Page 130 of The Mating Game
“Are you going to be okay?”
“I think so. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Just remember that you can follow your dreams without giving up everything you love,” she tells me.
Love.
It feels strange to even think it, but it also feels odd hownotstrange it is. I’ve never felt longing like this, never felt this need to be with another person—to see them, to touch them, to simply benearthem—and what else could that be if not love?
It’s as terrifying as it is exhilarating.
“Thank you,” I say. “I really needed this.”
“I’m always here for you, babe,” she assures me. “You knowIlove you.”
“I love you too,” I say with a broken sort of laugh.
“Now go rip off the Band-Aid and tell your parents everything you’ve told me.”
“Maybe I’ll leave outsomeparts.”
She chuckles. “Probably a good idea.”
“I’ll talk to you soon?”
“I hope so. Sounds like you might miss my birthday though, superstar.”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell her.
“Don’t be,” she urges. “I’m happy for you.”
“I’ll call you later.”
“You’d better.”
I hang up the phone, feeling only slightly better than I did before.
The drive fromthe airport to Newport Beach takes barely half an hour—I’m bone-tired after two flights in a twenty-four-hour period—and I’m grateful for the proximity of my childhood home now more than ever. It’s the same as always—red door, shingled roof that’s seen better days, wide wraparound porch that holds memories of hide-and-seek and tag and hot cocoa while it rains—and I know that inside is an abundance of love and understanding that I can’t get anywhere else.
Well, at least that’s what I thought until very recently.
Mom’s car is gone from the driveway, but Dad’s old pickup is parked where it always is, and I realize after checking the time that Mom has most likely run off to her weekly book club meeting with her girlfriends. It’s not ideal, since I wanted to tell them together, but I know if I don’t get all this off my chest now, it’s going to eat me alive. The excitement is too great, as is the strange forlornness that I can’t seem to shake.
I knew from the minute I signed the contract that I needed to tell my dad in person, but now that I’m here…there’s a wariness in me. Almost as if I’m worried he’ll be upset that I’ve been keeping things from him.
I knock before testing the handle, then turn it and push the door open before calling, “Dad?”
“Back here,” he says.
I find him in his old recliner, already lowering the raised leg rest and looking at me with pure confusion as he pulls himself from the chair. “Tess?”
“Hey, Dad,” I say, moving to meet him for a hug. “Surprise.”
“What on earth are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Colorado.”
“I was,” I tell him, moving to the couch, where he sinks down beside me. “But I came home because I have good news.”
His forehead wrinkles, his brown eyes that are just like mine squinting under his thick brows. “News?”
