Page 56 of Sweet Oblivion

During our senior year, Nash and I went to homecoming, to the Valentine’s dance, and to prom. My mother and Steve took tons of pictures before each, and I’d framed my favorites, setting them on a shelf in my room next to my bureau.

Nash had held me in his arms on more than one occasion as I worried over my mum’s weight loss, which she always chalked up to exhaustion, though neither Nash nor I bought that story.

He’d asked her point-blank one night if she was sick.

She didn’t answer.

But at least he’d asked. At least he’d tried.

When I looked back over the year, I guessed loving Nash had held me together with the weirdness that was both the perfect romance and occasionally a source of inner turmoil for me. But we had each other, we hung together, and that was all I could ask for. He was my safe place, my home.

However, while loving Nash came naturally to me, sometimes getting along with him was a whole other issue.

Like now. He was in a foul mood, brought about by his dad’s sex-with-a-groupie video making the rounds on the internet. That press had his mother smiling impossibly wider, her eyes empty as she hit each of the clubs on Milan’s strip, and even as she called Nash to tell him she’d sent divorce papers to Brad.

“I just can’t anymore,” she said.

I could hear her through his phone speaker, so I shifted away. But Nash pulled me down onto his lap, tucking my head under his chin as he leaned back into the pillows on my bed. I sought out my UT pennant on the opposite wall.

MIT hadn’t accepted me, so I’d decided to stay here, close to my mother and Nash.

I couldn’t wait to start classes at UT in August. Now that our high school graduation was behind us, Nash and I could focus on our goals: he would fly to Seattle June 1 to finish the album he’d started here, with Cam, at Asher’s studio, and I’d spend the summer there with him.

We had an apartment near Pike Place already chosen. Part of me couldn’t believe we were doing this. But I was giddy with excitement.

“Fine. I get it. He’s a total douche,” Nash said. I could hear the deep rumbles of his chest. I pressed my cheek against the soft cotton of his T-shirt. “But you’re still coming back, right?”

She was supposed to be here, in Austin, for Nash’s graduation party at Cam’s family ranch next weekend. The end-of-May event had been planned for months.

“No, honey. I can’t… I just can’t face it. Face him.” Tears lined her voice. “Please don’t hate me,” she sobbed. “I can’t stand for you to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Mom.” Nash sighed.

And he didn’t, but that didn’t mean he understood her choices—or liked them.

“You can come visit me,” she said, perking up. “I’ll meet you in Paris—”

“I have to finish my album.”

He didn’t add remember? to it this time. She didn’t, probably because she was on too many substances to think much at all.

“Oh. Well. After, then. I can’t wait to see you, Nash.”

She sounded like a small child, unable or unwilling to be reasoned with.

“I’ll be starting my tour after that,” he said, his voice patient.

“Oh. Well, then…Christmas.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll see you then. Bye, Mom.”

He slammed the phone down onto my bed with enough force to cause us to bounce.

“What the fuck does she think she’s doing?” he growled.

I slid off him, and he rose to prowl around my room.

Prior to last summer, Nash rarely came into my room, but my mother had grown too enamored with him during our almost year of dating to enforce the rules. This meant we did pretty much as we pleased. And we’d experimented. A lot. I flushed as I remembered last night.

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