I lay back on the bed.
Everything was so screwed up.
I had no job, no money, I was living in my childhood bedroom, and I wasn’t even helping my parents out with cleaning or in the orange grove or even keeping them company because I just hid in my room all day.
You need sunshine and sea breeze.
But I had brought the depressing Manhattan rain and cold with me, and the weather outside was miserable.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I told myself. “This cannot be the next however many years of your life.”
After grabbing a notebook from my desk drawer, I opened it, intending to force myself to write down five good things about my life currently.
Except there washishandwriting in the notebook.
I traced the letters with my fingertip then tore out all the pages, crumpling them up as the tears fell, smearing the ink on the page.
I was havinganother sleep-until-one-p.m. type of morning when I felt my bed sag with weight.
I blinked my eyes open.
My mom was there, a look of concern on her face.
“Sorry, Lexi,” she said softly.
“I should get up.”
“You can sleep if you need it.” She rubbed my back between my shoulder blades, like she did when I was a kid.
“You’re disappointed in me.”
“Your dad and I would never be,” she said kindly.
“Obviously Dad’s not,” I joked desperately. “He’s my number one fan.”
“Then that makes me your number two fan.” She gave me a sympathetic smile.
I felt like crap.
“I could never be like you. My hair isn’t as nice as yours. I never got picked to be Ariel, or work at Disney.” I sniffed. “I moved to Manhattan, and I’m not marrying my first love like you are.”
“You’re young, Lexi. You’ll find another job, and you’ll meet someone new.”
“I don’t want anyone new. I wanted Grayson, but he was so awful, at the end. Maybe he always was, but I just refused to see the bad in him.”
“Sometimes,” my mom said gently, “we meet someone who becomes one of the most important people in our lives, who leaves such an indelible imprint that it fundamentally changes who you are. Sometimes you marry that person, or become fast friends, but then sometimes you leave them, knowing that they have forever changed you. Maybe that’s you and Grayson.”
“He got more out of it than I did,” I said.
“Relationships aren’t transactional.” My mom tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear.
“You had to have learned something from this experience, right?” she prompted. “Maybe how to set boundaries? Maybenow that you know what you want, you know what’s at stake? Not to mention, you flew in a private plane and spent the night in a beautiful penthouse. That’s something. Most importantly, you got to know a very complicated person and understand how that kind of terrible life experiencereallyaffects someone. With that knowledge, you can be more empathetic if you ever have to deal with someone like Grayson in the future.”
“That’s just more toxic positivity,” I said dully.
My mom gave me a knowing look. “I never said change was always good. Sometimes change is just change.”
She hesitated then said, “I read the book, the one Mary Louise was peddling around town. Let me tell you, Grayson had a horrible childhood. It would be a nightmare for a grown man, and he was just a little kid. It breaks my heart as a mother.”
