My brain’s going a million miles an hour, like usual. I should say something supportive. “Mom, how’d you know Dad was quote-unquote the one?”
Whoops. That wasn’t what I had in mind. I wasn’t planning on letting that thought sneak out of my head. But here we are.
She grimaces and waves towards herself. “This.”
“What?”
“I can’t sleep without him.” She gives me a sharp look. “Are you asking because of Errol?”
Caught by surprise, I stammer. “I — we didn’t —” She cuts me off, reaching over to rest a finger on my lips.
“I’m not wrong, am I?”
“No,” I admit. “But I feel like I’m going to screw it up.”
“Why would you think that?”
“What if I’m just on the rebound? I mean, I told him I loved him — and IthoughtI meant it — but what if I’m wrong?” I run a hand through my hair and shake my head at myself. “I don’t want to go all-in on this if my feelings aren’t real. I can’t hurt him —abandon him —again.”
“Is Errol the first…” Mom sounds like she’s picking her words carefully. “Had you been with — dated — men before?”
I shake my head. “Uh-uh. Do you think that’s weird? What did Dad say?”
“You know that both your father and I just want to see you happy.” Her tone is admonishing, like I should have known better than to ask. She’s right. Hadn’t I reassured Errol just a few days ago that my parents wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if I had a boyfriend? Maybe I just needed to hear it.
I realize Mom is studying me as she adds, “And why would I think it’s weird? Attraction isn’t governed by arbitrary societal boundaries.” When I don’t say anything back, she asks, “Is thatwhy you’re worried that you might be on the rebound? Because Errol is different from all your previous partners?”
It’s a damn good question — shuts me up for a solid minute as I think about it. “I don’t think so,” I finally say. “Things feel different with him. But still! It feels really…soonto have these thoughts. I was with Eliza for more than a year. And I never once felt like I do now.”
She sort of laughs. “Honey, it’s only soon if you don’t count the years the two of you were inseparable.”
“But we were just friends!”
There’s a pause before Mom answers. “In a lot of ways, you seemed to treat him as more than a friend. You were always so protective of him.”
I frown. “He needed somebody to look out for him! He got picked on even worse than I did.”
“Picked on? What do you mean?”
Shit. I’ve never told her how bad it got in high school. I don’t want to get into it now, either. But she’s staring at me with her eyes narrowed in a way that I know is the prelude to an interrogation.
“Picked onhow?” Her voice goes up on the last syllable. “Do you mean teased? Or physically bullied? Did anything else happen after that incident with the football player who got suspended?” The questions come in a barrage.
“Yes. Bundy got suspended. But honestly, that just made things worse. He was already on some sort of academic probation. I guess getting suspended was the last straw for the coach. He got kicked off the team permanently. From then on, he had it out for mebad. In his lunkhead brain, it wasmyfault he didn’t spend senior year as the star quarterback and lost his shot at a football scholarship.” I huff out a bitter laugh. “I mean, he would’ve peaked in high school anyway, but he was convinced I ruined his fucking life. And he didn’t let me forget it.”
“Why didn’t you tell us? Your father and I —”
“Couldn’t have done a damn thing,” I interject. I put my elbows on the table and drop my head in my hands as unbidden memories send a rush of that old sense of helplessness through me. I swallow hard, gritting out my words so my voice won’t break. “I got it bad enough as it was. I wasn’t going to be a snitch.”
Technically speaking, Iwasn’ta snitch. But Iwasin more or less of a panic when, right at the beginning of senior year, one of Bundy’s cretin football buddies hauled Errol up by his hoodie for the quarterback to pummel because he fuckingcould. So when I shot my mouth off and told Bundy to pick on somebody his own chicken-legged size —something I knew he was sensitive about —he turned on me in a fury… and had the ill-timed luck to swing a punch that broke my glasses and wound up blackening my eye a split-second before the assistant principalcame around the corner and saw the whole thing go down.
I realize I’m grimacing in the dark when Mom puts her hand on my arm. “Honey, if things were that bad, you should have come to us. We would’ve taken you out of that school.”
I snort. “And what? Put me in a private school? With whose money? It was easier just to keep my head down and remind myself I was going to do something with my life and not be a loser who peaked in high school and blamed everybody else for it.”
“Your father and I would have figured something out.”
“I couldn’t —” It feels so obvious to me now as an adult. I say the thought I never put into words —not even in my own head —as a teenager. “I couldn’t leave Errol behind.”
