Page 80 of Josephine and Clay

Still, the words come anyway. “Like enough.”

Mom sits down across from me, slower than she used to, hands folding together on the table. “Clay.”

I keep peeling the same peach long after there’s no skin left to take off.

“You were always enough,” she says.

“No offense, but mothers are legally required to say that.”

“I’m not talking as your mother.”

“That would be a first.”

Her eyes flash. “Watch yourself.”

I drop the knife onto the table. “See? That. That right there. Boone can do no wrong because he stayed. Dallas keeps everything neat and quiet. Nash charms his way through life, and people laugh. Me? I’m the one everybody braces for.”

“That's not true.”

“It is.”

“It isn’t,” she says, sharper now. “You’ve been determined to cast yourself as the outsider for so long you don’t even hear us anymore.”

I push back from the table a little, pulse starting to pound. “Maybe because I’m tired of hearing everybody tell me I’m misunderstood when I’m standing right here being exactly who they think I am.”

“And who is that?”

I gesture helplessly. “The screwup. The one who leaves. The one who can’t be counted on.”

Mom stares at me, and I almost wish she’d yell. “You're my son. That’s who you are.”

The anger in me has nowhere clean to go, so it just keeps burning. “That’s not enough.”

Her face closes up in a way I hate seeing.

I drag a hand over my mouth and look down at the ruined peach in front of me. “I didn’t mean…”

“Yes, you did.” She stands, gathering up the peeled fruit and carrying it to the counter. “You just haven’t thought through how ugly it sounds.”

Shame crawls hot under my skin.

I hate this.

Hate the way every conversation lately is a fence I don’t see until I’ve already run straight through it.

Mom slides peaches into jars, spine straight, movements precise again. After a long minute she says, “Your father used to think if he pushed hard enough, he could shape you into staying.”

I go still.

“I told him all it’d do was make you run faster.”

I don’t say anything.

Couldn’t if I tried.

She keeps her back to me. “You and he were too much alike in some ways. Too stubborn. Too proud. Neither one of you knew how to speak plain when it mattered.”

My throat tightens unexpectedly.