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“You want to leave, too, don’t you?” I say to Mom, and when I glance up her worn-out expression tells me everything I need to know.
“Yes,” Mom admits. “But I feel like I should stay.”
I finish what’s in my mouth and I study her. Mom looks older tonight. More her age. A few of her curly blond strands have broken away from her ponytail and cover her face. She smooths them back.
“Why are you here? Why wasn’t Dad at work?”
“We didn’t like how things were left at the hospital and knew you were coming home tonight. We just wanted to spend time with you. Logan, you’ve been so...distant lately. With your friends graduating and the change in schools and this girl we didn’t know about being shot and...we feel out of touch.”
My mind spins as I catch up too fast, too late. Spaghetti. Dad doesn’t cook spaghetti. Too many carbs. “That wasn’t a meatball, was it?”
“It’s a meatball...without meat.”
It was a meal made by my mother for me and I was too caught up in my problems with Abby to notice the obvious. With a blink of my eye, I finally see what I was blind to before. The dinner table set. Cut-up strawberries on the counter. Dressing for a salad.
Damn. I came barreling in, my problems on my mind. Pointing out their flaws and I never once considered their emotions, their concerns, and how they feel about me.
I exhale and push the container of spaghetti away. “I’m sorry.”
Mom places her hand over mine. “What’s going on with you?”
“I’m in love with Abby.”
Mom smiles and when she notices I’m not smiling with her, she edges her chair closer to me. “Did she break up with you?”
“She sells pot and in order to get out of dealing she’s leaving town. So, yeah, in a way, she is. And before you ask, I don’t do drugs. I’ve never been around her when she’s sold and yes, the dealing is why she was shot and why she’s getting out.”
Mom goes perfectly still and after a few beats of silence, I continue. “But she’s more than a dealer. She’s crazy and funny and beautiful and smart.” I glance over at Mom. “She’s brilliant. Can keep up with me like no one else. She makes me think differently about things, about who I am and who I want to be and she’s leaving.”
Emotion chokes me up and I just shake my head as if that can tell Mom the rest of what I can’t speak.
“No one prepares you for any of this—being a parent,” Mom says. “There’s a ton of classes to take on having a newborn, but after that, they shove you out to be on your own.
“Nobody could have prepared me for the fear I had when you were sick or the endless pit of panic that consumed me when they told me you were diabetic. No one told me how to take away your pain when you cried or were hurt or were frustrated. And as you got older, I had no idea how to get you to open up about the feelings trapped inside. And no one could have ever prepared me for you falling in love with a girl who deals drugs.”
“Really?” Both me and Mom’s heads snap up to find Dad standing in the doorway that leads outside. “I fell in love with you and you’re shocked your son fell in love with a girl who sells pot?”
Mom’s face twists as she tries to hide it, but the laugh escapes regardless and I can’t help but smile. Dad rejoins us at the table and touches the top of my head, messi
ng my hair like I was a kid, before sitting down.
“How long were you there?” I ask.
“Walked out front and then came straight back here. Right around the time you figured out you ate something meatless.”
“Could have said something,” I say.
“Could have.” He leaves out that I was too busy busting in and calling him and Mom out.
I pick up the container with the spaghetti and meatless balls and put some on Mom’s plate and then a generous helping onto Dad’s. He scowls at the number of meatballs.
“Sorry for screwing up dinner,” I say.
“But we’re having it now.” Mom brightens and eats like it’s good.
“I divorced your Mom over the cooking. Putting that on my plate means premeditation.”
“You divorced me because I left and I couldn’t come back,” Mom says and both Dad and I go quiet. Mom’s never said that before and it’s an awkward kick in the gut. “I loved both of you, but being here every day just didn’t work for me. Sometimes I wish I was different than what I am, but I’m not.”
