Rowan heaved a loud sigh. “You really wanna know?”
I nodded, bracing myself for something about how I was annoying and overbearing and they all needed a break from me. It would destroy me to hear those words, but at least I would know.
“I didn’t want you to see me cry.”
I sat up, confused. “That makes no sense. I’ve seen you cry.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking, okay?” His entire face had gone red, and he wouldn’t meet my gaze. “That whole night just sucked, and I needed to fucking fall apart and ...”
And he hadn’t wanted me there for it.
It was the explanation I’d been waiting for, and I knew he was telling the truth, but it still felt like something was splintering between us.
Everything had shaken him that night, but for the first time in our lives, my best friend hadn’t wanted me there.
NOW
On Sunday, the second weekend after graduation, the rare day when I don’t have anything else on, my mother places a line of fabric swatches in front of me while I’m halfway through breakfast. Mom 2.0 is always busy, grappling with important choices such as whether we need a whole new dinner set or whether the one we’ve had for the past decade is fine. I’ve learned that if there are any household items I’m particularly attached to, I have to tell her in advance, or I might come home and find them gone. It’s been one of the weirdest things to get used to, suddenly having to keep up with her.
“Thoughts? Complaints? Recommendations?” she asks, watching me eye the line of patterns in front of me.
“Nice. Super nice. All of them.”
She sighs. “Jessi! I need you to help me narrow it down. Even if you just close your eyes and point to something.”
I feel bad for not sharing her enthusiasm about our new couch set, and I feel even worse that she can tell.
I don’t close my eyes, but I do randomly pick something, a grayish cloth material.
Mom’s face lights up. “Really? That was the one I was leaning toward!”
“Great minds,” I say, and tap my temple.
“Will you go with me to the furniture store to place the order?” she asks. With Mom 2.0, one errand usually turns into five or six, so I quickly try to shoot down the idea.
“Um, I can’t. I’m ... listening to a podcast. That Ernie recommended.” It’s a terrible excuse, and not just because Ernie can’t tell the difference between a phone and “one of those music recording devices,” despite his grandkids’ efforts to make him the most tech-savvy octogenarian there ever was.
“We can listen in the car while we drive,” she offers.
I concede.
First, with an excuse that lame, I deserve what I get. Second, I really don’t have anything else to do, and I’ve learned that the days when I have the chance to think—those are the worst. Third, my mom is trying really hard. It still catches me by surprise, seeing her bustling around the house and stepping out for groceries and going out for coffee or anywhere that isn’t work. This time last summer, like all the summers in my life before it, Mom was basically catatonic. Now she’s picking out fabrics for a new living room set.
It’s part of her therapy, changing up her environment and getting rid of any reminders of the “hole” in which she spent the last eighteen years of her life. I guess the sofa was particularly offensive to her.
“I’ll just go get dressed,” I tell her as I get up from the table.
“What’s wrong with how you’re dressed?” she asks.
I’m wearing a pair of cutoffs and a tank top I’m pretty sure I slept in. But if it passes Mom 2.0’s test of approval, it’s good enough for me.
“Okay, let’s go,” I say.
We pass Dad in the living room, where he’s watching TV and getting in as much time with the old furniture as he can. It’s almost as jarring to see my father stretched out across the couch on a Sunday morning, doing nothing. Before, if he wasn’t working, he was getting groceries or mowing the lawn or trying to talk Mom into eating something.
“Don’t have too much fun,” he calls out as we go.
“Right backatcha,” Mom says, shutting the front door behind us and slipping an arm around my shoulders, and it’s almost more than I can take. This sudden change in the universe, where my life now consists of my parents shooting cheery comments at each other and furniture shopping and wanting to do things with me.
