She sighs. “What did you do? Why didn’t you tell her about your gym?”
“I’m not good for her,” I finally whisper, admitting it to myself and my mother and everyone walking around Brooklyn.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she bursts out angrily.
“I can’t take myself seriously. I’m a gigantic fuck-head himbo. I’m?—”
“Did she say that to you?”
I think about it. Of course she hasn’t. “No. But everyone else has. My entire life, everyone else has. With my job, with my relationships with women. I can’t do that to her. She’s the best, smartest, most successful person I know. I can’t bring her down.”
Mom is silent for a while. “I’m sorry that you feel that way, Elias, but that’s not true, at least for me. I can’t speak for other people, the Roberts or your friends or whoever is saying that crap, but I have to ask. What does it have to do with Mia, if Mia doesn’t think that?”
I’m silent, digesting.
“Do you think that about yourself?”
“Yes,” I say automatically. “Well, no,” I amend, after thinking about all the events of this past month.You’re, like, annoyingly competent at existing. Your gym is already legit, Elias.“I guess… Mia’s… She’s the only person who’s made me not think that.”
“Then there you go.”
I scrub my face.
“There’s another thing, Elias. If you’re turning her down because you have this irrational fear of not being good enough for her, even when she has told you otherwise, then you’re doing what everyone else has been doing to her for her entire life. Everything you both hate, and that you’re both afraid of. You’re dismissing her, just like everyone else does. Dismissing her opinions and thoughts and feelings as not as true as yours.”
My heart drops. “Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
We’re silent as I watch people walking by.
“So what are you gonna do about it?” Mom finally asks.
“I can’t… I mean… it’s not like I can just find her and apologize for being a fuck-head and tell her I love her.”
“What did you just say?”
“I can’t just find her and?—”
“Elias, think about what you just said, please.”
I do. “I… can do that? I should do that,” I say with a shaky conviction.
“People have an extraordinary capacity to forgive the gigantic fuck-head himbos in their lives,” she says with confidence. “Especially the ones that they love.”
“I… but what do I do about Leo? He’s my best friend. He’s pissed at me, too, after he found out what I did. He punched me in the face. I have a giant black eye to prove it.”
“That sort of seems like an extreme reaction for someone who’s been essentially your brother your entire life… but maybe it’s because of that that it isn’t,” she says.
“Huh?”
“I don’t know, honey. But talk to him, too. Make him see you.”See me, her voice says in my head. “Tell him the same exact thing you tell Mia. Have a mature conversation instead of keeping secrets and throwing punches.”
I exhale loudly. “Wow, Mom.”
“I know, right? I’ve been around long enough to know that you should fight for the relationships that matter,” she says. “But anyway, why are you still on the phone with me? Go get her. I’ve been planning your wedding for years.”
What matters to Mia right now? What is significant? It’s probably not you anymore. So what could it be?
