The smile on her face makes it all worth it.
“Where?”
“At my place. With Carter and his boyfriend. How does Saturday sound?”
Her eyes widen with excitement. “A double date, already? You must really like me. Yes, Saturday works.”
“It’s concerninghowmuch I like you.”
Angie smiles one of my favorite smiles. It’s not a big one, but it lights up her face and transforms her into a completely different person.
“Okay, Casanova,” she says and taps on the bar, but I don’t miss the blush that paints her cheeks a rosy pink. “I need to do my closing things before I clock out. Are you leaving, or?—”
“I’ll stay.”
“Okay. Thirty minutes.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I reassure her.
I remember when my family and I would go on road trips and Dad had us pick out CDs to play. Occasionally, one of the CDs would have a scratch on it, causing the song to skip, or a line would repeat over and over until Dad was fed up and skipped to the next song. It’s like the skip, or repeat, in the song was allowing the singer to catch their breath–even though the song had long since been recorded. At my statement, I see Angie skip. Not physically, but metaphorically. Like a CD. And I hate that she’s had to question whether I’m going to stay or leave. I’ve already gathered that Angie hasn’t had anyone put her first. She’s been used to smiling and going along with plans that others have set for her, or that have no room for adjustment. That when someone takes the reins and makes plans that benefit her, she doesn’t know how to react.
Angie isn’t a project. But I do plan to show her that choosing her and putting her first should have been the thing that her family did from the beginning.
16
ANGIE
I’m riffling through my wardrobe of black, when I feel the vibration of the garage door opening beneath my feet. I know I’m one of the only three people with the code to the opener and the alarm, but I still find myself creeping out of my room into the hallway to look over the ledge overlooking the door. Seeing that it’s indeed my parents returning from another trip, I let out a tense sigh of relief and head back to my room to get ready, silently closing my door in the process.
I think my parents have been stuck in a struggle of where and how much attention to give to their surviving child after one passes away. And it’s something I’ve been talking about in therapy. I’ve never classified it as abandonment, because my parents have always been there. Until these last couple of years. But if I’m comparing the parents Liam had to the parents I had—well, my therapist classifies that as abandonment. Which was also the starting point of my anxiety and depression that only got worse when Liam died.
I huff in exasperation at the stylistic choices that havenever once bothered me until now. Brandon makes me want to wear color when, for the majority of my life, I’ve been content in darkness. Until I can remedy that, I find a black maxi skirt with ruffles and an off-white sleeveless button-down vest in my closet that molds to my torso. Padding quietly across my room and into my bathroom, I brush out my damp hair and put some leave-in conditioner in it to let it air dry. I don’t bother with makeup because I rarely wear it, and since tonight’s double date is at Brandon’s and I’m meeting Carter’s boyfriend, the less the better.
I’m pulling on my Doc Martens that are reserved for times I’m not at work, when a knock on my door causes me to jump out of my skin.
“Yeah?” I call out after staring at the wood separating me from whoever is on the other side.
The handle of my door turns, and my mom pops her head in. If I looked in a mirror in forty-five years, this is what I’d likely see. From the time I could understand complete sentences, I’ve been told I’m the spitting image of my mother. Sure, when I manage to look at pictures of her when she’s younger, I can see it. But where I’ve never taken any color to my blonde hair, my mom now chooses to darken her hair, so it makes us look less like twins and more like mother-daughter.
Was that our first fracture? It’s hard to think that something as simple as hair can be a defining factor in someone’s life. And maybe there’s a childhood part of me that still wishes she could be like her mom.
“Hi, Claire Bear. Your dad and I are about to order in for dinner, and I wanted to see if you wanted to join us.”
I stand up from the storage bench at the foot of my bed, which is more like a smaller daybed, and walk over to my dresser to spritz on a light dusting of perfume. The childhoodnickname hits me like a tidal wave, and I clench my fists so hard my nails bite into my palms and I use that to focus on instead of the way my eyes want to water when hearing that name.
“I already have dinner plans,” I tell her when I finally meet her eyes.
“Oh,” she says and steps fully into my room. I try to remember the last time that my mom was in my room and come up with a time when I was in middle school. I had just gotten in a fight with one of my best friends, and she reminded me that real friends may fight, but it’s what comes after the fight that matters. She was right because the next day they showed up here, we apologized, and went about our friendship.
It’s funny how, after that, I assumed our friendship would last forever. Maybe I’m holding out hope that they still think about me and one day we’ll be able to repair what was broken. Is two years too long to hold out hope?
“Do you have a date?” my mom continues as she takes a seat on the bench.
I’m not sure how much to spill to her because it seems like the littlest thing can set her off into a blubbering mess. To say she still hasn’t come to terms with Liam dying is an understatement. So I settle with, “Yes.”
“How long have you been dating?”
My forehead scrunches as I survey my mom.
