AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hmm.He was pretty much all I ever talked about senior year of college. He came home with me for Christmas and helped you make waffles. He sent you flowers on your birthday, and oh, yeah, took your daughter’s virginity in her college dorm room(not that my mom knows that last part, but Derek brought it up and now it’s on a constant loop in my mind).
“Yep,” I squeak. “You might have. It’s…Derek…Pender.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you haven’t…?”Seen him since you broke upis what she doesn’t have to voice.
“Correct.”
We both marinate in this for a second. And to be honest, I think it’s the first time I’ve really let myself sink into the painful parts of it since seeing him again yesterday. I looked in his eyes. And I watched those eyes shutter when they looked at me.
My heart hurts.
“It wasn’t my idea,” I tell my mom. “The agency paired us together last minute. They obviously don’t know our history and I plan to keep it that way as long as possible, so things don’t get weird.” Or weirder…
“And how did it go? How did Derek act when he saw you again?”
“Umm…it could have gone better.” I pause, thinking of the frown between his brows. He never used to frown at me. “I just can’t stop thinking of how ironic it is that I ended it with him to pursue my career, and now my career is hinging on him.”
“It’s not hinging on him, Nora. Your career will go forward even without him. But through him might be the easiest way to make it happen sooner. So…you’ll just have to decide what this new working relationship is worth to you.”
More than I want to admit—but maybe not for career advancement reasons.
Wait, no!
I’m in this with Derek for career advancement only.
“I’ll figure out a way to make it work.”
“I know you will. You always do, sugar peach!” Somehow my mom rarely calls me the same pet name twice. “I have complete faith in you and will show up to your cheering section with a bedazzled sign any time you need me.”
I smile because I know she’s not kidding. Would probably appear outside my office building like that if I asked her to. Because that’s the thing about my mom—she’s supportive. Even back in the eighth grade when on a whim I told her I wanted to cut off my long hair I had spent years growing, she didn’t ask me a thousand questions and make sure I knew what I was doing. She simply made an appointment and let me chop it to my chin. Her motto has always been to encourage me to listen to my inner voice. To trust myself and learn from my choices as I go.
And so, when out of the blue I broke up with my college boyfriend who I had been hopelessly in love with, she didn’t question me or my logic. She said:Come home this weekend and let’s eat ice cream and watch movies and you can tell me about it.
Ugh, why does my brain continue to run toward Derek every chance it gets. It needs to be put on a leash.
“While I’ve got you,” my mom starts, giving me the distraction I need. “I want to give you a heads-up about some news I just saw on Facebook.”
“Why do you still get on Facebook?”
“I love the drama. Especially when the neighborhood gets their panties in a wad about whose dog pooped in whose yard. Gets really juicy…the gossip, not the poop.”
“That was both disgusting and hilarious. I loved it.”
“Good, because you might not like the next bit.” She pauses, and I tense. “Your dad is getting married again.”
My lungs deflate in a rush.
The subject of my dad is a tricky one. My parents were never a couple, and so in between his visits, I started keeping journals full of stats on teams and players just so I could wow my sports-loving dad over on his next visit, and then maybe…just maybe he’d want to spend even more time with me. (And then fall in love with my mom and we’d all live happily ever after like in the Disney movies.)
It worked in some seasons of my life, and in others it didn’t. And the older I got the more I realized it wasn’t that my dad wasn’t choosing my mom—it was my mom who didn’t choose my dad because she had good standards, and god love him, my dad would never meet them.
