I laugh and shake my head, even though I should correct her, because for far too long I have been exactly that kind of woman. Somehow, though, I have a feeling that I won’t be for much longer.
IT’S BEEN three weeks since I’ve returned home from Virginia, and nearly everything about my hometown feels different to me since I’ve been back. It’s too bright, it’s too hot, it’s too…everything. Something shifted in me while I was away, and I’m not sure if anything will ever be the way it used to be. Is that a good thing? Is it bad?
Regardless, it doesn’t take me too long to get back into the bland, boring routine of my everyday life here. Every morning I wake up, turn on my computer, and I work until late in the evening. Some people (like Gabby) might call it avoidance, but I call it drive. The more clients I have, the more money I’ll make. The more time I won’t have to dwell on all the ways I know I’m messing up my life.
My mother comes home every night and makes me dinner like I’m still a child. I hate it, but I can’t make myself leave. I’m stuck in this strange holding pattern that I can’t get out of—or won’t get out of—and it’s the most uncomfortable and maddening thing I’ve ever experienced. I hang out with Ben and Gabby a few times after they get back from their honeymoon, and I can tell that they both want to call me out on my jackassery, but they’re not quite willing to do that yet. Maybe there’s a waiting period for calling your friend out on being an idiot. Because the more I think about it, the more I think maybe I was being—am being—an idiot when it comes to him.
When it comes to Nate. I don’t really let myself think of his name that often, because those four letters are what seems to send me into a tailspin of self-pity. Not the thought of his beautiful, smiling face. Not the thought of the way he touched me. Just his name.
It’s not until my mother catches me looking at the wedding photos that Gabby emailed me earlier in the day that she finally broaches the subject. She knows something’s been bothering me since I’ve been back, and she’s enough of a mind-reader that she probably knows it’s a guy. She’s always been over-the-top with her motherly intuition, which is completely maddening (and helpful) at times.
It’s a candid shot that does me in, one of me and Nate dancing, smiling at each other. He’d just said something funny—I can’t remember what it was—and I was looking at him like he was my sun, moon and stars. If I wasn’t one of the people in that photo, I would’ve guessed the two of them were very much in love. Maybe we are, and I just need to let myself feel it, I don’t know. What I do know is that looking at this picture makes my chest ache, makes it difficult for me to breathe. I had him right there within reach, and then I willingly let go.
“Is that him?” Mom asks, casually swiping a dishtowel across the kitchen counter.
“Who?” I reply, no doubt setting off her overactive bullshit detector.
She sighs. “The one who’s got you looking like the world stopped making sense.”
“He’s not the one who made me look like this,” I tell her. My mother looks at me in a way that is uniquely hers. She knows me as only a mother can; she can see all the little idiosyncrasies that make me…well, me. She knows me right down to my bones, which makes hiding things from her particularly impossible, but I’m telling her the truth this time. “I’m the one who made myself look like this, Mom, although he does have something to do with it.”
She tosses the dishtowel on the counter, pulls out the chair next to mine, and sits down.
“His name is Nate,” I tell her.
That’s all I say, and my mom’s eyes widen, waiting for more information. Information that I’m not sure I want to give to her. “How’d you meet?”
Of course she’d ask me that. Of course she would.
I sigh. “I don’t want to tell you that.” I realize immediately that I should’ve just made up a story, but I can’t lie to her. I never could.
“Why not?”
The question hangs in the air around us for a few seconds before I finally answer. “Because I’m afraid you’ll think less of me.”
“Impossible.” She says that word with such conviction that I’m sure she’s right.
“I met him at the airport on my way to Gabby’s wedding. There was a weather delay, and we…spent it together.” I don’t really want to elaborate, but my mom’s a smart woman; she understands what it is that I’m not telling her.
“Oh.”
“I didn’t think I’d see him again, which…yeah, I guess doesn’t make this sound any better. I just…I wanted to put something, someone between Ethan and me.”
Mom nods slowly, taking all of this in. “Why was he at the wedding?”
“Turns out he’s Ben’s brother.”
Mom’s not as shocked about this development as I would’ve thought she’d be. Instead of offering me a reply, she just looks at the picture, and a soft smile pulls at her lips. “You love him,” she says.
“I only knew him a week.” I don’t even try to deny what she said, because what’s the point?
“If you feel it, you feel it, Cal,” she says, squeezing my hand. “What difference does it make how long it takes?”
“Nate said the exact same thing.”
“He sounds like a smart guy,” she replies, smiling.
“How can I trust it?” I ask.
“Why is a love you feel right away more trustworthy than the one that takes time to grow?”
“Because that love is rooted in something,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t be worried about waking up one morning and not feeling it anymore.”
“Love is love, Cal. It’s not about how long it takes you to feel it, it’s about how much effort you put into it to make it last. Don’t act like it’s something that just happens. It’s something that you have to nurture.”
I sit back in my chair and think about what she just said. My relationship with Ethan fell apart because he wasn’t willing to nurture what we had. If I’m honest with myself, it started to die long before the cheating. But did I nurture it, or did I treat it like something that was just a given once it happened? I liked being with him, I put effort into that, but what did I do to make our love grow? Did I do anything to give it roots? I had list of things that I thought should happen once Ethan and I started dating. We’d get serious, move in together, get married, have children, and then spend the rest of our lives together. But I wasn’t really investing in a life with him, I was checking off a list. I’m not to blame for the way the relationship ended, but I am to blame for not putting more into it. Although now I’m beginning to realize that may be a blessing in disguise.
Maybe Nate was right. Maybe I needed to be with a person who didn’t fit in order to learn the lessons I needed to learn to find the person who does fit.
“I barely know him,” I say, voicing the one niggling concern that pulls at me, stops that bud of feelings I have for Nate from fully blossoming.
“So get to know him,” Mom says like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Maybe it is.
“Is that what you did with my father?” I ask.
Mom knows exactly what I’m getting at.
“Your father was an adventure,” she says a bit wistfully.
“An ugly one.”
Removing her hand from mine, she reaches over and touches my cheek. “Not so much.”
“You don’t regret it?” I ask, wondering how she possibly couldn’t. He left us alone, how could she not hate him for that?
“Not for a second,” she replies. “It was a learning experience. Besides, he gave me you.”