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“Not just any vacation, Mom.” I beam at her. “A cruise!”
“A… cruise,” she repeats, sounding a bit dismayed.
I nod. “It’ll be a great way for us both to relax and mentally prepare for the next stage of our lives. You and I both aren’t going to be the same anymore. We’re off on new adventures. You’re leaving your asshole of a husband, and don’t look at me like that. He might be my father, but that doesn’t mean that I’m lying. He’s an asshole, and you’ll be so much better off without him. You can do this, Mom, but let’s take it one step at a time, okay? We’ll take a cruise. We’ll enjoy the sun and swim and relax and drink…”
“You aren’t twenty-one.”
“The legal age in Mexico…” I wave my hand. “Fine. You don’t want me to drink? I won’t drink. That’s not the point of the trip. We’re going to come out of this on top, Mom. You’ll see. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
“That’s what they say, yes,” she says dryly.
“I know I’m throwing a lot at you,” I say as I reach over and open her straw and shove it into her lemonade. “Just think about it. We can have the time of our lives. You and me, we’re a team, and I refuse to let you wallow anymore.”
“I’m not wallowing,” she protests.
I snort. “Eat your burger.”
“I don’t even know why I got it,” she mumbles. “I don’t like burgers all that much.”
Wordlessly, I pass her my chicken sandwich and take her burger. I had a feeling she would’ve said the same thing about a chicken sandwich if she had ordered that instead, which was why I made sure to order the opposite.
I pick up my sandwich but make a point of staring my mom down until she takes a bite of her new sandwich. Her grin is small, but I’m so happy to see it.
“Things are more than a little crazy right now,” she murmurs around her bite.
I laugh. “Queen of the Understatement!”
“I just… Running away…”
“Mom, I bet you anything that Erika wished her mom would’ve run away,” I murmur.
"True. The last thing I want is for you and Kyle to be left orphaned."
“Technically, orphans are kids younger than eighteen,” I point out.
“I don’t want the two of you to have no parents,” she says, giving me that patented mom glare.
"Good. So you agree then? Cruise time? Don't worry. Since we're booking last minute, the prices are amazing. They're desperate to fill the ship before it leaves the port, and we can hop on the ship right in Galveston. Western Caribbean is what I've been looking at mostly, but there are also Caribbean islands that we could hop from. One ends in Florida, though, so that's out unless you would want to fly from Florida to Europe somewhere?"
“Don’t get your hopes up,” she retorts. “What would you do?”
“Book myself a flight back to Texas,” I say easily.
“Flights aren’t cheap.”
“No, but you could just book a flight to wherever is cheapest in Europe and then take the train or public transportation to go wherever you want. The public transportation system is supposed to be so much better over there than here in the US.”
She shakes her head. “You really won’t let this go, will you?”
“Right now, I’m just worried about the cruise. If you’ll just agree, then when we head back to the hotel, we can settle on which one. The island ones tend to be longer. The most we can do is twelve days.”
“Twelve days!”
“Just think about it. Who knows? Maybe you’ll fall in love with an island and move there. That could work instead of Europe.” I wink at her.
“I am not going to move to an island!”
“Why not?”
