Now we were getting to the good stuff.
“What brought you back?”
She sat back and stared out the window at the passersby. I watched her think about the answer.
“I don’t really know. I hadn’t been able to really put down roots or feel like home anywhere else and one day I just kind of wondered why not? It’s also a lot cheaper here than anywhere else I’d thought of.”
Wanting to keep the focus on her, I asked her what else she was doing for work, as if I hadn’t been stalking her social media under a burner account for the past few years. It was one thing to read it online and another to hear her talk about things herself.
Once she opened up a little, she relaxed, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“But what areyoudoing? I feel like I’m only talking about myself.” Her cheeks flushed and she looked down.
“Another matcha?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Are you avoiding any questions about yourself? Do you actually need an alibi?”
The question made me burst out laughing so loud that a few people nearby gave me dirty looks.
“No. I don’t need an alibi. I’m just enjoying hearing about you.” Her cheeks flushed a deeper pink and I smiled to myself in satisfaction.
She was gorgeous when she blushed.
“We literally haven’t been in touch for years. You could have reached out before now,” she said.
Her fingers traced a scratch on the table. “So could you.”
It was one of those things where the longer you didn’t speak, the harder it became to reach out. To crack that barrier between us and make the first move at reconnecting.
“I thought about it. But I didn’t want to bring up the past if you didn’t want to revisit it.” The divorce hadn’t been traumatic for me. I’d expected it, of course. There was no way that my mother was going to stay with that man. She didn’t want to stay with any man, but they didn’t know that. She was very good at making men believe what she wanted them to.
“I assumed you just didn’t care.”
Ouch. I deserved that.
“I told myself I didn’t. It was easier, you know?” Opening yourself up meant that you could get hurt. Getting to know people meant that it would suck when my mother would get another divorce and move me somewhere else. A new town, a new man, a new life, and she’d pretend that the previous ones never existed. The only life we had was the one we lived right now.
Lea nodded. “That makes sense. But you could have—” she stopped herself and then shook her head. “I don’t want to relitigate the past. There’s no point.”
I didn’t necessarily agree with that, but if she wanted to drop it, we could.
“Of course. You probably had other plans today and I just hijacked your time. Thanks for hearing me out and agreeing. Let me know if I can help you pick out a dress or anything.”
At least she’d get to wear what she wanted. My mother had already sent me the dress I was required to wear. She’d learned from past experience.
At the wedding when she’d married Lea’s father, I’d shown up wearing a ripped shirt and a bikini top underneath and the shortest shorts I could find. She’d held out the dress she’d picked for me, covered in hibiscus flowers and told me I could put it on, or she’d send me to a private military school. It was a threat she kept fresh in my mind by leaving brochures from various programs around the house and every now and then making a phone call and making sure I heard her side of it.
Lea looked like she wanted to leave, but instead of getting up, she said, “Can I ask you a question?”
I nodded. “Go ahead.”
“If you’re so against it, why are you going? You could just not show up.”
Fair question. “You’re right. I could. Not going would really piss her off. It would confirm all of her beliefs about me. That I’m ungrateful, that I’m a bad daughter, that she is the victim of everything I do. But it’s far better to go and be who I want and put the onus on her to kick me out. Go ahead. Throw me out in front of all the people you are so desperate to impress. I want her to do it in public. If I don’t go, then she gets the last word.”
Revenge was best served face-to-face.
I hadn’t meant to make a big speech about it, but here I was. Being around her was making me loose lipped.
