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The usual onslaught of texts, voicemails and emails downloaded.
But there were only two that caught his eye.
The texts from Elsa.
And a voicemail from his mother.
He was surprised to hear from Sam. Their relationship had always been rocky, but it was mostly non-existent after she pulled that shit on the Elsa Exchange.
He decided to get the worst out of the way and listened to Sam’s voicemail.
“I hear two things,” she said, her tone even on voicemail snide. “My son is coming home soon, and I didn’t know about it, per usual. And he’s dating someone, and I didn’t know about that either. If you could manage to carve out some time to visit your mother, Hale, it’d be appreciated. I mean, really, isn’t it time we moved beyond you being angry with me?”
He deleted that voicemail even as he reflected on her question, because it had now been years since she sat down with Elsa to skewer his dead father and throw Tom under the bus along with him.
It wasn’t right what she did. It wasn’t nice. She and his dad had been over for nearly three decades by then, so her holding that grudge also meant she had no excuse to do any of it. And Tom and Genny certainly didn’t deserve it.
But he wanted to be the bigger man.
He should forgive.
Then again, her tone didn’t sound remorseful. It was its normal pugnacious.
Hale sucked back some of his drink, put the glass on the bar, his fingers still wrapped around it, and then he went still as a memory assailed him.
His hand around his glass.
Back home with his dad the summer between his junior and senior years of college.
They were accidentally sharing a meal because Corey came home unexpectedly, Hale was grilling a steak and making Hasselback potatoes, and it would be rude if he didn’t cook for his father too.
They were out on his dad’s balcony. It was after dinner. Hale was having a beer he’d poured into a glass. And he’d also been lulled into an uncommon moment of camaraderie between them, because somehow he’d found himself sharing how he would soon be breaking up with his girlfriend of six months not only because she’d gotten too clingy, but because, when he asked her to back off, clingy had turned bitchy.
Even though he knew it had to end, he obviously liked her, since he’d been with her so long.
But he didn’t know how to end it without being a dick.
“Don’t get caught in that trap, Hale,” Corey had told him. “This girl, you don’t owe her anything. You didn’t make promises. You didn’t put a ring on her finger. You didn’t share decades of your life with her only to cut her loose when you were done. You told her you want time to devote to your studies, to spend with your friends with her not around. She refused to grant you these standard concessions. You aren’t asking the impossible.”
“I know, Dad. I also know, since she seems to think that’s asking too much, and she’s obviously more into me than I am her, me breaking it off isn’t going to go well. And that pisses me off. But I’ll have to live with how I act, and I want to be the bigger man.”
It was then, Corey looked him straight in the eye and said, “That bigger man shit is overrated. You look out for number one. I’m not saying you have carte blanche to shit on everyone just because you can. You’re not going to act like an ass. I know my son. You’ll do your best to let her down easy. But it isn’t up to you to bend over backwards to make something that’s hard on you easy on her. The reason you’re ending it is her behavior, not yours. So in this instance, why is it on you to be the bigger man?”
It had made sense then.
And in regard to his mother, it made sense now.
Brandi sent Sam birthday and Christmas presents, Mother’s Day flowers. She’d also mailed notes of thanks he’d handwritten for what his mother sent him.
But since they had the blowout confrontation after she sat down with Elsa years ago, he hadn’t seen her.
She had never been a good mother.
Was it on him to be the bigger man?
This was something he had to think about, maybe talk to Tom about, perhaps mention to Elsa, though she had her own mom issues she was dealing with, so maybe not.
And on that thought, he went to her text, thinking it’d be like her others, which were often TikToks she found cute or hilarious (and so did he), or pictures she took of New York in spring (she seriously loved that city)—a flowering tree in bloom, newly planted window boxes—or selfies of her out with Fliss and her other friend Carole.
