Sometime while the endless highway stretched out in front of me, my heart stopped aching and the bitter taste of betrayal stopped coating my tongue. I was still upset, still really mad, but the focus had switched now that I didn’t have the vision of Royal and Nash wearing nothing but towels dancing in front of me. I was mad at myself, afraid I had made a mistake and once again jumped to awful conclusions out of self-preservation. I had run before thinking it through. But now, with nothing but the road, my wildly careening thoughts and Sea Wolf on the radio, the important parts of the argument started to blanket me like a heavy fog.
All I could hear, all I could feel wrapping around me, were the words I love you. The worst part of the entire thing wasn’t letting Nash go, wasn’t feeling bad because Royal was prettier than me or more alluring—no … the worst part was how desperately I wanted to believe him. I wanted to trust in him, wanted to take everything he was telling me he wanted to give, but I was so hung up on the idea that he would take it away, let me down like so many had before, that I had just jumped to the easiest conclusion there was. I wanted so badly to wholly believe Nash could love me, that he could see himself with me, and even with what happened today, I really just wanted him for my own and it was tearing me apart because all of me wanted all of him and that was scary.
I couldn’t get to him with myself standing in the way and I needed room, needed time to figure that out. He said he would give me everything. I hoped that the time to get my head on right and to try and figure out how much I was willing to risk for him was part of that.
When I got to my mom’s fancy town house at six thirty the next morning, she took one look at me, wrapped me up in a hug, and put me to bed. I was dead on my feet, and an emotional wasteland. I slept for most of the day and only roused that evening for her to feed me a PB&J. The next morning I actually took a shower and got brave enough to look at my phone. I had no missed calls and zero missed text messages from Nash, and I didn’t know if that made me feel better or worse about the way I had left things.
I made my way down to the kitchen and grabbed a muffin my mom must have left on the counter for me. I saw her sitting on the balcony that overlooked the golf course her town house butted up against. I poured myself a cup of coffee and went out to join her. She looked me up and down over the top of her glasses and gave me a grin.
“You look terrible.”
I sighed heavily and sank into the chair opposite to hers. “I just got my heart ripped out. I look pretty much exactly how that feels.”
“I didn’t even know you were seeing someone.”
I pushed my hair back off of my face and looked out at the desert landscape. “I’m not sure what I was doing with him, but I knew it was going to end like this.”
“How?”
“How what, Mom?”
“How did you know it was going to end badly?”
I looked at her, really looked at her, and was surprised to see my old mom looking back at me. Getting away from Brookside had done wonders for her. She looked healthy and sane, and I would be willing to bet her morning cup of coffee no longer had a healthy dose of Irish in it.
“Because he broke my heart once before. Because look at you and Dad. Because look at me … I’m so screwed up, how could it have ended any other way?”
“What happened, Saint?”
I didn’t think I wanted to relive it, but before I could stop, the words, the entire story, starting with seeing him the night Rome got stabbed, came pouring out of me in an unstoppable torrent. When I got to the scene yesterday she was frowning, but as I told her about Nash telling me he loved me, she started to nod and grin at me. I thought that reaction was totally uncalled for until she reached over and patted me on the knee.
“Honey, you have to let that boy love you if he’s the one for you.”
I balked at her and set my coffee down with a thunk on the table. “Did you miss the part where he had a beautiful, naked girl in his apartment? How am I supposed to overlook that?”
She lifted an eyebrow at me. “In your heart, do you really think he would cheat on you? Do something to jeopardize all the work he put into getting you to let him in?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Saint, don’t you know the question is why would he? Why would he cheat on you when you are apparently what he wants? Why would he have worked so hard to get to you, tolerated your hang-ups and oddities, made a space for you in his very busy life, if he was just going to screw it up the first chance he got? Is he a moron?”
“No, he’s really smart, but so is Dad, and he cheated on you.”
She winced involuntarily and I opened my mouth to apologize, but she waved it off.
“Your dad cheated because he no longer loved me and he was bored. It took me all this time to get to that point that I recognize it now. He was a coward, and instead of just saying he didn’t have the same feelings for me anymore, he had an affair. Your young man doesn’t sound like a coward, Saint. He sounds like a man willing to put his heart on the line for you.”
I huffed in aggravation and threw myself back in the seat with my arms across my chest.
“Why are you taking his side, Mom?”
“Because I love you and I realize now that I may have had a hand in some of the issues you are struggling with that are keeping you from being truly happy. I was hard on you, had a hard time with how quiet you were, and nitpicked about your looks and lack of social life when you were younger because I thought I was helping. I thought if you acted more like Faith, looked a little more polished, you would have an easier time of things. Kids can be cruel and I didn’t want that for you. I should’ve appreciated the wonderful child I had, not tried to make you into something else.”
“Oh my God, Mom.”
She took her sunglasses off and looked me dead in the eye. “Listen, honey, I loved your dad my entire life. He was everything to me, and yes, I went off my rocker when that went away. I thought my life was going to be over when he left me, but I wouldn’t change any of it now that I’ve had some space to reflect. At one point our love was the most beautiful thing in the world to me; it brought you and your sister into the world, and it gave me something to look forward to each and every day. It might have gone badly at the end, might have hurt me more than I thought possible when it went away, but I wouldn’t trade a single moment of the best parts of it. I would never trade in experiencing that hurt for the family that our love created, Saint.”