“Old times like when we’d come home drunk? Sneak girlsinto the attic bedroom? Smoke behind the pool house and set the trellis on fire?”
“Oh, lord.” She laughs. “I forgot I didn’t have a strand of gray hair until you joined the family.”
“Come on, Minnie, you’ll never have a gray hair in your life.”
“Not that the sky will ever see.” She sits down on my bed and crosses her legs. “You all right, honey?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Because until today, the only time I saw Cameron outtalk you at the table was when you were coming off a concussion. He wasn’t kidding about your broken heart, was he?”
“I guess not.”
“What came between you and this girl of yours?”
“She was going one way and I was going the other.”
“Of course. That’s how all relationships end ... except the ones that don’t.” She gives me a meaningful look.
“Uh . . . translation?”
She sighs dreamily. “Oh, I don’t know. I was never great at love. But I know if I had a man who loved me, I wouldn’t abide him turning tail just because things got a little rocky. Are you trying to work it out with her?”
“Can’t say I’ve really tried,” I admit. “But I’m not sure she wants that. I’m not even sure I know how. I don’t have answers when it comes to me and her.”
“Do you love her?”
I nod.
“Do you think she loves you?”
I think about Jade up on that rooftop, looking down at me. The way she showed up for me in that simple way that only she could understand meant the entire world to me. I remember the way she used to look at me, those too-short moments when she forgot she was supposed to appear indestructible at all times and she lost herself in watching me. “Yeah,” I say.
“Well, there it is.”
“There’s what?”
“Your answer. You found love, so now you hold on to it, darling.”
“She won’t tell me she loves me. She won’t tell me anything.”
“And yet you know she does. How did she manage that?”
Touché. “So it’s all on me? I have to fight for her and she just gets to sit there and say yes or no?”
“Looks like it.”
“What a bunch of bullshit.”
“I know you’re used to winning. On the field, it all comes easy to you, but love’s not like that.” She smooths out the bedspread with a manicured hand. “You’re going to be lonely the rest of your life if you expect love to play out like a game of football.”
“I didn’t expect it to. I didn’t expect it at all, really. I was trying to stay as far away from a relationship as possible.”
“In that case, thank your lucky stars it found you. Now you better fight like hell to keep it.”
A wave of exhaustion moves through me. “I thought when a relationship was right, it would come easy. That if you have to fight too hard, it wasn’t meant to be.”
Minnie shrugs like she doesn’t have the answer, but the light in her eyes tells me otherwise. “Only you can say whether this girl is worth fighting for. But if you want real love, you have to be willing not just to fight for it but to lose it altogether—to know you might end up heartbroken and alone, but that you did everything in your power to give your heart what it needs. That you didn’t just sit around waiting for love to happen to you.”
