Page 76 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“No, Sammy. It’s the entire ambience that matters. And the Lost Key, while—”
Sam couldn’t hear her mother speak over the sound of her teeth grinding themselves to dust. Was her mother really picking apart the venue now? After everything else Sam had done?
“Mom. The venue is fine. The food is fine.”
Was there anything she could do to make her mother happy? Or was she going to spend the rest of her life trying to earn love and being taken apart for it?
“I just want it to be equal. I want my friends to see you putting in your best effort, Sammy.”
“My best effort?” Sam let out an exasperated squawk. Since when had she ever given her mother less than her best?
Her own stupidity crashed into her like a wave. Sam’s eyes started to sting as her thoughts collided, each more painful than the last. She’d thought that if she did just one more thing for her mother, then she would love her without strings or guilt trips or outrageous expectations. But no amount of acquiescence was going to make her mom happy. At each turn, the goalposts moved.
“You know what I mean, Sammy.” Her mother’s voice was low and hurt, as if she were the one being asked for a miracle at the last minute.“I know you just want me to stay in my little corner and forget about me. First with the invites and then—”
The aging tape that was holding Sam’s relationship to her mother in place snapped. There was no party she could throw, no award she could win. It didn’t matter if she lived next door to her family or in a remote corner of the Andes. No amount of sacrifice or availability would ever be enough because there was no enough for her mother. Sam couldn’t make her mother happy, because she wasn’t actually unhappy with her daughter; she was unhappy with her own past. And Sam couldn’t fix that.
“You know what, Mom?” Sam felt her breathing come in sharp, short bursts. “I’m sorry, but I have too much going on right now. You need to work this out without me.”
“If you didn’t want to be a part of this, you could have said so. I would have handled it myself.”
“Would you? Because I tried to do that months ago, but you’re so self-centered you couldn’t hear it.” She knew she had more or less shouted at the phone, but honestly, in trying to please her mom, she’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, had gotten in a fight with Grant, and very possibly still had camera makeup caked to her face. She was tired, hungry, and in need of a soak in a tub with a serious scrub brush.
For a moment, there was silence, and then her mother’s flat voice came over the phone. “Well, you know what? I don’t have to have the party. We can cancel since it’s such a burden to you.”
“Oh, grow up,” Sam spit out, rage clawing at every word she tried to say. “No one is saying you can’t have a party. You literally just have to go to the store or call a catering company yourself ...”
Sam paused. Somewhere in the back of her mind, something clicked into place. There was no amount of reasoning she could apply that would make her mom back down. As long as Diana thought there was a chance that she could get Sam to put her life on hold for her, shewould continue the cancel-the-event charade. Either Sam would do this and then get suckered into the next thing, or she would have to put her foot down and risk her mother cutting her off again as punishment.
Was living like this worth the relentless struggle to maintain the relationship? Sam knew the answer as soon as she thought the question, but it still broke her heart to say it out loud. “I’m setting a boundary. I love you, but you’ll have to figure this situation out on your own. You can text me what you decide.”
Sam sighed, then pressed the red end-call button. Standing in the dead silence of the lounge, she looked at the dark screen. She’d never in her life imagined she would hang up on her mother. This was not something Sam had ever done to a living soul, not even a telemarketer.
Stunned, Sam dropped back down to the couch and threw her elbow over her eyes, creating a little cocoon for her to try to get her thoughts around what had happened. She just had to focus on pulling herself together. If she could do that, she could order a car and get herself home without being one of the crying messes that rideshare-driver Reddit threads mocked.
Eventually, Sam peeled her arm away from her eyes, then snorted. Almost nothing about feeling this bad was funny, except that the heat of her skin and her watery eyes had combined to melt some of the mascara and eyeliner off her face and onto her elbow crease. Two black eye shapes stared up at her from the crook of her arm, like some sort of all-knowing, rough-day-watching parody.
Gathering up her now-cold coffee and her phone, Sam had taken two steps toward the door when it opened, and she froze.
Grant stood in front of her, looking as surprised as she felt. After a tense second, he relaxed and said, “I’ve been meaning to text you. How is Sheila?”
“Emergency delivery.” Sam looked at her cup as she said this. For whatever reason, looking at Grant’s face felt more difficult right now. “Everyone is okay. Baby is in the NICU, but they’re all doing great.”
“That’s good.” Grant spaced the words out as if he wasn’t entirely sure what else to say.
Sam wished she’d just stayed sealed off on the couch. She had been naked in front of this man, yet with her shot nerves and their fight hovering over them, she felt more exposed now than she had at any point in the last week. Part of her wanted nothing more than to hug him. To feel the security of his arms wrapped around her.
The rest of her wanted to dump her coffee on him. Just because the day had been long didn’t mean that she had forgotten what he’d said. How he’d just defaulted to assuming that she couldn’t handle her own life.
Grant pursed his lips together and looked at the floor, then looked back at her as if he was debating saying something. Sam considered warning him that the only thing she wanted to hear was an apology, but before she could figure out exactly how to phrase that, Grant started speaking.
“So listen. I know now isn’t ideal, but we have a problem.”
“Grant, I don’t want to fight about my mom. Can you just let it go?” Sam closed her eyes and dropped her head to her chest. She wished she’d come up with a plan for this. It wasn’t like she couldn’t have predicted running into him. This was basically the workplace-dating scenario that every TV show warned her against.
“I’m not talking about earlier,” Grant said, sounding irritated. “I’m talking about the progress report for Anjo.” He waited for a second to see if she would jump in. Sam’s mind spun as she tried to sift through the fog of the last twenty-four hours.
Oh shit.Those were the only two words that came to Sam’s mind, and they raced through her brain like a mantra, slowly burning away whatever good feelings the delivery had left behind.
