Is this where you say “I told you so”?
Charlotte shakes her head.
What do I do?I ask in the notes.
Give her time and space. She’ll come around. I promise. If she likes you as much as you like her…she’ll come around.
I press my lips into a tight smile and mouth the words “thank you” to her. She nods and tucks her phone back into her purse. I want to believe Charlotte, but maybe I fucked up so royally there’s no coming back from this.
I watched as the realization about the Halloween party played out on her face. I watched the light in her eyes dim. I watched her body language shift from open longing to “fuck off.” The sting of that rejection still stabs at my ribs. I planned to take the truth to the grave, but the moment felt right. It was so casual, and she seemed so tickled by the idea I expected us to laugh about it. I thought it might become an inside joke. But it was more like a worst-case scenario, and the thing that I was trying to avoid all along happened: I lost Jessie.
Jade and Charlotte seem to think she’ll come around, but hope is a slippery thing, and I’m losing my grip on it with every passing day.
* * *
Hoursafter the service has ended and stockings have been exchanged and family games have been won and lost, I’m finally in bed, grateful for the silence and the time to myself. I’m just about to turn off my light and roll over when there’s a knock on the door.
“Door’s open,” I say, certain it’s one of my brothers. But my mom appears in my doorway. She looks tired, but in the satisfied “I just spent all day with my entire family” kind of way. Her eyes sparkle, but her smile shakes at the edges.
Her body slumps a little and she leans her head on the doorframe. She should be in bed asleep by now, but I know she’s going room by room to check on everyone, and I also know she’ll stay up a little longer just to get some time to herself.
“Merry Christmas Eve,” she says with a smile.
“Merry Christmas Eve.”
“You okay?” she asks, her forehead crinkled in concern.
“Yeah, why?”
“I heard about the scholarship from your father.”
“Ah. Maybe you should ask if he’s okay.”
“He’ll come around.”
I nod. He will come around, but not in the way all of us hope he might. I don’t know how my mom has put up with him for this long, but they seem happy enough. She’s nothing like my father—she’s proud of us for everything we’ve ever done, loving us endlessly and openly, and filling in the gaps he creates with his silence and disapproval.
“You know he’s proud of you?” she says.
“He’s not, but it’s okay.”
She presses her lips into a thin line. “It’s not okay,” she says, her voice a whisper. I can see tears in her eyes. I know she wishes he were different with us.
“It is, though, because I don’t need his approval. I know who I am and I like who I am, and if that’s not good enough for the Baldwin name, he’s the only one who cares.”
She walks into the room and pushes my hair back, planting a kiss on my forehead. She wraps her arms around my shoulders and holds me to her. I lean in, her floral laundry detergent scent enveloping me.
“I’m proud of you,” she says.
“I know,” I say. And it’s enough. All of it is exactly enough.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
JESSIE
“You have to talk to him.”
“I don’t though. I don’t have to do anything, Jade,” I say as I watch her do her makeup for a date with George Greg. She’s not wearing nearly enough clothes for January, but I know if I point this out she’ll change into something skimpier and insist that’s what her jacket is for.
