Page 99 of Honey Undone
“Choose a different adjective,” she said calmly and went back to writing notes.
“She’s beautiful,” I said, my tone softening and not my choice, it was something that happened when I allowed myself to think about her like that. Beautiful was correct but it was a heavy word in my mind associated with heavy feelings. “We were having fun, we’re supposed to be having fun.”
“You brought your… booty call to my house?” Mom looked up at me and I threw my hands up in surrender. “You are not my child.” She rolled her eyes at me. “I disown you,” she joked.
“Itstartedlike that,” I reminded her. “I think we both know it’s not that anymore considering I'm sitting on your floor.”
“So what is the problem, because all I’m hearing is you’re toying with a very beautiful, incredibly intelligent girl's heart and if that's the case, I’m closing this notebook and beating you over the head with it,” she said, and that time she wasn’t joking.
“Keep writing,” I laughed, scooting back on the carpet. “She plays rugby and she's good Mom,reallygood. It’s almost scary how natural she is at it.”
“More problems, less compliments, Kai.” Mom rolled her hand in a circular motion to hurry me up with an annoying smirk on her face.
“The problem is she got scouted, for another professional team.”
Mom looked up at me finally and the humor faded away. I wasn’t stupid and the reason I wasn’t was because neither was she. We both knew what that meant and I watched as she put together the pieces of my crumbling heart. Up to that point I hadn’t been brave enough to say it out loud, silently sleeping with it to try to get over the sting of her possibly leaving but telling my Mom. The look on her face. No glue, cement or nails could hold me together anymore.
I loved Adeline Sarah, and I would be an idiot if I ignored it any longer.
“So your problem is, your casual fling—” Mom rolled the words off her tongue and they hit me like a dagger. “—Is traded out of Harbor.”
“That casual fling is going to fly out of Rhode Island with my heart in her back pocket.” I dropped my head to stare at my hands.
“It sounds like you’ve already come up with a solution,” Mom said after a long beat and I looked up at her confused. I had definitely not solved anything…what the fuck was she on about?“Letting her go, being sad about it and not doing anything to stop it.”
Oh,“Sarcasm, thanks Mom.” I sighed.
“Malachi, over the course of your life you have never quit anything without a serious conversation and this notebook.” She held it up, “it’s got notes in it all the way back from kindergarten when you decided that soccer wasn’t the sport for you. It took us two weeks to decide that you wanted to quit.”
“This is different,” I said.
“Exactly, and whoever is sitting in front of me right now is not my son. Because he would never just give up on something because it was too hard.” Mom pushed. “What are the pros of her leaving?”
I swallowed down the urge to argue, “She’s been working toward this for her entire career, it’s all she’s wanted. It’s her dream.”
“And cons?”
“It means I’m not,” my tone was heavy and cold. I was upset but not with Mom, with my own foolish heart for getting us into an impossible situation.
“Give me a real con and stop being dramatic.” Her smile was soft and encouraging.
“It’s in California,” I said and ran my hand through my hair.
“Long-distance relationships can work, Kai. They do all the time,” she was quick to swoop in with an answer. The issue was, we couldn’t do long distance. Even now my fingers were tingling, absolutely itching to get my hands on her. It had been less than twenty-four hours since I saw her last and all I wanted to do was be close to her. Facetime and weekend visits would be hell.
“Not for us,” I said because I knew.
Mom didn’t flinch at the conviction, her dark eyes watching me carefully before she spoke again, “I need you to be very honest with me for a second,” she said and I didn’t even blink, my entire body stilled. “Do you love her?”
I didn’t say a word, saying them out loud would make them real, true… tangible. Right now they were just words bouncing around in my mind like a rogue tennis ball. But they were honest, raw and honest. Fear wasn’t an emotion I experienced often, I just found the adrenaline in every scary situation, but to love someone? That was fucking terrifying.
“You know what you need to do,” Mom said after a beat.
There were unspoken ideas ricocheting around us.
“I can’t just leave,” I said after mulling on it for a while.
“Why not?” Mom chuckled. “You’re taking one class a semester to play baseball, maybe it’s time you graduate for real and find a new thing tolove.”
