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“That’s the truth,” Mom says and looks back at Sophia. “How are you holding up, dear?”
“Um,” Sophia says again. I feel as if I should’ve better prepared her for this, but like everything else in the last week, she’s just jumped into the pool without a life jacket.
Good thing Sophia can hold her own when it comes time to swim. “Very well, actually,” she says. “Your son is a wonderful man.”
Despite her sunken features, Mom manages to waggle her eyebrows. “And have you two been considering the future?”
“Mom,” I warn. I want her to ask this, but if I don’t protest a little, she might suspect that something’s up. “We haven’t been dating for terribly long.”
Sophia looks at me, and there’s a light in her eyes despite the darkness of the room. “I’m holding out hope,” she says.
Mom squeezes her hand. “God bless you, dear,” she says, and this time, she smiles for real.
And while this should be everything I want—my mom smiling, my hand in Sophia’s, her beaming over the idea that this might be getting serious—my heart still sinks.
It’s not real. Our relationship is platonic, like roommates who enjoy each other’s company. I know it’s unreasonable to expect that it’d develop into more within a week, but I worry that this is it, that we’ve hit the limit, and this is all we’ll ever have.
It’s that same barrier that I’ve felt with other women I’ve dated. They always seemed to want more from me—more than sex and companionship and a dating relationship. In the past, I’ve been left wondering what else it was that they wanted from me that was so worth leaving a good thing for.
Now I understand what they all told me.
Love.
That’s what they wanted.
Not that I didn’t tell a few of them that I felt that way, but in the end, they always knew I didn’t mean it. I look over at Sophia, and she smiles at me, a soft smile that melts a little corner of my heart. And for the first time, I want to mean it, I want to love someone and have her love me. I don’t want this to be some arrangement we’re both comfortable with, some transaction out of which we both get what we need.
With her, I want so much more than that.
I want everything we’re showing my mother to be real.
7
Sophia
There’s only so much to do in Hunter’s house before I start to feel like I’m trapped in some kind of eternal waiting room. I remember when my mother was alive, talking about how nice it would be to have endless free time, not to have to work or worry about bills.
Now I know the truth. Endless free time is exceptionally boring, and there are only so many books I can read, so many videos I can watch, so many miles on the treadmill I can walk, and only so many times I can try to make up silly chores to do in Hunter’s already well-kept house.
Even Cocoa can only run back and forth with the branch so many times before she collapses at my feet, panting and looking up at me like she wants me to know she’ll catch the branch if I throw it, but she’d really prefer I just forgot about the game altogether.
It’s quiet, both in the house and in the woods. I never realized how noisy a city is—the cars, the horns, the chatter of people—until all those sounds suddenly fall away. There are birds here, of course, and chattering squirrels, but even the larger animals—the deer and, apparently, the moose—drift through the woods making hardly a sound.
I have lots of time to consider whether I regret coming here, and I decide that I don’t. I like Hunter, and that kiss in the woods still haunts me, like a promise of what might be. He’s kind and gentle and very respectful, and at mealtimes and in the evenings when he’s finished with work, we sit for hours, talking about nothing in particular. It’s comfortable. Lovely, in fact. I find myself hoping that there’s more to it than friendship, on both of our parts, though he hasn’t done anything to encourage me to think that since that day in the woods.
I try not to think about the fact that we only have two and a half weeks left to decide.
To distract from these thoughts, I decide that it’s worth learning to drive Hunter’s truck down the bumpy dirt road just to have a daily excursion to the mailbox to take care of. I load Cocoa into the truck and down the road we go—I’m still driving slower than Hunter drives, and Cocoa lies on the floor the entire time, but at least it’s narrow enough that I don’t have to worry about driving on the wrong side of the road.
The wrong side of the car is confusing enough.
Today in the mail, Cocoa and I find two dog toys I ordered last week—Hunter seems happy to let me buy whatever I want, but I have demanded that he give me a budget to adhere to because I don’t ever want to overstep. So far most of the things I’ve bought have either been books to read or little things for the house, but Cocoa has been such excellent company that I thought she deserved a treat.
One of the toys is a flexible ball with a hole down the middle for stuffing with peanut butter or dog treats. I fill it with some of the treat paste that came with it and let Cocoa gnaw on it all the way back up the road to the house.
The other, which I hide from her until we arrive, is a bright green tennis ball. Not that branches don’t make for great chasing toys, but I’m getting a bit tired of having my arms scratched all to hell when she decides to wrench them away at the last moment and play chase instead of fetch.
I park the truck, and we climb out, and then I unwrap the ball. Cocoa’s eyes are riveted to it. Hunter says she doesn’t have any now, but she’s clearly seen one before, or else dogs have been so evolutionarily groomed to chase tennis balls that the memory passes through generations.
