms, disappearing into the darkness of the shade trees.
I unlocked the Volvo and climbed inside, eyes swimming.
Chapter Twenty
‡
Islunk inthe front door at almost three-thirty in the morning, jittery from the coffee and Twizzlers I’d gobbled to stay awake on the drive home. My eyes were gritty beneath my glasses—I’d pulled over to remove my contacts sometime after one—and my wrist throbbed.
Mom was still awake reading a novel on the sofa in her plaid flannel gown. “Baby? What are you doing home? Are you okay?”
I dropped my bag by the door. “I broke up with Adam.”
She put her book aside and opened her arms.
In two steps I was cradled closer than I had been since I was a baby, crushed against my mom’s bosom. My glasses dug into my cheek, but I didn’t care. She patted my hair and shushed me while I cried. I cuddled my aching wrist to my chest and let her rock me back and forth awkwardly.
“I’m sorry. I know it hurts.”
“It’s hurt for a long time,” I mumbled when I could finally speak. I sat up, wiping my nose with the tissue she handed me from the box on the coffee table. “It can stop hurting now, right? Now that it’s done?”
“Sometimes. Grief is strange. It comes and goes.”
“He’s not dead.”
“No. But grief comes in lots of packages.” She smoothed my curly hair off my forehead, and then her gaze and tone sharpened. “What happened to your arm? Did he hurt you?”
Hand-shaped bruises ringed my wrist, angry red in the light from the lamp. “He grabbed me. We went to a gay club. I was dancing with other guys.”
She tilted her head. “I think you should start at the beginning.”
So I did. I told her about kissing Daniel in Nashville, and she chucked my chin, whispering, “I knew it.”
Then I told her about Adam’s visit while they’d been at Dad’s cousin’s funeral and how it’d all felt so wrong.
“Oh, baby.” She touched my bruises lightly.
I told her about Minty trying to fight me, and how I’d lost the only friends who knew the real me.
“You’ll make more friends.”
I told her about arriving in Atlanta and how it had been more of the same with poor Leslie, and I seized all my courage and told her that Adam wanted to have sex without a condom.
“He what?” Anger flashed over her face.
“I told him no.”
She narrowed her eyes. “He was always safe, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” I didn’t tell her about my fear that he was lying about our last fuck together. “So we fought, and it got ugly. Our friends convinced us to go out to the club anyway. I danced with other guys to prove to him that I could.”
“Heshouldknow that. Of course you can.”
