My parents chuckle as we all climb into the truck and I pull away from the airport and head toward their house.
While they’ve been away, I’ve been house-sitting. When they left, I’d been having the urge to sell my flat for a while, so the timing worked out. Now they’re back and I want them to have their own space again. Being mainly trapped on a cruise ship for months on end can’t have been an ideal living situation. I’ve taken up Wren’s offer for me to stay with her until I find a place of my own. She’s barely at the house anyway, choosing to instead spend most of her nights with her fiancé at his farm—Goldleaf Pumpkin Farm. She’s decided to move there eventually, but with Gus’s autism, they’ve had to do the moving thing in stages.
“So, how has everything been while we’ve been away?” Dad asks as I pull onto the highway.
“Yes, we want to know!” my mom shrieks. “You both barely told us anything while we were gone. Now we come back there’s a new fiancé for Wren? What else has happened?”
The back of my neck prickles as my mom’s tone takes on the high-pitched squeal that always makes me feel uneasy. Because I know exactly what she’s going to ask.
“Have you started seeing anyone? Maybe a certain brown-haired girl?”
Oakleigh has dirty-blonde hair, but if I correct Mom, it’ll only further convince her that Oakleigh and I are destined to be together, and I really don’t need another conversation in which I have to lie and say that any feelings for Lee will forever be an impossibility.
It’s not that I don’t believe it; quite the opposite, in fact. The problem is that I spend so much of my time believing it and then having to remind myself that Oakleigh is not interested that I don’t think I’d be able to handle both of my parents encouraging my delusion as well. It’s also fucking embarrassing having to say, “Hey, guys. This whole time I’ve been on Team Oaklinn, but I didn’t tell you because I know that Oakleigh doesn’t feel the same way because she’s hated me since the moment she met me. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that no one really wants to date someone who has a fractured mind.”
“Mom, please,” I groan, my grip tightening on the steering wheel.
“I’m just asking!”
“All you do is ‘just ask’, and then I say no, and then you give me an hour-long pitch as to why dating Oakleigh would be a good idea.”
“Because it is a good idea!”
“Cherry and I would end up killing each other before we even made it to our one-month anniversary.”
“You’re just competitive, that’s all,” she argues.
I let out a frustrated breath, but refrain from answering, hoping that if I do, she’ll drop the conversation for at least one more day.
After Oakleigh and I kissed last year, I’ve been forcing myself to ignore my feelings even more than I did before. A chance to tell her how I feel was dangling in front of me and I’d chickened out, instead ordering her to go inside, far from where she could break me more than life has already broken me. All it did was solidify my reasons for never making a move before that night—Oakleigh deserves someone whose mind isn’t as fractured as mine.
Thankfully, Dad rescues me from both my mother and my own head by asking, “How’s the company coming along?”
“It’s going really well,” I say, pride blooming within my chest. I take a deep breath as I add, “I was…uh…actually thinking of selling it.” I pretty much mumble the last part.
“What?!” they both exclaim.
Since we’re now sitting at a red light, I allow myself a second to close my eyes and breathe deeply. I hate disappointing people. It’s a bad habit that unfortunately both Wren and I adopted when we were young. Even if there’s no evidence to show that they would be disappointed, my mind still manages to wrangle up a reason that only makes sense to my anxiety.
“It’s just an idea I’m considering,” I rush out. “Nothing is set in stone, I just?—”
“What brought this on, Finley? I thought that the business was really lifting off,” my mom cuts in, surprise coating every word, turning them into poison-tipped arrows lodging themselves into my chest.
“It is, Mama. It really is.”
“Then why the sudden decision?”
We’re driving down a winding road now, so as much as I’d love nothing more than to hang my head in shame, I have to keep my eyes ahead. All I can do in the moment to keep my feelings in check is grip the steering wheel just that little bit tighter and count to ten in my head.
Even though the AC is on in the cab, I roll down the window. Bad for the environment, I know, but I find a driver choking on tension and crashing to be just as bad. She doesn’t even sound mad or disappointed, just confused and eager to know my thoughts. Logically, I can compute that, and yet the only thought racing its way from one side of my mind to the other is that she can’t believe that I’d let her down like this.
“Wanda,” my dad mumbles under his breath.
“What?”
I try my best to zone out while they whisper to each other loud enough for me to hear every single word. Dad telling Mom to stop asking questions. Mom asking what’s wrong with asking. My father trying his best but inevitably coming up short. He’s always been the only one able to see when my mind is straying.
She means the best, my mom, she really does, but I’m her golden boy. In her eyes, doing something wrong just isn’t in the cards. Wren has always been a little bit rebellious, but a well-behaved kind, meaning that my parents were always expecting some kind of pushback from her. I was always too afraid to break the rules. Wren was, too, but at least she was smart enough to simply bend them instead. I just couldn’t bring myself to do that, even though I wanted to.
