Page 63 of The Difference Between

I slip into the thick summer night air.

Seventeen

Mom stirs when I sit next to her on the couch. Her hair is back, and her surgical scar exposed, faintly illuminated by the lone lit lamp in the room.

“Well?” she asks.

“He had a nose that would make an elephant jealous.”

Mom could have had her entire brain removed and she’d still know I’d find that unacceptable. “Thank God for small favors.”

“Your future grandchild doesn’t like your attitude.” I drop my head back onto the couch and look at the ceiling, Mom’s patchouli fragrance settling over me.

“It’s a ridiculous plan, Reese,” she says. “You know it, and I know it.”

“Did you give Rue and Remy this same motherly love when they got pregnant?”

“Here we go,” she huffs. “That’s not what I said. If you want to be a mom, you’ll be a damn good one. Aside from the fact you’re trying to manufacture a human by illegally hunting donors like prey, your reasons are absurd.”

“I knew helping you wasn’t a good enough reason to come back here.”

At this, she laughs fully. “You know what I mean. You work a thousand hours a week”—I’m proud of myself for not correcting her math—“at a job I’m not sure if you like, and⁠—”

“Who said I don’t like my job?”

“—and you live in a city I’m not sure you like.”

“Everyone loves Chicago!”

“And you’re lonely.”

I scoff. “I’m not lonely.” I sure as shit felt lonely when I walked out of that bar. “I’m bored because I’m not working and you’re a pain in the ass.”

“You’re bored because you don’t share your life with anybody. Why you’re so hellbent on making this baby—misguided as it is. You want someone to love.”

“I want a baby to love,” I correct her, dragging a granny square blanket off the back of the couch and draping it over our laps. “And I saw Gavin.”

Her “Ahhh” sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

“Don’t ahhh me.” I rake my hands through my hair. “He’s distracting.”

She chuckles. “Things you can’t fit into a box typically are. And—don’t give me that look, you know I’m right. You like him but he wears work boots.”

“I don’t care that he wears work boots,” I defend.

She pins me with a yes you do look.

“So what if I do care? What’s wrong with wanting to be with someone who’s driven and aspires to be excellent?”

“You are your father’s child,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “You can’t handle the thought of someone being happy without a fraction of your money while you’re counting your coins and trying to make a baby like a robot.”

“Rude.” To my belly I say, “But you’re my little robot.”

Mom makes an incredulous noise. “What about the vineyard?”

“What about it?”

“How’d you get your firm to agree to it after they sent you here to slow down?”