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His mom’s face changed, blanking out. She didn’t understand. Sydney had been gone for nearly ten years and he hadn’t brought her up. She’d added her to his social media, but she didn’t say a word about it when she did it. She’d never mentioned Syd, because she had enough mom sense to realize how painful that was for him.
“Of course I remember,” she said softly. “She was such a nice girl. It’s too bad she moved away to San Francisco and you guys lost touch. I thought you’d be friends forever.”
“Yeah- well- uh- okay. So- in college, the last day of college actually, we went out to celebrate. We took a taxi home since we lived in the same place. Um… things got a little out of hand. Okay, more than a little.”
His mom’s lips formed into a round O of shock and her eyes went wide. Like, really wide. Wide enough that her whole face looked like eyes. Eyes the size of basketballs.
“Okay, mom, I’m not having that conversation,” Jesse rushed on. “You’re my mom and it’s just too weird. So, don’t even try. It was a mistake, what happened. She packed up and left the next day.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. But the night before- well- after it happened- er- I thought it was pretty good for her even though it was the first time for the both of us and I was-”
“Overconfident?”
Jesse nearly choked. “No! God, mom! I was going to say drunk. I was pretty drunk. I told her that we had a bunch of life to live and this was the start of it all, seeing as we were both graduating, and that if she was still single in ten years, I’d marry her myself.”
“And yesterday was…”
“Her thirty-second birthday.”
“And it’s July. It’s been ten years since you graduated.”
“More than ten years,” Jesse agreed. He watched as the light of understanding finally lit up his mom’s eyes.
“Oh. Oh… Jesse… what have you done?”
“What have I done?” he asked, open-mouthed himself. His eyes were probably bigger than basketballs. “What do you mean? She’s the one who wrote it as her damn status. She was calling me out where everyone could see it.”
“But I’m sure not everyone knew what it meant.”
“No, no one did, but it was up there, flashing like a damn billboard for me to see. What was I supposed to do? Just ignore it?”
“Well… maybe. I- well- it’s been ten years. She’s moved on. You moved on. You both had a lot of life in there and now- now you’re telling me that you’re getting married to someone you really don’t even know anymore?”
Jesse was glad he was sitting down. All the wind rushed out of his sails and damn, those sails had been flapping in the breeze of his ungodly optimism. He was pathetic. That was the truth. Moved on? Fuck, he didn’t even know what that felt like. He still felt like that kindergartener who breathed in the sunshine hair of the girl he was completely enamored with. He couldn’t even conceive of a world without Syd in it. He’d lived that world for ten years. He’d always held out hope that one day Syd might move back, or something might work out somehow. It was a one in a million shot and he knew it, but hey, so had his company taking off.
He’d hoped, when he started getting all the media attention, that Syd might hear about him and give him a call. A text. Reach out on social media, but she’d been radio silent.
Nothing.
For years.
Ten years.
“Look, mom, I know this is crazy. I know what it sounds like, but the truth is-”
“You love her.”
He stared at his mom for so long that the silence got uncomfortable. He stared at her until his eyes dried out and he remembered that he had to actually blink.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’ve known that you’ve been in love with that girl since you were old enough to know what that means. I figured that after she left, you’d either go and get her back one day or you’d stay single for the rest of your life.”
“Mom!”
“What? That’s not a bad thing, honey. I’m just saying. I’m your mother. I know you. You might think you’ve hidden it all these years, but I knew. Your dad even knew. Sam probably knew.”
“No! Not Sam.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell him, if he doesn’t know.”
“He used to call her Skydney.”
“He does it just to bother you. He’s always loved you and I think he feels that because he’s the bigger brother, he had to be something you wanted to live up to. It was a lot of pressure for him.”
Jesse, through some galactic sized miracle, managed to stay quiet and not voice his thoughts about how badly Sam had screwed that up. His mom would only sit there and defend him until she sucked up all the oxygen out of the room and they both got blue in the face from lack of air.
