“This is your problem, Lucy. Not your mother’s.”
“I came here for comfort,” I say, doing my best to keep calm. “Not a lecture.”
“A lecture might be what you need. You have to stop pushing people away when they try to help.”
“She wasn’t helping! How many times do I have to tell you this? She was doing it for herself. For the money for the store. She lied to me when she said she wouldn’t give people those samples. Not even give them away, but sell them.”
He shakes his head slowly. “You’ve told yourself that story so often you believe it, and now it’s like you can’t see the truth. I don’t know how to talk to you about this. You’re being beyond stubborn.”
Me. I’m stubborn. How can he say that when he’s met my mother? “Sure, I’m the problem. You don’t know what she’s like. She deliberately put you in this apartment so we would get together. She said as much. That’s how much she wants me back, that she thought you would convince me to move.”
“What?” He freezes. “Lucy, you can’t be serious.”
“Why not? You don’t think she could do that?”
“Whywouldshe? That doesn’t make sense. You’ve created this imaginary scenario to get angry about, and it has no basis in reality.”
“You don’t get it.”
“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I thought I was a work in progress, but you’re in tinfoil-hat territory.”
I want him to reassure me, to tell me that I’m being silly. But instead, he’s getting angry. He takes a deep breath. “You need to grow up, Luling.”
Hearing that name again spikes my rage. “I said to call me Lucy!”
My voice echoes in the room, and he shakes his head. “You don’t even see how much like your mother you are.”
He couldn’t have thought of a worse thing to say. It was easier when I was on my own. I don’t want this in my life. I don’t want him. “This was a mistake, to try and be friends again.”
There’s a heavy silence as we both absorb what I’ve said. “Don’t be like that,” he says softly.
My fury at my mother has fully redirected toward him. It’s not fair I’m the only one hurting. “No. You’re using things I told you against me. I trusted you, Rafe, and here you are, trying to tell me my mother is right. That I’m in the wrong.”
When he looks at me, his eyes are tired. “No, Lucy. I’m trying to tell you that you need to stop thinking of her as the enemy and making up things that let you feel like a victim. You need to think about what you want enough to fight for instead of running from the people who love you. You did it with her, and you did it with me.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“When you left, when you were twenty. Sure, I was a jerk and I didn’t handle what happened in the garden well. But you didn’t email me, either, and when I came home, you were gone. You didn’t leave me a note, like I had been nothing to you. Like I was part of your childhood you abandoned with everything else, like it was worthless.” He stops talking, both hands pressed flat on the counter. “You ran.”
“Maybe it’s because I know I’m better off alone,” I say.
“That’s what you want? Me out of your life again because you had a fight with your mom?” He sounds disbelieving. “Because you’ve decided I’m some long-con game of hers to get you out of Toronto?”
“I want you out of my life because you haven’t been in it for a decade, and since you came back, I’ve had nothing but problems.”
He rubs his chin, then his forehead, as if warding off a headache. His face looks older, and tired. “If that’s what you think.”
“I do.” I’m engulfed in a hurt so deep it burrows right through me.
“All right.” He doesn’t bother to argue. I can tell how tired he is of me. It’s almost as tired as I am of myself.
That’s it.
He watches me stumble out and shuts the door. It’s not a slam, butit’s firm enough to send its own message to confirm that whatever we had, or could have, is over.
***
The next few days go by as if they were copied and pasted. Each night when I get home, I look down the hall, wondering if I should knock on Rafe’s door. He doesn’t knock on mine, and I decide I’m not going to beg to see him.
