Because it was something I was choosing for myself, whether or not Mom liked it, or approved, or was even still willing to talk to me after.
“I wish you would’ve talked to me about it,” Mom continued, apparently oblivious to all the noise in my head right now.
Aiden cared about me. He’d cared about showing me who I really was, letting me explore what I really wanted in life. I was still wearing the badge he gave me inside my coat.
I wantedhim.
The whole time we’d been apart, I’d been miserable.
I…
“I love Aiden,” I said, and it was almost as much a surprise to me as it was to my mom, judging by the look on her face.
But it was true. I’d thought it before, in the haze of happiness I felt while I was around him, when it was just the two of us and no one else in the world got to render an opinion.
It was just as true now as it had been then, and just as scary.
Scary, but true. What was the point in pretending otherwise? I’d lived a lie for years and Aiden had shown me what it’d be like if I wasn’t. Dad had been miserable most of my life, and I’d seen what he was like when he wasn’t, now.
I loved Aiden.
For everything he’d done for me, and for everything he was, and for everything the two of us could have been together.
Ilovedhim, and I was letting him get away because…
… because I’d lost my mind.
“Honey—”
“No,” I interrupted. I’d talked back to my mom more in the last seven days than I had in the entire rest of my life, and I was just now realizing that wasn’t a bad thing.
I couldn’t bow down to whatever she wanted for the rest of my life.
“Don’thoneyme,” I said. “You haven’t earned the right.”
“I’m yourmother,” she said, mouth hanging open, eyes wide.
“You’re supposed to love me!” I said, louder than I meant to. A woman walking her dog on the other side of the street glanced at us, but then kept walking without saying anything.
“You’re supposed to love me,” I repeated, quieter, defeat sinking into my bones.Supposed towasn’t the same asdid.
Reaching inside my coat, I unpinned the badge Aiden had given me and closed my hand around it, drawing strength from knowing what a kind-hearted, sincere gesture it’d been. From knowing howproudof me he was, how excited he’d been to share my real self with me. “You’re supposed to love me even if I screw up, even if I do things you don’t approve of, even if I don’t turn out exactly the way you pictured. Even if I fall in love with the troublemaker from the family next door who’s been kinder to me than anyone else in my entire life.”
“It’s okay if you like men,” Mom said, voice shaking. No, it wasn’t, but she was recalibrating her worldview because even she realized there were some things she couldn’t change.
Now probably wasn’t the time to explain about bisexuality. She’d get the wrong idea.
“Just notthisman?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“He doesn’t deserve you. You can do better. Marlene Wilkinson has a son your age, he works for one of those big tech companies out in Silicon Valley, I bet he’d love to meet you.”
“I’m sure he would,” I said, drawing on the last reserves of confidence Aiden had given me. “I’m great. He’s probably great, too. But IwantAiden. And there is nobetter. I’m lucky he even looked twice at me. I’m nobody, I have nothing to offer him other than myself, and I’m not even sure he’ll accept that. He’s incredible. I don’t deserve him.”
I paused, taking a breath.
Aidenwasincredible, and Ididn’tdeserve him, but I’d spend the rest of my life regretting it if I didn’t try.
Dad didn’t think he deserved Trent, either. That was probably the kind of poisoned thinking my mom had left us all with.
