Chapter 16
DICE, STEVIE. DICE!” MY MOM yells from behind me.
“I am dicing!” I turn around to face her, but she’s just a big blur of colors through the stinging tears streaming down my cheeks. I swipe my sleeve across my face to clear my vision and see her vigorously stirring two pots of spaghetti sauce simultaneously.
“No. You’re chopping,” she says, eyes wide.
“Oh my gosh, Mom. What is the difference?” I ask, looking back at my pile of apparently chopped onions on the cutting board, my eyes practically burning out of their sockets.
“They need to be smaller. Like one-third that size.”
“My God. She’s becoming the Spaghetti Dinner Menace,” I mumble under my breath as I get back to it.
“I heard that!” she replies with a laugh, trying and failing to knock her bare foot into me from her post at the stove. “I just want everything to be perfect.”
“It will be. We’re trying three different meatball recipes. One of them has to be a winner.”
When she finally deems my pile of vegetables diced, we get to work assembling each of the three types, spreading them out evenly over a few sheet pans.
The first batch is 100 percent beef, the second is all pork, and the third is the two mixed together. Honestly, all of them smell delicious already, even raw. Probably thanks to all the garlic and parsley.
“So what did you and Nora do yesterday?” she asks, rolling a meatball between her palms.
“We—” Probably wouldn’t be the best thing to tell my mom that I went right back to the place where I almost died. That sounds like a good way to actually die, since she’d kill me herself. “We just hung out at her house. She made us sandwiches and we talked.”
“Well, she seems like a nice girl. You’re welcome to have her over anytime.”
“Okay,” I reply, but I’m not so sure Nora and I will be hanging out again.
Not after how the last time ended. Which reminds me, I’ve been wanting to ask my mom about Ryan, but I haven’t been sure how to start.
I guess I’m surprised that she hasn’t brought him up to me.
The only way she wouldn’t is if I never told her.
“So, you know how I went to the Dinor with Savannah and Rory the other day? Well, they told me something… about, you know, before.”
My mom sets her meatball down and looks over at me. “Oh?”
“Yeah, they told me about this… boy, Ryan. I guess I kinda really liked him.”
She doesn’t say anything at first, but I can feel her eyes on me. “Really?” she says finally, a surprised lightness in her voice, then excitement. Like this is the first she’s hearing that he exists.
“Yeah.” I look over to find a genuine look of shock covering her face that answers that, but I press on first. “I wanted to ask… can I go to the fair with him tomorrow? Savannah would be there too, and—”
“Yes,” she replies before I can even finish. “Yes!” She throws her arms around me and squeals as she squeezes the breath out of me.
She finally releases me and picks her meatball back up, shaking her head with a huge smile still plastered onto her face. “See. I knew you’d find someone.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, furrowing my eyebrows.
“Oh, n-nothing,” she stutters. “I just… I’m happy for you, baby. Tell—”
“Mom, but how do you not already know about him? I have always told you literally everything.” I’m looking right at her, but her eyes are on the countertop now.
“But that clearly hasn’t been the case, and I just keep brushing it off, because you tell me everything is fine, but… something doesn’t feel right.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She shrugs.
“Really? You didn’t know the answer when I asked why Savannah and Rory quit soccer.
You reacted so weird when I told you to come sleep in the hospital bed with me.
We haven’t gone to Lola’s in over a year and you could barely give me an explanation why.
And then this. What aren’t you telling me?
” I raise my voice, pleading with her to finally come clean.
“Stevie, just drop it.”
“Why? I deserve to know! Maybe it would even help me remember.”
“You shut me out!” she replies, her shaky voice echoing through the kitchen. When she looks up at me, her eyes are shining with tears just like that night in bed at the hospital.
“What?” I ask, my voice softer now.
She sniffles, turning away from me to look out the window. “You just stopped talking to me.” Her words stab me right through the heart.
“What do you mean? I wouldn’t. We’re so close.” I shake my head, blinking hard.
“We don’t spend time together, Stevie. We don’t talk. We barely ever even sit in the same room.”
I try to process this. Try to imagine me just drifting away from her. But I can’t. Does it have something to do with me lying about work and ditching Savannah and Rory? Is it all connected?
“Mom, something must have happened. I wouldn’t just…”
“You grew up, Stevie. That’s what happened.
I mean, I knew it had to happen eventually, but…
” She shrugs. “You just… you wouldn’t talk to me.
I tried so many times. You have no idea how many times.
” She pulls her sleeve over the end of her thumb to wipe a tear off her cheek.
“I’m sorry. I know more questions isn’t what you need right now.
I know you’re trying to get back on track so I didn’t want to say anything. ”
“No, I want you to be honest. I need you to be.” I reach across to squeeze her forearm, hoping she’ll look at me, but she doesn’t. And even if I can’t remember why, I can feel it in my chest, how deeply I’ve hurt her. Guilt washes over me.
“But whatever it was, it’s in the past,” she replies quietly. “We can start over.”
I genuinely can’t imagine a scenario that would cause me to completely stop talking to my mom, but even just thinking about it scares me. I’ve been trying so hard to get the past back, because I thought it would solve all of my problems, but maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe some things are better left forgotten.