“I really,reallykissed him. And Ben got upset with himself, and it was terrible, and now he’s not talking to me.”
“Oh, no,” Alexis whispered.
“That about sums it up. I’m an idiot.”
My mom left her armchair and squeezed between me and Alexis on the couch. She brushed the hair off my forehead, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see she was doing the same to Alexis. Her fingers were cool and soft, the skin of her hands almost paper-thin. I closed my eyes and couldn’t imagine anywhere I’d rather be.
“Neither of my daughters are idiots.”
“Hey, no one said anything about me,” Alexis protested.
Mom stroked my forehead. “Lee, why did you think you were only attracted to Ben because he was off-limits? Couldn’t you have genuine feelings?”
“Psshh.” I shook my head. “This isn’t aboutfeelings. Not for me and definitely not for Ben. Man,” I laughed. “Can you imagine if Iwasdumb enough to have feelings for him again? That’d be like slapping a sign on my forehead that said Please Kick Me. I would deserve the universe shredding my heart. I’d be asking for it.”
“Pain is a part of love,” my mom said calmly. “When you open yourself up, pain is inevitable. But you do it anyway because love is worth it.”
“Even when it doesn’t last?” I stole a look at her out of the corner of my eye.
“Even when it hurts you so bad you don’t think you’ll survive?” Alexis added.
Mom patted us. “I’m not saying you should accept abusive relationships or stay with people who consistently hurt you. I’m just saying that when you give someone your heart, you have to accept they might break it. And if they do, it doesn’t mean you weren’t right to give it in the first place. Or that you shouldn’t give it to someone else again.”
“How can you believe that,” I whispered, “after what happened with Dad?”
It had been a long time since the three of us had addressed Dad this openly. It honestly hurt to mention him. I clung to that hurt, the way it felt like he was suddenly in the room.
“Honey.” Mom stopped brushing my forehead. I looked up at her. “I have absolutely no regrets about your father.”
My jaw dropped. “How can that be true? He crushed you. He left you all alone. You’re just now starting to date again.”
“Of course, I wish it had ended differently between us. And I wish he’d never been in that car that morning, on his way to the grocery store.” Mom’s face was gentle. “But even knowing what I know, I’d do it all again. Fall in love with him, marry him, have you two. And I won’t let the possibility that Ethan could hurt me like your father did—or in new ways—stop me from giving him my all.”
“You’re very brave,” Alexis said, snuggling into my mom’s side.
I stared at the two of them.Wasshe brave, or was she foolish? Shouldn’t she have learned from what happened, and made sure she was never in a position to be hurt like that again? That seemed like the reasonable answer. Not throwing herself out there again without armor. That was downright masochistic.
Mom shrugged. “I forgave your father.” She squeezed my shoulders. “I’d like you to forgive him, too.”
“Forgive him, and forget him?” I asked.
“No.” Her hand was back on my forehead. “Forgive him, and remember what a good dad he was. Forgive him, and love him in his absence. Forgive him, and forgive yourself.”
I wouldn’t pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about. So I simply closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of my mother’s fingers skimming through my hair.
17
The Empire Strikes Back
I’d learned two important things tonight: first, Mendax Oil employees had alotof grievances to air, and they were not shy; second, Ben had possiblymoregrievances to air, and yet he could go a full two hours with zero eye contact and only a few terse words.
As we sat side by side in uncomfortable folding chairs at the Mendax employee town hall, I found myself fantasizing that Ben would leap out of his chair, run to the microphone at the front of the room and say, just like the guy currently up there, “Well, since youasked, Iwilltell you what’s on my mind.” But instead of venting about bad vending machine snacks in employee break rooms, Ben would finally get everything he was thinking about me out in the open.
Getting on the Mendax Oil town hall agenda had been my idea, and I was amazed at how simple it was to pull off. I’d been scouring the Mendax Twitter feed for clues about what they were up to when I saw the post about the town hall. Turns out anyone could get on the agenda as long as they were an employee. I’d found the email address for a random engineer, begged him to add “A thrilling, mutually beneficial, history-making announcement from Lise Motors” to the agenda, and the sucker just agreed! There was either a solid mutiny brewing in the ranks at Mendax or an extremely small number of give-a-fucks—either way, a good sign.
Unfortunately, attending this town hall was not the reunion with Ben I’d imagined. For the first time in our campaign, we’d committed the environmental cardinal sin of driving two cars to the same location. I’d had no choice, since the only response I’d gotten out of Ben since the night of The Verboten Kiss was his reply to my email about the town hall, and it just said,See you there. Our saving grace was that he drove a Prius and I drove a sleek Lise Model XX, so between the two of us, our carbon footprint wasn’t astronomically high.
Luckily, no one at Mendax Oil had slapped our faces on any posters: “Wine festival crashers, climate hippies and upstart lotharios, wanted dead or alive.” Also lucky was the fact that Hudson County authorities hadn’t caught me stumbling down the side of the road the night of the wine festival, crying messily into my phone to an Uber driver, three too many glasses of wine and one too many humiliating Ben encounters under my belt. Therefore, I had not been summarily captured and booted the moment I reentered county lines.
