Shane shrugs. “Any chance you have any expensive Scotch?” he asks.
“Of course,” I say. “And in fairness, the trip wasn’t totally for nothing. I have something I need you to do. ASAP.”
47
Natalie
The morning after my dip in the hot springs with Sonya, Ivy, and Reggie, I go out for a bagel and coffee and come back to find my mother’s car parked next to mine. I get out of my car, hoping it’s a hallucination, but she gets out of hers, too, and walks around to greet me.
Or, really, scowl at me.
“You might have mentioned that you and Lloyd are no longer a couple.”
I bite my lip and say, “Hi, Mom.”
She rubs her fingertips over her forehead. She’s wearing a knee-length gray skirt and a seafoam blouse, and my eye catches on a small bleach stain on the skirt. I wonder if she knows it’s there. I bet she doesn’t. She wouldn’t have worn it if she did.
“It was awkward, finding out the way I did. I ran into him at Target, and I started toward him with the intention of giving him a big hug. He got an uncomfortable look on his face. And then a woman stepped around the corner and cozied up to him, someone named—” She searches her memory.
“Susie,” I finish, wincing. As frustrating as my mother is, she didn’t deserve to be blindsided. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you a heads-up.”
“I’m sure you had your reasons,” she says in a tone that suggests exactly the opposite.
“I didn’t want to tell you about it the other night at dinner, with everyone around.”
“You could have called me and told me.”
I could have. But I knew how much she liked him. I knew how disappointed she’d be.
And I knew she’d make it my fault.
“I liked him for you,” she says. “This is what I worried about. That he would get tired of waiting for you to pull your life together.”
Wait a second.
Wait a fucking second.
How did Lloyd’s being an asshole become about me and whether I, quote, unquote, “have my life together?”
“That’s not what happened.” My voice surprises me. It’s firm and sure. The way I feel when I’m running an activity. “He was seeing someone else. I caught him holding hands with her in a coffee shop.”
She flinches at that. “That’s…unfortunate,” she says, as though Lloyd’s betrayal was an accident of fate and not a decision he made. “He was good for you.”
“No,” I say. “He wasn’t. He didn’t know me. Or want to know me. He didn’t understand what makes me tick.”
“Whatdoesmake you tick, Natalie? Because I’m not sure I know, either. And to be honest, I’m not sureyouknow.”
Two weeks ago, those words would have crawled into my chest and burrowed in, a dark knot of self-doubt, like rot in fruit. Right now, though, it’s like I’m wearing a face guard and the chest plate and swinging a baseball bat at an old VCR: the sharp, bright clarity of anger. And something else. Confidence.
“You’re wrong,” I say. “I do know.” I’m thinking of Preston again. Thinking of how it felt to make him smile. To make him laugh. To watch him flip himself into the foam pit. “I know exactly what makes me tick.”
She’s visibly startled, and so am I because surely, this can’t be the first time I’ve pushed back. Stood up to her.
Except her expression suggests it is. Have I always just accepted whatever she wants me to believe about myself?
Well,I think,enough of that.
I don’t stomp my foot or even cross my arms, but I do straighten up a little. I point. I say, “You have a little something on your skirt. Rightthere.”