Page 50 of Falling Off Script

“You told me that story,” I say, quieter than I mean to.

“And you clearly inherited the branding instinct,” she says. “Well done.”

I lean back, arms crossed, trying to keep my expression neutral. She doesn’t miss it. She misses nothing.

“So this whole time,” I say, “you weren’t... mourning, or committed, or whatever. You were just busy?”

“No,” she says. “I was grieving. For years. But grief’s not a cage. It’s a process. And eventually, I finished the part that required silence.”

I process that.

Then immediately try to deflect.

“You want me to screen people? Run background checks? I could set up a private intake form—”

She laughs, just once. “Andrew.”

I shut up.

“You don’t need to manage this,” she says. “But if there’s someone you genuinely think I should meet, send him my way.”

I nod, slowly. She waits.

The thing is, I built a whole system to help men get what they wanted—fast, slick, impressive. But now, when it’s aboutsomething real—someone real—I’ve got nothing. Not one guy I’d introduce to my mom.

What does that say about me?

I exhale. “It’s just... weird.”

“Because I’m your mother or because I’m a woman?”

“Because you’re both,” I shoot back. “And because you’ve always said—explicitly—that you had what most people spend their whole lives chasing.”

“I did,” she says. “I also think that’s a terrible reason to stop living.”

I glance down at the table. Run a fingertip along the wood grain like it might distract me from the creeping horror of her being, well, right.

“You know,” she adds, “you coach men. Hundreds of them. You’ve helped strangers build self-worth from scratch. And yet—when it’s me—you act like dating is a nuclear threat.”

Yeah. That’s the part I don’t like admitting. I taught men how to win women. Not keep them. Not connect. Just win. I sold the chase. Polished the pitch. What happened after the conquest? Not my department.

She doesn’t back down.

“This isn’t about replacing your father. It’s about finding something that fits who I am now.”

I go quiet.

She sits back, folding her hands in her lap like a judge who’s already made her ruling.

“This isn’t a crisis,” she says. “I’m not marrying a Pilates instructor.”

“Yet,” I mutter.

She smiles. “But I am open. And that doesn’t erase anything that came before. It just means I’m alive. And aware. And curious.”

Alive. Aware. Curious. God, she even dates like a therapist.

I finally look her in the eye. “You really think you could find that again? Something like... what you had?”

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