by Piper Lennox
He drops his hand and shrugs. “Or, who knows: maybe she knew damn well I was my dad’s kid—I am, by the way—and just lied because she assumed he’d give up custody, test-free. God knows that blog needed lots of Theo content to keep going.”
I get the feeling my next question won’t be welcome, but I’ve been dying to know for days. “Is the blog still up?”
He shakes his head. “Got a court order to remove all content of me. Not that it helped her get any less fucked in the head, mind you. She started lying about her own life, instead of mine.”
Theo rearranges again, moving his arm out from underneath me. I watch him pace to the railing, shrugging on his coat as he goes.
Wrapping two of the blankets around myself, I follow.
“Actually,” he sneers, “most of that started before she left. She faked a miscarriage, a brain tumor….”
“Oh, my God, are you serious?”
“Wish I wasn’t.” He folds his arms and leans his weight on the railing, eyes on the pitch-black void of the horizon. “She shaved her head to pretend she went through chemo, and had all these fake doctor reports printed up.”
His brow gets heavy, jaw locking tight again. “But the pregnancy one, that hit my Dad the hardest. He knew she was faking; none of the details lined up or made sense. But he wanted to believe her so much. He always wanted more kids, and for me to have siblings. So when she pretended to lose it…that was the last straw. It finally hit him that he couldn’t trust her.”
The venom in his voice, even though it’s not meant for me, seeps into my veins. I wish I hadn’t declined that wine refill. “She lied to you guys about it all, too? Not just for the blog?”
“Yep. Mother and Wife of the Fucking Millennium.”
I stare at my hands, braided together on the railing. His, meanwhile, grip it hard enough to crush the whole thing.
“Sounds like she was mentally ill,” I offer, even though I don’t want to defend what she did. It’s more for Theo’s sake.
“She was,” he nods. “Is. Dad tried to get her therapy a hundred fucking times, but she didn’t want help. And the lying just got worse.” He runs his tongue over his teeth with a long inhale. “When she finally left to be with her investor? She justified it on the blog by claiming my dad was abusing her. Crafted all these fake bruises and injury photos.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” Theo laughs, but in that way you would when you’re struggling to not flip a table or punch someone out. “Those posts got him in a lot of trouble with the law, until he could disprove all the claims. Almost lost his job in the meantime. Lost a lot of friends. It wasn’t enough for her to just leave: she had to wreck our whole fucking life on her way out.”
He glances at me. “So the way you feel about cheaters? That’s how I feel about liars.”
The air turns acrid, even though we couldn’t ask for a more gorgeous night. My heart pounds in my chest, while his words drill through my head.
He hates liars.
He hates you.
Mercifully, a cold breeze skates off the water, right into our faces. Theo shivers and rubs the chill from his nose. I face the wind head-on and breathe until my pulse calms down.
“After that,” he says, “I stopped believing anything she had to say.”
He gets quiet. In the silence, I hear him swallow.
“Including that she loved me. None of her actions backed it up, so....” His words stumble over themselves, tangled in a breath as he stares at the rocks below.
The expression on his face stabs my heart. In it, I can perfectly picture Theo at thirteen, struggling to make sense of something more incomprehensible than anything else on this earth: how a parent can not love their child.
“Maybe she did love you.” I say this not because I believe it, but because I want Theo to. Desperately. “In her own way.”
He shakes his head. The green glow from the pool catches the film on his eyes.
“Does your mom love you?” he asks, suddenly.
“Yes.”
“And how do you know?”
I think a moment, then shrug, pulling the blankets around myself tighter. “I just...do.”
“Exactly.” Theo cracks his knuckles, then tucks his chapping hands under his armpits, shivering deeply. “When someone loves you right, there’s no room for doubt.”
I can’t argue with that, much as I want to. No matter how intense the urge is to make his pain smaller, I know I can’t.
With another shiver, he stalks away from the railing. “Let’s go inside.”
I shake my head as he tries to lead me to the backdoor, then point to the poolhouse. “Play something for me.”
The anger leaves his face, but I know it’s still there. It’s always there.
I carry a similar brand for my dad. Like the last drops of poison in a vial, we keep it tucked away where it can be ignored, but never forgotten.
While we walk to the poolhouse, he pulls me into his side. His mouth presses against my temple, like if he inhales the scent of me long enough, the vial will seal itself shut.
It must work. Once he’s seated at the piano, his shoulders are loose, his voice is soft, and the waiting glance he gives me is that clear, sparkling emerald.
“What am I playing for you, tonight?”
Dragging the blankets with me, I join him on the bench.
“‘American Pie,’” I tell him. Her favorite.
He hums a moment, then places his hands on the keys.
He plays.
I shut my eyes. In his style, the familiar notes have that feeling of a person you know, trapped in one you don’t. Or that feeling of going home, but knowing you’ll never again find it how you left it.
Maybe that’s just how the song makes me feel, nowadays. I think it’s how I feel about her.
When it’s done, he rubs my back in slow circles. He doesn’t ask who this song was for. He simply waits.
