Page 22 of It's Always Sonny

I didn’t deserve his love, but I felt it all the same. It was so novel, so totally unlike anything in my past experience. Sonny was my first boyfriend, but I never even had real friends until college. My gymnastics teammates had felt more like rivals, but I was as friendly as I knew how to be with people in student government and on the debate team. Problem is, I was always too worried about grades to let myself get close to anyone, even if my mom hadn’t discouraged me from forming friendships with those “wanton hussies.”

Yes, she called the ambitious nerds I occasionally hung out with “wanton.”

In college, the first person who ever simply pushed past my walls instead of letting me push her away was Jane. I met her in an introductory marketing class our freshman year, and she brought all of the Janes together on a group project. She had the sense that each of us would carry our own weight (we did). She thought it was kismet that we all had Jane in our name, and after the project was completed, she kept inviting us to do things. The others agreed right away, but I held back until she wore me down.

Many Clint Eastwood movies and a handstand-and-milkshake challenge later (which I won; don’t ask), I had my first set of real friends.

I’m not exaggerating when I say they’ve changed my life.

I wouldn’t have agreed to go out with Sonny without their squealing encouragement. I wouldn’t have had the courage to keep dating him after freezing when he told me he loved me, and I wouldn’t have been able to say it back to him several weeks later.

I never would have survived breaking up with him, either.

My friends and I have been through a lot together. We’ve fought and forgiven. We’ve gotten pimples and destroyed our moisture barriers trying to get rid of them and had to figure out how to restore moisture barriers together. We’ve laughed to the point of tears more times than I can count, even me.

“I don’t know,” I tell Linda, who’s still waiting for my response. “I’ve been happy. But it’s different. It wasn’t just happiness we had. It was more than that.”

“But it wasn’t perfect.”

“No.”

“Because you weren’t good enough, right?”

I wince.

“Let me ask you a question,” Linda says. “You don’t like animals, right?”

“Right.” Sweetness is nuzzling me, and I tolerate it with a roll of my eyes.

“Of all the adorable animals here, why would you let this one in?”

I swallow hard. “I know what you’re doing.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t,” she says with a smile. "You’ve told me you felt like you had to earn your parents’ love, and the fact that they’ve withheld it all these years proves you didn’t earn it. But you know that’s not how love works, don’t you?”

I nod. Academically, objectively, theoretically, sure.

Personally?

Not even close.

“So why was Sonny the exception? You did have his love.”

“He didn’t know the real me.”

“Aw. So you were faking it?”

I nod again.

“Parker, you’re smart, but no one can fake perfection for that long. You two were together for over a year and a half. He may not know everything about you, but he knows a lot more than you think.”

My throat is so thick, I feel like I’m choking. “He built up an idealized version of me in his head. He never saw the real me. He couldn’t.”

“If he couldn’t, then it’s more important than ever that you move past him. If he couldn’t see you, he didn’t deserve you.”

A fierce need to defend him rises in me. “You don’t understand. It wasn’t his fault. I couldn’t let him see me like that, either.”

“Okay,” Linda says, watching me pet Sweetness. I should stop, but it’s surprisingly calming. “Maybe you both did the best you could then. But you know how to do better now, so do it. In the meantime, give yourself some grace.”

---