Page 103 of A Bookish Story

Re: Please forgive me

I hope you’re still in the area. If so, I’d love to chat. Please email or text if you’d like to meet at a coffee shop. I’d love to show you around town if you have time. Most of all, of course, I’m sorry for everything, and I want to talk. What I’ve done was unfair but I need you to hear my side and I don’t feel comfortable explaining this all in an email.

I sign off by leaving her my cell number. I don’t expect an immediate reply, but maybe Holly will give me a chance to explain my actions. While I didn’t write the first book, I’ve officially taken on the pen name. From now on, it’s me behind Elizabeth Brogan and everything that entails. And because I’m a good friend, no matter what she might think of me now, I want to help Holly in any way I can. Ryan helped me and it’s time to pay it forward. Women in publishing need to stick together.

I drive home for an afternoon of working in my shed without interruptions. If I can stop thinking about Ryan for thirty minutes, I might get a few hundred words in. But he’s constantly interrupting my flow, as a montage in my mind goes back to the first time we met. Me, giving the wrong professor my entire life’s story while behind him, Ryan quietly listened. I segue to the night I saw the video of him, angry and tearing into the genre that made me want to be an author, the genre he’d accidentally fallen into. The day he brought me soup and asked me to do him a gigantic favor.

He changed my life. But in the end, I changed my life.

I took a risk, dared to push past my comfort zone. I went on a streaming show seen by millions of people, talked, and I didn’t throw up once. I’ve grown more in the past month than I have in a year, and growing pains ache. Before I know it, I’m crying. They are not just tiny tears but big flowing ones accompanied by wrenching sobs. I know deep down Ryan is hurt and somewhat broken, still carrying the guilt over the real Elizabeth. Still thinking he’s not good enough for me and he’s so wrong.

“I said I wouldn’t do this!”

Fists clenched, I look up at my ceiling, imploring the heavens to take away the part of me that makes me so damn empathetic. It screws with my life and causes me to make bad choices like even for one second considering giving Chris another chance.

There’s a knock at my door a few hours later, and I fool myself into thinking it’s Ryan. He’s come back to tell me he made a mistake. This would be the way I’d write this scene: All this time, he’s been sitting at the airport trying to figure out a way to let me know he’s sorry about leaving. He wants to take it slow since he realizes I just ended a relationship. But because he loves me he suggests a long-distance relationship since Pasadena isn’t that far. We can see each other once a month and before long we’ll have frequent flyer miles and it won’t even be that expensive. We can take the time to get to know each other and go from there. Reasonable. Logical.

And all things he should have said!

It’s not Ryan because real life isn’t like the scenes I write in my head. It’s my mother and she’s beaming. I’m happy for her, seriously, but I can’t take this right now. Being around happy couples isn’t going to be on my agenda for a while. They can take their joy and stuff it.

Mami holds up her left hand, the ring on her finger big enough to blind me.

“Eddie asked me to marry him!” She launches herself into my arms.

I pull back to admire the ring the way I know she expects, holding up her finger to the light. It’s just the right amount of bling and big enough to suggest Eddie spent a big part of his savings on it.

It takes me a minute but I notice my mother isn’t wearing any makeup. What in the actual world is this black magic? She looks better than I would have guessed without it, looking more like a fifty-something mother who simply took care of herself. There are wrinkles, but they are soft. She looks, for the first time, like a real mother. My mother. Damn, I’ve missed her. I love her.

This love has a way of chasing you, of burrowing inside of you to find shelter, of never letting go. It’s the kind of love I feel for my mother. The type of love that is simply…inevitable. I never made the choice to love her. Loving her is uncomfortable. Imperfect. But it is undoubtedly the most real thing in my life.

“When are you getting married?” I walk her further into my shed, and she sits on the seat.

“As soon as possible. I don’t need a big wedding, but this is Eddie’s first marriage, so…”

“Abuelita wants a church wedding.”

She nods. “Exactly.”

I want to ask her a question that has been heavy on my mind since the moment I realized how she felt about Eddie.

“I don’t understand. Did you just…always love him? I mean, you never stopped?”

“Yes,” she says, not meeting my eyes. “But I loved your father, too. It is possible to love two men and I stopped thinking of Eddie once I was with your father.”

“But after Papi died? Why didn’t you just try then?”

She shakes her head. “The grief…it strangled us both. I think for Eddie, especially, he could never get past it. He adored his brother. And I understood. The reason I left you with Abuelita and Eddie is because I loved him too much to stick around, waiting for him to be ready to love me again. You missed your father so much, and Eddie was the next best thing.”

“I always thought you left because I was “too much.” Too needy, too noisy, too…too everything.” I bite my lower lip, straining against any more tears.

She reaches for my hands. “No, no, mi amor. You were always this bright light, never too much. Yes, I got frustrated at times like any parent when I was suddenly without my partner. But it wasn’t you at all. It was me. I hurt so much that I had to leave but I didn’t want to pull you away from the only family you’ve ever had. Especially not Sofia. You’ve been like sisters all your life.”

I never thought I’d see this through a different point of view but the plot is twisting. It’s turning down a lane I don’t recognize. Leaving me here instead of taking me away with her was selfless. I would have been miserable living away from Sofia, my abuelita, and Eddie.

“I’m sorry that I was angry with you for so long,” I say. “You were an easy target, I guess.”

“That’s what mothers do. We become that target because your arrows of contempt can’t ever change the way we love you. I won’t deny it can hurt, because it does. But I never stopped loving you even when you hated me. After a while, I didn’t understand what you needed from me anymore.”