“Magnolia,” I said, “I owe you an apology for the past. For my actions after my mom was fired.”
She pulled her legs up onto her chair and hugged them, her eyes locked on me.
“I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions,” I continued. “For thinking you were the one accusing her. For shutting you out.” I swallowed hard, ashamed of how stupid my reaction had been. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust that the Magnolia I was getting to know was the real you.” I shook my head, regret flooding me, making it hard to keep talking.
“I’ve been pissed at you all week because I told you everything—more than my friends know, even—and then you just left. This doesn’t change the past, but it helps.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I fucked up big-time. In high school, I mean. Maybe last week too, but I was bowled over by everything you told me. It took some time for everything to sink in.”
“I do understand that.”
“I was an idiot back then,” I admitted. “I’d like to kick my seventeen-year-old self’s ass.”
“I’d like to help you kick your seventeen-year-old self’s ass.” She didn’t smile when she said it.
“Regret is a bitch.” My voice came out thick with emotion.
“Yes, well, you can’t change the past,” she said. “But I do appreciate the apology.”
Her tone seemed dismissive, but I wasn’t ready to walk away just yet. Was it just the regret talking? Making me want to try to smooth things over? I knew that wasn’t possible, but I couldn’t make myself get up and leave.
“Have you heard from your mom since she told you everything?”
She shook her head. “She’s…going through some things. She was just diagnosed with cancer. That’s what provoked her to tell me everything. And no, I’m not making excuses for her. I’m not waiting around for her to call. I don’t know what she’ll do. I might never hear from her again.”
“Would you be okay with that?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” She grasped her legs tighter and shrugged. “It’s not like we could ever have a good relationship. Not after everything that’s happened. I do have her number, so I could call her if I want to, but I don’t know. I’m still processing everything too, even though I’ve spun it all through my head a thousand times.”
“It sounds like it was a lot. I mean, a lot doesn’t begin to touch it. Just what you told me about the battle between her and her husband…” I shook my head. “Sorry to say it’s like an over-the-top TV drama.”
“I had the same thought.” Magnolia shifted her legs to one side and ran her hands up her arms, like she was hugging herself again. She gazed off at nothing, her expression deeply troubled, tinged with sadness.
I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but I had a strong urge to pull her into my arms and comfort her. That would likely get me shoved away. She didn’t want solace from me. I understood why, but my brain seemed to be confusing the past with the present, mixing the reality of now with how it’d been between us before her ring had gone missing. The good times, when our connection was crackling with potential and hope.
I clenched my hands together to try to ground myself fully in the here and now.
“Part of me is stunned by the hateful games she admitted to,” she said. “Part of me is thinking, yes, that sounds about right. That’s exactly the house I grew up in.”
“No child should be subjected to that kind of home life.”
“Lots of people have it so much worse than I did, honestly.”
“That doesn’t make it less awful.”
She nodded. “Nobody else knows how it really was. I tried to hide it from everyone. It wasn’t like they were beating me or locking me in the basement, you know?”
“Just playing devious head games, using you to hurt each other. That’s fucked up, Mags.”
Her gaze shot to mine. Only then did I realize what I’d called her. Mags. That was what I used to call her. It spoke of a better, closer relationship than what we currently shared.
Instead of apologizing, I carried on. “What are you going to do? Have you talked to your—to Felix? Called him out? Asked him why the hell he accused my mother of something he knew damn well she didn’t do?”
She laughed, but it was hollow. “He wouldn’t let me in the door if I tried. I’m dead to him.”
I narrowed my eyes, hoping karma would come along and clock that fucker.
“I thought about doing a tell-all on the Tattler,” she said, a hint of a real grin curving her lips. “Apparently he’s mortified by his inability to have children.”
