Page 92 of Nothing Like the Movies

The English language had yet to create a word that could capture my level of frenzied, desperate need.

The feel of her full lower lip between my teeth was like… like holding a freshly grilled steak up to the mouth of a starving man.Okay, shitty analogy, but I swear to God that every one of my fingers clenched, every muscle in my body trembled, and every instinct in my being reared up and wanted to feast.

God, the way I want everything with her.

Liz’s bedroom light flipped on as I looked out the window, and I imagined her climbing into bed and pulling up the covers.

Good night, Lib.

I sighed, regretting my decision to be a decent human, because Iwasa starving man when it came to her.

Which made me an idiot for not filling up when I had the chance, right?

I sat there, lost in want and regret, until I finally saw her room go dark.

Then I drove myself crazy in a multitude of ways.

I paced the main level of the house, continuing to torture myself by replaying the almost-kiss and the way she’d looked at me in that moment.Dear God, the way she’d looked at me.

I did push-ups as I revisited my half-sober recollection of myfreak-out (over and over again), and then I lay on the kitchen floor as I tried figuring out whatexactlyI’d told her about my guilt regarding my father.

Because the alcohol and exhaustion were really messing with my recall.

I was pretty sure I’d onlyalludedto my culpability, falling short of actually confessing the details. Which—thankGod, because if she’d looked at me like I was a pathetic loser for my drunk freak-out, I could only imagine how she would’ve looked at me if she discovered I’d been a monster to my dad, on top of everything else.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to get her to forget about the mess I’d been, but I’d find a way just as soon as we were back in LA.

Ihadto, because I was going to die from thiswantif I didn’t get her back soon.

I was happy to see the sun come up a few hours later, and after showering and packing up all my stuff, so the place was ready for the new owners, I texted Sarah.

What time are you coming over?

Sarah: Mom and I are on the way.

That wasn’t what I expected. I looked out the window at the place next door and texted:She wants to come to the house?

Because even though therapy had helped my mom get okay enough to return home for my sister’s sake, she’d alwayshatedthe house after my dad died.

Sarah: She wants to take PICTURES of the house.

That made me smile in spite of everything else, because I’d really come to appreciate my weird new mom.

It was bizarre, how much she’d changed.

She was justMomfor my first eighteen years, the woman who made dinner, put Band-Aids on my scrapes, and kissed me good night after the sun went down.

But when my dad died, she disappeared.

She became this unreachable person, a shell of the mother I’d grown up with. If she wasn’t crying, she pretty much wasn’t doing anything at all. Part of me had hated her at the time—even though I felt like a jerk for thinking that—because her PTSD had forcedmeto take on a role I’d never wanted.

But now she was like an entirely different version of herself.

She was funny, self-deprecating about her issues, and the woman who’d once been relatively private was now the most open book anyone had ever met. It was annoying a lot of the time, to be honest, the way she’d tell anyoneanything, but I’d take it, because she was alive again.

Hearing her laugh again was something I’d never grow tired of.

Although I was really second-guessing that sentiment an hour later, because as Lilith, Clark, and Liz did their thing, hauling equipment around the house while randomly asking me baseball questions (that didn’t involve my dad’s death, thankGod), my mom kept filling them in on information no one needed to know.

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