Page 48 of I Love You, So What?

“You did?” Excitement fills her voice like she’s already forgotten I’ve said things aren’t okay. The running water in the background turns off like she’s putting a pause on doing the dishes. “Like girlfriend kind of met someone?”

“Yeah. Well, that’s why I’m calling.” I take a breath. “Mom, I swear I tried to do right by her–Lexy. I’ve been trying to be better with her than I was with Emily, but it feels like it’s pointless.”

“Oh, sweetie.” There’s a whoosh of the sliding door opening, and I picture Mom sitting in the patio chair while she gives me whatever pep talk is coming. “First, I want to remind you that what happened with Emily was not your fault. You gave that girl everything you possibly could have at your age, and she didn’t deserve you. It breaks my heart you’re still blaming yourself for that.”

I sigh, resting my hand on the steering wheel as I stay parked. “I thought I was over it, but Lexy pulling away has all those feelings coming back.”

“What happened?” The chirping birds in the background send a ping of homesickness straight through me. A car at the end of the row I’m parked in honks, reminding me of the chaos of California and heightening the feeling.

I sigh. “I don’t know. It was hard to win her over in the first place, but something just kept telling me I had to get to know her.” I pause, not knowing what to say from here.

“And when you got to know her?”

“She’s so great. You’d love her. She’s sassy. She’s such a badass bartender. And beautiful. We have so much in common–not just shallow shit like the same favorite bands, but also in ways I never want to relate to anyone–like childhood trauma and insecurities and all that.”

“But…” she says softly, although I have a feeling she already knows.

“But she’s letting her past hold her back from being happy, and I don’t know what to do if she won’t let me in.” Fuck, I hate how pathetic I sound, but I don’t know what else to do.

“Did I ever tell you the story of how Mike and I met?”

“Remind me.” I humor her, reclining my seat and settling in for the story I’ve heard more times than I can count.

“It was the summer before our first year of college. We were both at the first Oregon Jamboree in 1992 with our friends and met standing next to each other waiting for Wynonna Judd to take the stage.”

Mike and Melissa took us camping for the three day country concert every summer until we graduated, and each time they drank a little too much wine and retold their love story like we hadn’t heard it the year before.

“We hit it off so well, we ended up ditching our friends,” she continues. “But that was back in the day. We couldn’t exactly exchange phone numbers, and he didn’t have a landline in his dorm at U of O.”

I chuckle at the flashback, trying to envision what it must have been like living in a world without cell phones. “And you went to Oregon State,” I add.

“I sure did.” Her smile is evident in her voice.

“So, what happened?” I indulge her with feigned curiosity.

“We decided to write it off as a good time and went our separate ways.”

I keep quiet, waiting for the rest.

She chuckles on the other end of the line. “I lasted a day before I decided Ihadto see him again. I convinced my friends to road trip to Eugene every weekend to party, hoping I’d run into him. Then, Thanksgiving weekend I stayed in town for the Civil War rival game, praying he’d miraculously come to me.”

“No fucking way.”

“Way,” she says as if she can still hardly believe it herself. “I ran into him in the soft pretzel line.”

“Thank God for that.” I don’t even want to imagine the shit show my life could have turned out to be if Melissa and Mike had never found their way back to each other. “What does that have to do with Lexy, though?”

“Look, sweetie. Sometimes life blesses you with someone that fits you so perfectly you can hardly wrap your mind around how they exist. But that doesn’t mean everything between you will be perfect. That’s not possible–with anyone.

“I guess what I want to know is… say you think you found that person… how do you know if the not perfect shit is worth it?”

“Are you willing to do the work it’ll take to see?”

“Yeah. I am. But she has to want to work too. I can’t make her.”

“Does she not want to?”

“I want to believe she does, but I don’t know.” My mind flashes back to when she left the other night. As well as I can usually read her, I have no idea how easy it was for her to walk away.

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