“I never said I was abandoning relationships.Abandoningmeans to give up completely. I said I was not interested, and that means I was not concerned with it. There is a difference, and that difference matters.”
She brushed her hand over my locs and then cupped my cheek. “I’m afraid you aren’t processing your pain and—”
“Mom, I’m fine. My pain has been processed. The healing I had to do was from thinking I had to live a perfect little life that didn’t fit me with a man who wasn’t worthy of me. It wasn’t the breakup with Tyson that I needed to heal from. I had to heal from the realizationthat striving for perfection, living up to other people’s expectations, had taken a lot from me. Because if we’re being real, I never should’ve married that man in the first place.”
“You didn’thaveto marry him, honey. I mean, he seemed perfect for you, so we were happy to see you married.”
“No, he didn’t seem perfect for me, and he wasn’t.”
And if you knew me better, you would know that.
“But I married him anyway, so that’s on me,” I continued.
She gave my shoulders a squeeze. “What I would recommend, to help you during this time—”
“I’m going to hold your hand when I tell you this,” I interrupted as I clutched her hand. “You’re my mom; you’re not my therapist.”
“Honey, I’m not treating you like one of my clients.”
“You sure about that?”
My dad and Monica came back into the living room, and we changed the subject.
Aunt Addy woke up, and the five of us had dinner. My parents made a plan to come back the next day and coordinated care with Monica. I retreated to my room, still thinking about what my mom had said.
Abandoning the idea of relationships and marriage is not the same as not being interested, I argued to myself.
And I kept repeating that thought anytime my mind strayed.
Picking up my phone, I called Aaliyah.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Do weallhave to have a date for Saturday or just you?” I asked.
“Well, hello to you, too.” She snickered. “Yes. But your date doesn’t have to be adatedate. It can be anyone you want to bring.”
I cleared my throat. “Okay.”
“Is there someone you have in mind?”
“Is there someoneyouhave in mind?” I countered. “Your party is in forty-eight hours, and last I heard, you were into Lennox. Is he still the one?”
“Lennox is no longer a contender.”
My eyebrows shot up. “What? Since when?”
“Officially last night,” she said, before giving me a quick rundown of what had happened over the past week.
The bartender, I thought with a rueful smile.I know more about him than the men she’s actually going on dates with.
“Lennox went out of town for work or something. He’ll be back on my birthday. But I’m going to let him know it’s not going to work the next time we speak,” she continued.
“Interesting…”
We spent twenty minutes discussing her birthday-date dilemma and her upcoming date. When she turned the conversation to me, I didn’t plan on saying anything, but it burst out of me.
“So, I was talking to my mom, and she basically said that she thinks I haven’t ‘processed my pain’ from Tyson,” I told her.
