“Thank you. I’m sorry for snapping at you. I was just hoping you would be a little more excited.”
That almost made me laugh. I don’t think she cared how I felt. “Let me know if you need anything.”
We talked for a few more minutes before I ended the call. I set my phone down on my nightstand, wishing I had gone with my gut and not answered.
I sat down at my vanity and reached for my curling iron. I needed to focus on getting ready, not let her get into my head. Which always seemed to happen when I talked to her.
The bartender slidour drinks across the polished wood counter. The bar buzzed around us.
Ember tucked the cocktail menu back in the holder. “So, you never said how you feel about your mom getting married again.”
I moved the ice cubes around in my drink, which were mostly melted. It wasn’t that I was upset and wanted her miserable. She deserved to be happy, but this news was just another reminder that life kept moving forward while mine felt like it was at a standstill.
“I think it just caught me off guard.”
“How long has she been dating him?”
“Seeing that she’s only been divorced from Pat for eight months, it can’t be that long.”
“A few months?” Ember blinked. “Okay, I’m going to say this the nicest way I can, because you’re my friend and I love you, but your mom treats marriage like I treat my streaming subscriptions.”
I laughed because I knew she wasn’t trying to be harsh. She was aware of how exhausting it was watching my mom jump headfirst into these relationships while I was still trying to make peace with everything.
“Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m upset about. It’s not like I expect her to stay alone forever. The thing that bugs me the most is that she keeps moving on, making things look easy. It makes me feel like I’m not doing something right.”
“Here’s the thing, you’re allowed to have mixed feelings about all this. But let me be clear: you’re not doing anything wrong. You are moving through life at your own pace, and shame on her for making you question that.”
“She does know how to make me feel bad.”
Ember groaned. “You realize that’s ridiculous, right?”
“I do, but it’s hard to measure up to a woman who saves lives for a living as opposed to me, who writes about football.”
I hated how defensive and insecure I sounded. But that was usually how I felt after one of our phone calls.
“You are an award-winning sports journalist,” she corrected.
“I know, and I love my job. It’s just that every time I talk to her, I somehow feel like I’m fifteen years old again.”
Somehow, every conversation left me second-guessing the life I’d built. As if I had chosen the wrong path and was wasting my talent. My dad had never made me feel that way. If anything, he used to brag to all his friends and tell anyone he came into contact with that I was the best journalist the sporting world had ever seen.
I laughed, just thinking about it.
“You’re human, Becca. And you need to stop letting your mom get inside your head. Your mom picked a profession where she gets to be a hero every day. Good for her. But that doesn’t make what you do mean any less. You work hard. You make these players sound human. You report news that people want to hear, and you’re pretty fucking good at it, too. I think your mom has impossible standards for everything she does. She doesn’t know how to tell you how proud she is, so she does what she does best. She compares, she judges, and critiques.”
“You’re right,” I said quietly. “The thing is that my dad used to balance her out. He made her softer somehow. After he died, things just got harder.”
My dad loved my mom. She could be uptight and drove him crazy, but he accepted her for who she was. He was like that with everyone he met. Always looking for the good in everyone.
Now, my mom and I don’t even know how to talk to each other. It was as if the grief had changed us, and neither one of us knew where we belonged anymore.
“Your mom is better at fixing people than she is with feelings.”
“Maybe this guy will be what she needs,” I said, even though I doubted that would happen.
Ember took a slow sip of her wine, studying me over the rim of her glass. “How about we talk about something more fun, like a six-foot-two hot football player? How’s the one-on-one going?”
I took a sip of my drink and set it down. “It’s fine.”
