Page 30 of Fast

She doesn’t. The situation is actually much worse than I could have ever imagined.

“This might seem fast to you, and I take responsibility for it. I should have talked to you sooner. But you had your finals, andI didn’t want to distract you. Scott and I have been together for over a year.” She takes something from the pocket of her denim overalls. “He proposed a couple of months ago.”

She shows me her left hand.

A diamond the size of a hazelnut is catching the midday light. It takes me a second to find the words to express my shock.

“You—you’re getting married?” my voice comes out a little shrill, but I’ve never been so shocked in my entire life.

“We are. The wedding is next Saturday.”

I shake my head, sure that I must have misheard what Mom just said. Maybe jet-lag is messing with my hearing. I know the East Coast and California have just a three-hour difference, but still. There’s no way I heard this right.

“You’re getting married next Saturday? Like, in seven days from today?” I put emphasis on every word, to make sure there’s no way Mom could misunderstand my question.

“Yes,” she says with a bright smile that warms my heart and pisses me off at the same time. “And I was hoping you’d agree to be my maid of honor.”

Jesus.

I look at her with my mouth gaping open, like a fish out of water.

“Zara,” she squirms. “Please say something, for the love of God.”

If I say no to the maid of honor thing, I’m going to sound like an asshole. And I want to be happy for my mom. I just wish she hadn’t canceled my dorm room and made a ton of decisions for me without discussing one single thing with me first.

I take a deep, calming breath. “I will be your maid of honor, Mom.”

She lunges forward to hug me, but I scoot backward, needing some distance. “I want to support you and I want you to be happy.” I also want to express my feelings about all this. “Butyou’ll have to cut me some slack and give me a second to get used to all this stuff. I’m not mad, or at least I’m trying not to be. I just wish you had given me some kind of heads up about all these huge changes.”

I think I’m being reasonable, right? Two years ago I would have stormed off and found myself the baddest boy in a hundred-mile radius. I would have hopped on the back of his bike and rode into the sunset, just to piss her off. Hell, I still have the tattoo to prove how much of a rebel I was. Thank fuck Mom hasn’t seen it, or rather than to a boarding school in Connecticut, she would have shipped me to a gulag in Siberia.

“I know.” Mom sighs. “And I’m sorry. I was planning to come to your graduation with Scott and we were going to tell you then. But then your father decided to attend and?—”

She still can’t be in the same room as my father after ten years.

“I’m sorry too,” I exhale. “I should have come home after graduation, when Dad canceled our trip to Europe because he had to work.”

Mom’s lips tighten into a flat line, showing her displeasure. “He always has an excuse.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, frustrated with both my parents. “I know, Mom. Let’s not get into Dad’s shortcomings, please.”

I know I sound defensive, but I want to believe that Dad’s work commitments are the cause of these constant change of plans every time we’re supposed to spend more than a couple of hours together.

At least he made it to my graduation. I would have been really hurt if he had canceled that, too.

“What I’m trying to say is that our lack of communication isn’t just your fault, Mom. I was very disappointed when Dad canceled on me and I should have come home. Instead, I wasnervous about seeing you after the last time we were together didn’t go so well. I shouldn’t have gone to Florida for the summer with Sydney.”

Mom’s expression softens. “It’s ok, sweetie. Look, this is what I’ve been trying to say. I know things have been rocky between us. I don’t want to place all the blame on your father, but he always left me to be the bad cop while he swooped in to be the fun parent. I know you hated me for sending you to boarding school, but I was struggling. When I saw that video, I?—”

I was hoping to avoid this conversation. “I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t mad at you, Mom. But I know I fucked up, too. I lied to you a lot, and I kept breaking every single rule you had.”

That doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. I was hurting and I still am. I can’t blame my parents for divorcing. I get why their relationship didn’t last. That, however, broke something inside me. I had a happy childhood until they separated and all of a sudden, I had to fight to be seen. My parents were still there. Mom was always by my side, Dad was just a phone call away. And yet, it was as if apart from each other, their lives had grown busier, more complicated.

Mom was probably too present. But her focus was more on stopping me from making the same mistakes as her, than on me.

Dad had been my best friend, my partner in crime. After the divorce, he was traveling the world from one racetrack to another, without coming home in the breaks. When he retired from racing, things didn’t bring him closer. He’s been on a constant quest to start his own racing team. He’s had a few opportunities, but nothing really stuck, or compared to his racing days.

That left me feeling like an afterthought, a burden to both of them. I wanted to be seen, to still feel like I had a family and I tried to get their attention the only way I knew how.

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