Page 70 of Merry Me
Maybe.Or maybe not.
It was almost exactly what Paige had said earlier.
I wasn’t sure that it made me feel better.
I nodded slowly. “Remember how nervous Dad got before father-daughter dances?” I said, wiggling my eyebrows up and down.
She smiled, her eyes shining. “I definitely jumped him afterward.”
“Ugh. No. We can’t talk about that.”
She winked at me like scarring me for life was funny.
We both laughed, each of us blinking away tears, and then we sat in silence for a long moment.
“Are you thinking about Easton?” she asked softly.
I looked up, startled. “What makes you say that?”
She gave me the patented mom look—the one that saidPlease,child,I made you with my body and have known your soul since it was the size of a walnut.
“You look like you’re standing in the middle of the road trying to decide whether to leap or run.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“What if it ends the same way?” I asked. “What if I let him in, and he leaves, and it breaks me all over again?”
My mom reached for my hand again, her grip firm and warm. “Then you heal. Then you grow. But love doesn’t always mean pain, sweetheart. Not if it’s the right kind.”
I stared at her.
She smiled softly. “What if itdoesn’tend the same way? What if it’s the beginning of the best thing that ever happened to you?”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“He’s not your father, Natalie,” she said gently. “He’s not that man. And you’re not that little girl anymore.”
My chest ached. I let her words settle around me, into me, deeper than I realized I needed them to.
“Easton was always the one who could make me feel everything. Back then, it felt too big. Too real. Like if I really gave into it, there’d be nothing left of me.”
“And now?”
“Now it feels even bigger,” I said quietly. “But not like it’ll destroy me. More like…if I don’t let myself have it, I’ll never stop wondering what it could have been.”
My mom’s face softened. “That’s love, sweetheart. The real kind. It’s not supposed to make you smaller. It’s supposed to show you how much more there is to feel. How much more you’re capable of.”
I blinked hard, willing myself not to cry. “But what if I’m not ready?”
“Then go slow,” she said. “You’ll be scared. You’ll question it sometimes. But real love can take that. It can hold the messy parts. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be true.”
I let her words settle. Let them find the broken places in me and start stitching.
She smiled, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear the way she used to when I was a kid. “You know what Steve told me right after our first date?”
“What?”
