“You aremychild,” she snapped, her voice flaring wide like a lit match. “And forgive me for not trusting the version of you who thinksfalling in lovemeans she’s cured. You want to stop therapy? Absolutely not. You know what your diagnoses are. You know what Dr. Whitaker said about structure. You don’t get to just…opt out because you think you found a boy.”
“He’s not just a boy.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “He?—”
“Does he even know you exist?” My mother pounced. “And don’t lie to me.”
For once, my breath didn’t catch in my throat. I didn’t have to twist or invent or pretend. “Yes,” I said quietly, a tiny bloom of relief rising in my chest. “He knows.”
It shouldn’t have felt like victory. But it did…because for the first time in a long time, I could tell the truth.
Silence stretched across the line. I could hear my mother breathing, the faintclickof her pen stopping.
Then her voice came back, slow and cold. “Just like Nico knew who you were,” she questioned sarcastically. “Just like Tommy…”
The words sank into me, heavy and familiar, and a tear slid down my cheek before I could stop it.
“He knows me, Mom,” I whispered. “And helovesme.”
She laughed then, the sound humorless. “This so-called boy who loves you,” she said mockingly. “What’s his name?”
“Matty,” I answered easily, a burst of warmth filling my chest just saying it. “His name is Matty.”
“Full name.”
“Matthew Adler.”
For a moment, all I could hear was the faint clatter of typing on her keyboard, the sound of her pulling up whatever record she was about to use against me.
There was silence for a second. “The football player?” she gasped incredulously.
I closed my eyes, hating how shocking it was for her to hear that.
Even though I understood.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“You expect me to believe that?”
Something in me snapped. With shaking fingers, I opened my camera roll and sent her the picture Matty had taken of us—his arm slung around me. He was staring at me with a soft smile on his face while I beamed at the camera.
Silence filled the line. For once, my mother didn’t have anything to say.
For about half a second.
“How long?” she finally snapped.
I swallowed. “A while.”
“How long?” she repeated, and I could imagine her eyebrows lifting, the tired, warning line of her mouth. “You missed yourappointment today. You missed the one last week. You missed thegroupsession on Sunday that you agreed to participate in. How long, Ophelia?”
“I don’t know. We—we didn’t make it official right away.”
It felt like forever, though. Even though it hadn’t been much time at all. Not compared to the months I’d spent watching him, memorizing the shape of his smile, tracing his name into the margins of my notebooks until it became part of me.
“You barely know him, and you’re throwing away the scaffolding we spentyearsbuilding.” She laughed then, a low, joyless sound. “Of course you are.”
“That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair is me being asked to watch you drown. Again.”
