Page 20 of The Malibu Arrangement

I sit down and take her hand in mine. As before, she feels cool to the touch, too cool. I try hard not to cry before I drop the bomb on her head.

“Mom,” I begin. “I have some news.”

She nods. “Okay,” she says. “What’s your news?”

I take a deep breath. "I'm getting married. In two months.”

She looks at me, and then drops her hand from mine. "What do you mean? Celeste, you haven't dated anyone for several years."

Heat crawls up my neck and into my cheeks. I press my palms against them, as if I could push the blush back down. How do I explain this? The last guy I dated was that assistant director who kept calling me "babe" in meetings. That was—what—three years ago? Four? I've been too busy paying Mom's medical bills and keeping Lexi in school to swipe right or make small talk with strangers in dimly lit lounges.

My hand trembles violently as I try to muster the courage to tell my beautiful mother an absolute lie. Sell it, Celeste. "Mom," I whisper, my voice breaking. "There's someone who's completely shattered everything I thought I knew about love. I know it sounds insane—god, I can barely believe it myself—but the second our eyes met, it was like lightning struck my soul. We're moving at warp speed, but Mom, I swear on everything I am, this is it for me. This is the one."

Was my voice breaking? Was I meeting her eyes? Will she buy this from me? This is my mother. I feel like she can see through me like I’m made of glass. But maybe, in her illness, her senses and intuition might be dulled just enough that I can pull this one over her. Please let that be true. Please let her believe me.

She adjusts her reading glasses, her expression concerned but measured. "Celeste, this isn’t like you. You've always been the one who makes spreadsheets before buying a coffee maker. The one who researches every decision. This sudden marriage seems... uncharacteristic for you.”

I take a deep breath. "Maybe you have a point, but being careful hasn't exactly worked out for me. Twenty-five years old and what do I have to show for it? A string of three-month disasters with guys who looked good on paper but turned out to be walking red flags. All that analyzing and second-guessing just to end up alone anyway." I shake my head. "I'm tired of overthinking everything. Maybe it's time I trusted my instincts for once."

She shakes her head. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” she says. “I can see it in your eyes.”

I push back my chair. "We're basically Tony and Maria with a beach house," I say, knowing Mom would catch the West Side Story nod, considering that’s her all-time favorite movie. “Love at first sight, whirlwind romance, marriage pact—just with fewer switchblades and more prenups."

"Yes, and look how well that turned out," she says, arching an eyebrow. "One dead boyfriend and one traumatized girlfriend. You do realize West Side Story is just Romeo and Juliet with better choreography, right? Teenagers with raging hormones mistaking infatuation for true love. Trust me, modeling your relationships after Shakespeare's tragedies is a terrible idea. There's a reason those plays end with funeral processions instead of wedding receptions."

“Well,” I say. “I’m getting married and that’s that. I want you at the wedding, of course. It’ll be happen at St. John’s on Adams.” Mom’s right - how can I emulate play and movie characters who end up dead? I’m sure there are other examples in literature or film where two people meet, fall in love, and get married in a matter of months. But I can’t think right now of better examples to give my perceptive mother. Maybe that old sitcom Dharma and Greg? I seem to remember they married the same day they met.

"Celeste, please think about what you're doing," she says, her voice softening. "Marriage isn't just a piece of paper. This man—whoever he is—you've known him what, a few weeks? That's not love, honey. That's a chemical reaction." She leans forward, eyes searching my face. "Real love builds slowly. It's in the small moments—noticing how he stirs his coffee, how he apologizes after an argument, what makes him laugh on his worst days. And frankly," she hesitates, "what kind of man rushes into a lifetime commitment with someone he barely knows? That should tell you something. It doesn’t speak well of his character.”

Of course, Mom isn't telling me that it doesn't speak well of my character, either, that I'm rushing into a lifetime commitment with somebody I don't know. She's too kind to come right out and tell me I'm a fool. But she's thinking it. I can see it in the way her fingers twist around each other in her lap, in how she keeps opening her mouth and then closing it again without a sound.

I clear my throat. “Mom, I know what you’re saying. But I’m doing this.”

"Have you told Alexandra?" The way she says my sister's full name sounds so formal, like she's announcing royalty at a ball. Mom's the only person who calls my sister Alexandra—she’s Lexi to everyone else in the universe. I've always figured Mom clings to "Alexandra" because she spent weeks agonizing over baby name books before my sister was born.

“Yes. And Olivia and Tally, too.”

“That’s right, Olivia. She lives with you. What will happen to her? Will she have to find a new place to live?”

"Olivia can stay at my place," I say. "The condo's a solid investment I'd rather hang onto." What I don't mention to Mom is that in twelve months, when this charade with Max ends, those laminate floors and that tiny balcony overlooking the park will be waiting for me again.

“She can’t keep up your mortgage payments and you shouldn’t ask her to,” Mom says.

“No, Mom, I’ll just ask her to keep paying her half.”

“So, you’ll be paying two mortgages, then,” she says. “Your mortgage on your condo and I’m sure you and your new husband will be buying a house on mortgage, too. You’ll be stretched too thin, Celeste.”

I start to speak, then catch myself. Of course Max doesn’t have a mortgage, but the idea of someone without a mortgage would be alien to Mom—in her world, everyone struggles with thirty-year loans and fixed interest rates. A man who buys a Malibu beach house outright, with cash, marrying her daughter, who clips coupons and drives a ten-year-old Prius? She'd smell something rotten before I finished the sentence.

“Mom,” I say. “Please don’t worry. I’ve figured it all out, I promise you.”

She narrows her eyes, shakes her head, but then finally shrugs. “It’s your life, Celeste,” she says. “I’m just worried, that’s all.”

“Of course you are,” I say. “That’s what mothers do. But I’m going to be fine. Really. I’m not making a mistake.”

“I guess,” she says. “I’ll be at the wedding, of course. This cancer won’t keep me from seeing my daughter make a lifetime commitment.”

She says the words “lifetime commitment,” and I cringe. I imagine myself, a little over a year from now, telling my mom that she was right and I was wrong. I would have to break her heart with a quickie divorce just one year after breaking her heart with a quickie marriage.