“So, you’re standing up for her by not letting her let you walk all over her?”
I nod. “Yep.”
“You’re an idiot,” Cash tells me. “A colossal idiot.”
I might be an idiot, but I’ll never be the guy who let my mom destroy her confidence and tell her she wasn’t good enough.
“I’m aware,” I finally say.
“I thought that you just wanted to have sex with her at first,” Cash begins. “Just another conquest or whatever.” I raise an eyebrow as I glance over at him. “But I know you love her. It’s obvious.”
My eyes find Ingrid again. She’s swiping away on her phone, probably looking at all the photos she just took.
“Glad you’ve wised up,” I mumble.
“The thing about Ingrid is that she needs space,” he counsels me. About my own girlfriend. The one he walked all over for years. “Even if she doesn’t say it.”
I scoff. This explains so much. Explains why he would abandon her for the golf course. Why he wouldn’t sleep with her for months on end. Why he let his mommy talk him into leaving her for Europe last summer.
Ingrid doesn’t need space.
She needs to know someone’s staying. That she doesn’t have to change or be molded into someone Fanny Allred thinks is “better”.
It’s why I can’t go to New York unless she goes with me.
And I’m not going until she finishes college.
“You should apologize to her,” Cash suggests.
I smirk. “You’re the colossal idiot.”
She’s not ready to hear my apology. When she’s ready, she knows I’m right here. But she’s kept her distance all day. Which means she’s trying to figure out how she feels, what she feels, and what she needs.
How could Cash spend four years with her and still not understand who she is?
“I’m going to go talk to her,” Cash says as he pushes off the bench and slowly jogs over to her.
He can try, but she’s not going to be responsive.
Sure enough, he says something to her, and she turns her back to him and continues to take more pictures of the sunset.
I chuckle softly before standing and walking over to the railing. The view below is incredible. A huge canyon so wide it’s crazy to think that water cut a path through it. Or however this giant hole came to be.
Kind of weird how standing on the edge of something so vast makes you feel so insignificant.
Margot’s cancer.
Dad leaving.
NYU.
Does any of it really matter? Will it in five years? In ten?
I take a sobering breath.
I only have one sister. I’ve kept her at arm’s length for a long time. Can I keep punishing her for having the life I was supposed to have while being madly in love with Ingrid?
Who knows if I’d be right here right now if my dad had stayed.