“My mom has M.S.” My head finds his shoulder, then his chest when he turns to pull me into himself, straddling the bench so I fit better. “She was diagnosed six years ago, and it…it’s really aggressive. More than the doctors predicted it would be. She’s declined so fast, they’re telling her to prepare for a wheelchair, a feeding tube….”
He nods, so I don’t have to finish the sentence. I’m glad. My aunt can talk about Mom’s eventual incapacitation like it’s a deadline so far in the future, it doesn’t even matter. Like she’ll still get a life well-lived, instead of one already halfway stolen.
But I can’t talk about it at all. I wish I could. It would hurt less to be able to just say the words, matter-of-fact and medically sterilized.
“My aunt and I were taking care of her together, along with some home care, so she won’t have to go into a nursing home. But whenever Mom gets worse, the bills go up. So I moved out here, and I send money back every week. I told them it was the only well-paying work I could find.”
My chest aches. What I’m about to confess has festered inside me worse than any other lie I’ve ever told. And I think that’s why it has to come out.
“I did get offered some decent work in Jersey, though. But I didn’t take it. And I didn’t tell them about it.”
My body draws back from him, arms folding in like I can hold myself together. He pulls me back, no hesitation.
“You wanted to leave,” he whispers.
“Yes.”
I feel the tears on my face, cold lines down to my chin, but don’t actually feel like I’m crying. Just falling apart, in a space where it’s safe to do that.
I can’t believe it’s with him.
I can’t believe this is the same boy who humiliated me, who destroyed the meager but decent life I had, and my mother’s, with one selfish and sick action.
“Tell me that you’re smarter than that. Tell me you aren’t actually doing that to yourself again.”
Am I smarter than this? Who in their right mind would reenter the lion’s den, after t
he beast took so much from them?
Who would dare look at it and decide it’s changed?
But when he lifts my chin and cleans off my tears with his lips, kissing every ache in my heart until they’re numb, I don’t regret opening that gate.
Theo isn’t a lion, anymore.
And even if he were...I’m no longer a naïve little lamb, stumbling back into the slaughter.
“Look at me.” His eyes sweep across my face. “It’s okay. You’re still helping them, yeah? You just...do it from afar now.”
“Yeah,” I sob, “so I don’t have to look at her everyday. How fucking selfish is that?”
“I don’t think it’s selfish. I think you’re doing what you have to, for your own mental health.”
I shake my head. That’s a nice thought and all—but the fact remains that I left my mother, right when she needed me most, because I wasn’t strong enough.
I abandoned her. Just like my dad.
“I’m an awful person, Theo.” I stare at his chest while he kisses my forehead.
I touch the heart I almost destroyed.
“You’re not.” His voice, so sure and steady, reverberates in my head when I put my ear against his chest. “I know you, Ruby. You’re good. And you’re—”
Quickly, I lift my head and kiss him. I won’t let him finish that lie.
I’m not good. I’m not honest.
You used to be, though.
And that makes whatever I am now even worse.
23
“Okay, so then it’s a left at the base of the mountain, not a right.”
I write “left” on the back of my hand, then toss the marker aside to finish packing while Wes and Clara bicker in my speakerphone. “Got it.”
“Tell him it’s the hard left,” she urges Wes, “not the weird fork-in-the-road thing.”
“He knows what ‘left’ means, Clare. He’ll see it.”
“You didn’t. We almost got stuck in that creek.” The line swishes around, getting passed between hands; she calls, “The hard left, Theo. There are two left roads, don’t take—”
“The weird fork-in-the-road thing,” I finish, laughing. I cram my stack of new sweaters in the bag, add my toiletries and phone charger, then zip it shut. “Got it. I’m leaving now.”
They cheer and shout that they’ll see me soon. I hang up, then dial Ruby’s cell.
She sounds breathless when she answers. “Hey.”
“Hey. You all right?”
“Yeah.” There’s a long sigh, and I can tell she isn’t. “Um...oh, are you leaving now?”
“Yeah, just finished packing. Where are you?” We decided to postpone our goodbye for the weekend as long as possible. I’m supposed to meet her at her last house of the day on my way out of town.
She gives me the address, still sounding strange. I decide not to push it...yet. Getting info out of Ruby, I’ve noticed, is way easier in person.
She meets me on the curb in front of a sprawling, brand-new house in Westhampton. Right away, I know I wasn’t imagining that weird tone during our call. She looks upset.
I kiss her when she climbs into the passenger side. “Talk.”
With another sigh, she plops back against her seat. “My aunt is taking my mom on a cruise.”
“Uh...” I watch her angle the vents onto her face, basking in the heat. “That’s...horrible?”
She gives me a look, then rolls her eyes at herself. “No, no, the cruise is good. My aunt got it for free—she used to work there and built up, like, a thousand favors—and we both think the warm weather and relaxing will be so good for my mom. It’s just...she booked it because I told her I was going to be working this weekend.” Her hand sweeps to the house. “And instead, we’re doing our Thursday and Friday work today, because two clients cancelled.”
“Ah,” I nod. “So the problem is that, now that you can go home, nobody will even be there.”
