Page 99 of Follow Your Bliss

“You made a commitment to Becca.”

“Yeah, but I don’thaveto go. I mean, if you’ve stood in one wedding, you’ve stood in them all. I don’t need to practice walking down the aisle. Especially since I’m paired with Jason,” I added in a small voice. “Do you want to make cookies tonight? I want cookies.”

She frowned at me for a moment. “You can’t deter me with cookies, baby girl.”

The doorbell rang.

“You can’tnotgo.” Heather got up and went toward the door. “You have to go to this thing looking like the fierce, strong woman you are.”

I didn’t answer, just kept flipping as Heather talked softly with whoever was at the door. The only way to stay out of the Soniat family drama was to stay away from the Soniats. It was bad enough I’d still have to stand in the wedding. She’d already lost one bridesmaid, and I couldn’t bail on her.

Heather walked back into the living room with my mom, who was armed with her “my baby needs me” face.

Well, shit. My hand paused on the catalog. “Hey, Mom.” I’d been minimally answering her texts because I wasn’t ready for her cocktail of motherly mollycoddling and reasonable advice. But alas, the time had come.

“Hey baby, I came over as soon as I got back in town.”

Heather looked between us. “Can I get you something to drink, Ms. Dahlia?”

Mom sighed and dropped her purse beside the sofa, re-fluffing her short, dark hair. “No thank you, sweetheart. I just need to talk to this one.”

Heather nodded and left us alone as Mom sat next to me on the sofa and affixed her green eyes on me. The familiar scent of Lanc?me Magie Noire perfume wafted into my personal space. “Rosie, why didn’t you tell me about Jason?” she asked softly.

I went to flip the page, but Mom sat a tissue box on top of the catalog. I huffed a deep breath. “I don’t know. I didn’t think it was going to get serious. And then I thought you’d give me shit about living with him so fast. And he didn’t want his family to know, so I couldn’t tell Lily.”

She chuckled. “Well, Becca told her, then she told me. Are you okay?”

I looked into her big eyes. Just like Lily’s. I was the odd woman out with my dad’s blue eyes. “I’m okay,” I lied.

Mom sighed heavily and pulled all my hair away from my face. “You don’t have to be brave for me, Rosie. Is this thing between you guys serious?”

All the contents of that locked, imaginary box in my heart spilled out into my blood, and I crumpled into her arms in tears.

“I love him, Mama. I tried not to, but I couldn’t stop myself. We’ve been so happy.” I swallowed, trying to breathe. “But he’s not serious about me. I mean—” I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. “I obviously wasn’t gonna marry him.” That thought only made me cry harder.

“I did this to you, didn’t I? Made you not trust men. I can’t believe it took me and Steve getting engaged for me to start puzzling it together.”

I took a big breath, let it go. “It’s just…my whole outlook on relationships was formed at a very early age. You raised us to be independent. Not to rely on men for anything—not love, not friendship, not pleasure. Commitment leads to marriage, and marriage perpetuates the fantasy that married couples are somehow better than couples who don’t get married. It keeps women in abusive relationships and thinking that they have to be subservient to men. So many people use it to exclude and degrade people in the LGBTQIA+ community. God, the symbols of the white virgin wedding, and how dads give their ‘property’ over to the groom. The statistics of married women not living as long as their single counterparts. It’s permeated all of my relationships, been one of my core values. Men don’t feel love the way we do, and they don’t stay. And what happened with Jason proves it.”

Mom’s eyebrows had gone up higher and higher as I spoke. “Rosie, why on earth do you design wedding dresses?”

My nails bit into my palms. I was tired of answering this question. Frankly? Tired of my own hypocrisy. “Because I love to sew, and I love the way they look. It’s the only socially acceptable way to wear ball gowns and princess dresses. Trust me. I tried wearing some of my gowns in New York City as daywear, and the world isnot readyfor that.”

“Or do you, deep down, want to be a bride yourself, but you’re afraid to be vulnerable? And you’re afraid there’s something wrong about you that makes men leave?”

My heart cracked at her gentle words, exposing its gooey, shameful center. There was no stopping the sobbing now that she named it out loud. The truth. My truth. My big fear. I’d never told anyone, but nobody knew me like my mama.

I nodded. “How did you know?”

Mom held me through the tears, kissing me on the head. “Because that’s how I felt after your dad left. And instead of teaching you to be strong, I gave you my fears. I’m so sorry, Rose. I was wrong. And don’t you misunderstand.” She pulled back and smoothed my hair from my face to look me in the eyes. She was crying, too. “He and I fought constantly, ever since we met. We were completely incompatible. He left because he and I were a nightmare together. He never came back to see you two because he doesn’t care about anybody but himself. Trust me. It was a recurring motif throughout our entire relationship.”

She pulled three more tissues for me and two for herself, dabbing under her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault that he left. Or your sister’s. But after he was gone—” She breathed out, shaking her head. “I didn’t want you girls to think of your dad as the monster he felt like to me, so I made all men the enemy. I made commitment the enemy. It was faceless. It would keep you from being hurt the way I was.”

Mom had never said a bad thing to us about our dad, but I remembered her scoffing at weddings and Valentine’s Days. I remembered her getting hit on in the grocery store and her dressing the man down for approaching her when she was with her two kids. That guy ran off with his tail between his legs, and Mom lectured us on how all men were rude and inconsiderate.

“And you have to remember,” she continued. “My dad died when I was a little kid. I barely knew him. I didn’t have a clue what a real partnership could be like because the only experience I had was my shitty one.”

That’s all I’d had too. Shitty relationships built on nothing but sexual compatibility. Which, important, yeah. But only one piece of the puzzle. I learned that as Jason had lovingly fitted together so many more pieces of the puzzle of us. Him investing his time and know-how in my work because I was important to him. Him saving the last fortune cookie from our takeout for me because he knew how much I love them. Us fitting together like two puzzle pieces ourselves, helping each other with big and little things, collaborating to solve problems, and truly enjoying the time we spent together. Even the non-naked time.

---