“Your father and I hadn’t been getting along for some time before everything came to a head.” She spoke slowly, halting every few words as if she needed to carefully measure the weight of each one.

I waited. As she’d said, we’d never talked about what happened. I only knew what I’d pieced together from fragments of conversations I doubted I was meant to hear, and my imagination at age ten had been pretty active.

Mom started to say something but shook her head and stopped. She twisted her wedding band a few times and said, “What do you remember?”

The last bite of my croissant became very dry in my mouth, and I jumped up to pour myself a glass of juice. After a couple of gulps, I sat back down. Mom’s eyes were wide as she stared expectantly.

“He yelled a lot,” I said, “and you were always crying.” I folded my arms across my chest and hugged myself. “It was like the more you cried, the madder he got. I didn’t understand why you didn’t just scream back at him.” I glanced at her to gauge her reaction, but her expression hadn’t changed. Her eyes looked a little sadder, though.

“I thought it was my fault he was so angry,” I continued. “I mean, I knew about the restaurant and Franco taking money and stuff.”

Mom closed her eyes. “I’d almost forgotten about Franco,” she said, bitterness lacing her words. “I’m glad he didn’t have the nerve to show up when your father died.”

“I guess he screwed up a lot of stuff for the restaurant.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I warned your dad about entering into a partnership with Franco, but Vince assured me we could trust him.” She shook her head. “That’s where it all began, you know.”

“So, you mean, that time I got a C on my health test…?”

“Oh, honey,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “It was never about you.”

I nodded. I think a part of me had known that back then, but it was hard to reconcile when I’d heard my name so many times through closed doors.

Mom emptied her coffee cup and took a deep breath before she began telling me about their marriage, stuff I didn’t know and more stuff that didn’t make a ton of sense. She talked about how they’d supported each other through graduate school and thought they were invincible, how the pressures of building his restaurant and working her way up to partner had fractured the foundation of their marriage, how my birth was expected to re-cement their bond, how their differing ideas of parenthood ultimately drove them further apart. Watching her career take off while his restaurant folded had been like acid on his wounds.

I processed it as best as I could. In retrospect, it all made sense, and a part of me wished I’d known about all of it before, even though I knew ten-year-old me wouldn’t have understood half of it. There was stuff even sixteen-year-old me didn’t understand.

“But if things were so bad, why didn’t you just leave?”

“We’d talked about separating,” she said. Her body sagged, as though recounting everything was sucking the life out of her. “Nothing came of it, though. He’d throw it out there like a threat and dangle it over my head. I was too scared to take him up on it, and he knew it.”

My mother was scared? Really? This was the woman who could terrify the Westgate Prep administration into doing her bidding just by showing up. I didn’t think anything could rattle her. She was brilliant and passionate and determined—but scared? I didn’t think it was possible.

“Toward the end, I was tired of fighting,” she said. “That’s why I stopped answering him. That’s why I didn’t yell back. I knew it wouldn’t change anything.” She reached for my hand. “And every time he shouted at me, it took everything in me to keep it together for you.”

I closed my eyes, recalling images of my mom on the floor, sobbing. Or in a chair, or at the dining room table, or anywhere, always alone. My dad would break her spirit, reduce her to tears, and leave her where she fell. How could my mother still love someone like that?

“He was drunk that night, wasn’t he?” I asked, though I knew the answer. “He was always louder when he was drunk.”

She hesitated but finally nodded. “Vince said that was the last time he’d had a drink.”

“At least he realized he was out of control,” I mumbled.

If Mom heard me, she didn’t show it. “We didn’t expect you to come downstairs,” she said. “And had I known—”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” I finished for her.

“No, honey. Let me explain.” She put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. “If I’d known you were watching, I would’ve done a better job of standing up to him.” She lowered her eyes, and her bottom lip trembled. “Some role model I turned out to be.” Her voice cracked as she said it, and I leaned over to put my arm around her.

“You did fine,” I promised. “And I’m not the confrontational type anyway.”

“But I should have been protecting you,” she said with a sniff, “not the other way around.”

I wasn’t sure how long we stayed like that, just the two of us trying to put bad memories and past mistakes behind us, but I felt closer to my mom than I had in a long time.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Something in my gut twisted when I turned on my phone and saw the messages from Jake later that morning. Three messages in all, two just texts and one with a photo, each of them friendly and upbeat, none of them mentioning what happened the night before.

Wakey wakey eggs & bakey!

Stores shouldn’t open before 12 on Sat. Or ever.

A picture of him with his thumb up holding a vinyl copy of the Clash’s London Calling. Near mint 79 press w lyric sleeves! he wrote. And it’s mine! BWAHAHAHAHA!

I read through his messages again and wondered if I’d imagined the events of the previous night. I touched my lips where his mouth had caressed mine and closed my eyes. No, it really happened.

So why didn’t he say anything? I wondered.

I flopped back onto my bed and covered my eyes with my forearm, trying to ignore the growing, persistent ache in my chest.

My phone chirped with a message from Bianca: Ok to hang out later?

Sure, I quickly wrote back. What’s up?

Game at 3 v Xavier, she responded. B said he’ll drop me off.

I laughed. Bianca must’ve really been over basketball. Not even the draw of watching her boyfriend run up and down the court could make her go.

Another chirp. Talked to J?

My fingers hovered over the touchscreen on my phone for a few moments. No, I finally replied. Why?

It took a few seconds before she responded, Curious, followed a few seconds later by, You should call him.

I sneered at my phone and decided her message didn’t warrant a response.

And anyway, I said silently, Jake’s at work, so I couldn’t call him if I wanted to.

Even as I argued with myself, I knew I was lying. I’d bugged him at work a bunch of times before, and he had always responded to texts. The truth was I was scared. A part of me wanted to repeat that kiss, to lose myself in all the tenderness he had to offer. But another part of me wondered if I’d only liked kissing him because my emotions were running so high the previous night and if that meant another kiss would feel empty and meaningless. But the biggest part of me, the one that had kind of taken over, wanted to hide from him, especially since his messages sounded totally normal, as if nothing had happened.

What did you expect? I asked myself. Flowers and a sonnet after you took off running?

I grabbed a pillow and covered my face to muffle a frustrated scream.

A bazillion thoughts flooded my head. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake to kiss him. I mean, it wasn’t like he’d objected to it. Maybe Tim was right and Jake really did like me, but if that was true, then it was probably stupid to run away. But something happened in that kiss, and it was awesome and perfect and transcended everything. Nothing that good could last forever. If we got together, I knew it would only be a matter of time before we’d break up, and I couldn’t handle losing my best friend.