Page 6 of Getting Over You

“Tell me about it.”

“So, now what?”

“I was thinking,” I say, hands shaking, “that maybe I’ll stay at Belinda’s for a while.”

Mollie sets down her spoon and her phone at that.Oh, no.She clasps her hands together in front of her, leveling her gaze at me. “You’rereallygoing to leave me during my summer before college? Gigi—come on—I thought you said that because you just had a bomb dropped on you, not because you actually meant it. Fight or flight mode or whatever.”

“It probably won’t be all summer,” I tell her. “Probably.”

“Gigi!”

“Mollie. This is like defcon five for me. I have to escape it before I go crazy.”

“I get that. But now?”

“His new girlfriend is moving into the boathouse for the summer,” I explain. “I don’t want to be here longer than I have to be.”

Mollie frowns. “But summer before college.”

“You’ll be fine,” I say. “We’ll FaceTime every night. And you have Jason to keep you company. I’m the lovesick one, remember?”

“Gigi wants to go to Belinda’s,” Mollie says as Mom walks into the kitchen.

My mom blinks. “Oh?”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say. “Marcus and I ended things again. I’m looking to get away for a while.”

“You haven’t spent time with your mother since before starting college,” Mom says. “I don’t want to discourage you, but—”

“I understand,” I say. “But isn’t it sort of my choice to spend time with her?”

Mom stands there, blinking at me. “Yes. Yes, of course it is, sweetie. It’s just… I worry about you, that’s all.”

I shake my head at her and she sighs. “Nothing to worry about.”

Mom chews on her lip decisively. “We should mention that to your dad. But we can’t do that without some help.”

Mollie smiles, and Mom quickly grabs her keys. If there’s anything to note about the Knox family women, it’s that my mom is insistent that ice cream can fix anything.

Especially broken hearts.

Having a mom and a mother is an interesting idea. My mom, Greta, has been in my life one year shy of how long my mother has. My dad met Greta a few months after he split from my mother, and Greta got pregnant with my sister, Mollie, not long after that.

Dad tells it like this: when I was born, my mother stayed just long enough to make sure my dad and I were settled in. Dad says she got out of bed one day to feed me in the middle of the night, and the next morning, my mother was nowhere to be found. She left a note, he says, in which she stated that being a mother was not in her life plan, but she was sure he could work parenting into his.

When I was a toddler, Dad discovered my mother had moved to South Carolina and was investing in businesses in a small town there. Dad reached out, wondering if Belinda was interested in seeing me, getting to know me, or anything of the sort. She wasn’t. Not really. But she was more than happy to block out a month every summer to be a parent.

What’s one whole summer in twenty-one years of “parenting?” Surely Belinda can handle interacting with me for twelve weeks instead of the usual four, like she’s allotted for years. Any good mother would. Then again, Belinda isn’t necessarilygood.

“I worry you’ll be stepping on her toes,” my dad says that evening, as I’m relaying my intentions over dinner. “Your mother, Belinda, she’s very… She’s busy, Gigi.”

“I’m sure she thinks she’s the busiest person who has ever lived,” I agree. “But think of it like this: it’s a free beach vacation. I need that right now, Dad.”

“We all do,” Dad says with a chuckle. “But is it worth stirring up things with your mother?”

“I think so,” I tell him, scraping my fork against my plate. “It’s the least she could do.”

“Gigi.”

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