“Exactly.” She scrubs her cheeks, probably out of equal parts frustration and coldness. “It’s fine, I mean…my car’s in the shop until Friday, for one thing, so it’s not like I’d have a way home. And I have some friends and coworkers I can spend the day with. But I guess I didn’t realize how sad I’d actually be, not seeing my family for the holiday.” Her head tips back on the seat, eyes closing. “I’m being stupid, I know. I wasn’t even going to be there in the first place, so I don’t understand why it’s just now getting to me.”
“You’re not being stupid. It just turned out to be a bigger deal to you than you thought it would.” Taking her hand, I bring it to my lips and kiss it until she smiles. “I’ve got a silver lining, though.”
“Yeah?” She cracks one eye at me. “What’s that?”
“Now you can come to the cabin with me.”
Ruby sits forward, seeming to consider it, before shaking her head. “I’m still not done here, and you’re all ready to go.”
“I’ll wait.”
“I have work on Saturday.”
“We’ll leave on Friday.”
With a laugh like I’m crazy, she picks at her nail polish and mutters, “A trip together, on a holiday…isn’t it a little too soon?”
“I’m sure it violates some unspoken law in dating that I never got around to learning, seeing as I’ve never really dated anyone, but I don’t care.” I squeeze her hand. “If it bothers you, that’s okay. I’ll understand. Just don’t say no only because you think you’re ‘supposed’ to.”
Her tongue traces the corners of her mouth while she thinks. “It would be better than anything I could do around here. And I would miss you, while you’re gone.”
She looks embarrassed to admit that, but I couldn’t be happier. “I’d miss you too. So come with me.” Nodding at the house, I tell her again that I can wait until her shift ends. “Then we’ll swing by your place, you can pack a bag, and we’ll go. It’s only a few hours’ drive.”
Laughing again, like now she’s the one going crazy, Ruby tightens her ponytail and sweeps her eyes over the property. I see the idea take shape in her head.
“Okay,” she says, then bursts out laughing when I dive across the console to kiss her.
“We’ve circled the complex twice already. You forget your address?” I chuckle as we go over the speed bump in front of the leasing office for the third time. Jokes aside, I’m getting weirded out.
“No, just...wanted a spot to open up close to the building, that’s all.”
“I’ll just put on the hazards while you run in. Tell me which unit’s yours.”
“They don’t want you doing that. It’s a fire lane thing.” She shrugs and winces, a universal gesture of “it sucks, but what can you do,” before nodding at an empty space. “Just park here and I’ll walk to my place. It isn’t far.”
I do. When I unbuckle, she insists I wait here.
“Not very gentlemanly to let you heft a suitcase by yourself.”
“Two days’ worth of stuff?” she smirks, leaning back through the open door to kiss my cheek. “I’m just getting a little weekend bag, it won’t be heavy. Five minutes. Time me.”
I re-buckle with a dramatic sigh. “I don’t care if your place is messy, Ruby. Do you not remember what my house looked like, before you took pity on me?”
“Did it for the money,” she winks, then shuts her door with her hip. I watch her go in the rearview.
While I wait, I text Wes my change in plans. He tells me Clara is losing her mind with excitement at the thought of meeting my girlfriend, so I open up a thread with her and tell her she’s got to cut that shit out. “We’re exclusive,” I type. “Not official.”
“Technicality,” she texts back.
When I get to my building, I side-eye the vehicle parked right out front.
Then I relax, all the way down to my toes. It’s a black Camry, but it isn’t Callum’s.
Inside, I fill a backpack with the bare bones of everything I’ll need. I skip hair products—Theo said there’ll be other girls at t
he cabin—but do add the box of condoms I just bought. Bumming those is an embarrassment I could do without.
Before I leave, my phone chimes.
Hale: Yeah, we got you. I’ll put the key in that shitty charcoal grill of yours.
I smile. Hale and his wife are bringing my car back Friday morning from his brother’s auto shop, a huge and annoying favor I’m so relieved he agreed to.
Neither of us mentioned the reason, but we both know why. I don’t want my parking spot staying empty any longer than necessary.
With a dry erase marker, I write him a backwards thank you note on the inside of my patio door. The finishing touch is a big, loopy heart.
Right in its center, I see my reflection. She can’t stop smiling.
Yes, all of this feels incredibly soon, but it also feels incredibly right.
Something shifted, the other night at his house. Maybe it was a build-up from all our time together, or talking about our moms. Part of me wonders if the only thing that really changed was me.
All I know is, for the first time in weeks…I like the person staring back at me in this mirror.
Our trip takes three hours. We spend most of it singing along to showtunes, once he discovers I was a theater kid growing up, and I learn he played accompaniment for almost every musical his private school put on.
About twenty minutes from the cabin, he turns down the music and says, “I think that’s what I want to do.”
We’re riding behind a Little Debbie truck, so I’m instantly confused. “Bake snack cakes?”
“Piano accompaniment,” he laughs. “I forgot how much I loved doing that. But talking about our theater days, it reminded me that it was, like, my favorite part of high school.”
“Even better than the wild parties and casual sex?”
“I didn’t—” He trips over his words and sighs, until I assure him I was just joking. “Still. I don’t want you thinking I actually liked who I was, back then. I didn’t.”