“Find it yet?” I ask, suddenly feeling anxious.
“Find what? Wait…what the hell?” I smile, because a small part of me wondered if Tilly may have erased it, but I’m glad to know it’s still there. “Who wrote, ‘Sometimes life sucks, but cookies never do,’ on the wall in here?”
“Your mom.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yup.” I swallow, trying to maintain the levity in my voice as the memory replays in my mind. “She caught me in there not too long after I moved in, just sort of hiding. I’d had a shitty day, and everywhere I went in the house, there was someone. I wasn’t used to being around that many people. And my room…” I let out a breath. “It didn’t feel like mine yet.”
“So you went into the pantry.” She doesn’t form it like a question. More like a statement—one she understands. We were always alike in that way.
“Yeah,” I reply. “And when Tilly found me in there, she didn’t miss a beat. She just walked over to that shelf, reached down,grabbed the Oreos, and handed me a stack. The next time I came in, I found that note.”
I feel a lump in my throat.
That single motherly act was more than my own had ever done for me, and Tilly followed it up with a hundred more tiny gestures over the year I lived in that house.
She was the closest thing to a real mom that I ever had.
And then one day, she was just gone.
They all were.
“Thanks, Hollis,” she says. “I really?—”
“Hollis?” A voice I haven’t heard in years echoes in my ear, and before I know it, I’m sitting up, heart pounding.
“Mom?” Pres says. She obviously isn’t talking to me. Guess I should have had her shut that door after all.
“Did I hear you say Hollis?” I hear Tilly ask.
Pres pauses, and I realize she’s waiting for me to say something. To tell her what to do, because although we haven’t outright said anything, both of us have been keeping this thing between us on the down low.
“It’s okay,” I finally say. “You can tell her.”
I may have complicated feelings about Tilly Creed, but I do not want to force Pres to lie to her mother on my behalf.
“Yes,” she answers hesitantly. “We reconnected a week or so ago.”
“You did?” Even I can hear the slight hurt in her voice. “Were you going to tell anyone?”
“Of course, Mom,” Pres starts to say, and that lighthearted tone she had just moments ago is gone, and I hate that I’ve put her in this position.
So it’s time to fix it.
I will not be that guy who makes her sad.
Not tonight. Not ever.
“Let me talk to her,” I tell her, sitting up straighter like I’m preparing to face the principal at school.
“What?”
“It’s about time I say hi, Pres. It’s not like we have anything to hide, right?”
“Right,” she agrees, although I can detect a hint of worry in her tone. Is that for me? “Mom, he wants to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
