15
Zoe
Zoe was lying on her bed in the spare room in Avery’s flat when the message pinged on her phone.
She knew it would be from her mother (Cally still wasn’t speaking to her, which actually made her feel a hundred times worse than her parents’ divorce did), but she didn’t look at it right away because she knew her mum hated the weekends she spent with her dad and Avery, and looking at the message would make her imagine her mother all lonely and upset at home. But then she realized that if she didn’t reply she’d worry her mother, and everyone was already worrying far too much, so she picked up her phone, read the message and composed a reply.
Love you too. All good here. X
She stared at it and then deleted the second sentence. It wasn’t exactly good, was it? If she sounded as if she was enjoying herself, she might upset her mother. If she sounded miserable, she’d upset her mother. She had to sound neutral.
Love you too. Learning my lines! X
There. That was better. And her mum would be relieved she hadn’t given up on the play. Yet. She pressed Send, lay back down on the pillow and went back to staring up at the ceiling.
She didn’t hate being here, but she didn’t love it either.
The one good thing about being with her dad was that he wasn’t as emotionally intuitive as her mother, so she didn’t have to try so hard to hide her feelings. He didn’t seem to notice if she was happy or sad or quiet. Or maybe he just felt guilty and didn’t want to confront the consequences of his actions so instead chose to ignore them.
There had been that one excruciating moment early on when her dad tried to explain that he hadn’t meant to fall in love with Avery, and that the passion had taken him by surprise and overwhelmed him, and Zoe had wanted to cover her ears and eyes and tell him that if there was one thing a thirteen-year-old did not want to talk about it was her father’s passions.
Fortunately, he’d seemed to find the conversation as awkward as she did and had never mentioned it again.
Now on the weekends they were together they focused on doing things in the moment and didn’t talk about the situation. Sometimes it seemed odd to Zoe that he never asked how her mother was, but presumably if he really cared about her feelings he never would have left in the first place.
And although the first few times she’d met Avery had been stiff and awkward, it was getting easier.
On the weekends when she stayed with them Avery mostly left her alone to do “teenage things”
(Zoe wasn’t sure what those were exactly, but if it bought her the right to alone time, then she was happy to sign up for it), apart from that one time she’d offered to teach Zoe some yoga moves that might ease the slump in her shoulders. Zoe had wanted to point out that her shoulders had been just fine until her dad had run off with Avery, but she didn’t want to create even more tension, so she’d simply nodded politely and said she’d think about it.
To be fair, Avery was mostly okay. It could have been worse. She’d done her best to make Zoe feel comfortable in the apartment, which wasn’t easy because the place reminded Zoe of a showroom. At home she snuggled on the sofa with Tiger and everything was worn and familiar and comfortable, but in Avery’s place there was lots of glass and white furniture and a large modern rug with a weird squiggly design and paintings that were probably considered works of art but to Zoe looked as if someone had tripped while holding a paintbrush.
She missed the lake and the trees and the birds. She missed home.
The first time she’d stayed she’d wanted to ask if next time she could bring Tiger for company, but one look at Avery’s white sofas made her realize that this place was not animal-friendly, so instead she’d compromised and brought a photo of Tiger sitting on her mother’s lap.
On the positive side she had her own bathroom, and there was a small TV in her room. Avery never cared what time she turned her light out, so she often read until far too late and then felt exhausted the next morning.
And Avery could be funny, but every time Zoe laughed she felt a little bit guilty because it felt like a betrayal of her mother.
Not that any of this was her fault. She didn’t think that for a moment.
She hadn’t wanted her parents to split up, of course she hadn’t. But she was old enough to know bad things happened, and at least her mother hadn’t died like Mina’s, so she was grateful for that. And right now, the worst thing in her life was Cally not speaking to her because she talked to Cally about everything, and now she had no one she could be truly honest with. Also, Cally knew a ton of things about her, which made her feel vulnerable. Fortunately she hadn’t told her about Nicole, even though keeping that secret had almost made her burst.
She hadn’t told her dad either. Her mother had told her not to tell anyone at all, so she’d kept her mouth shut.
She had a weird feeling that something had happened between her dad and Nicole. Last time they’d stayed with her, Zoe had seen them talking to each other on the terrace of Nicole’s house in LA, and she hadn’t been able to hear what they were saying, but they’d been standing really close together talking intently, and her dad’s expression had been weird, and for a wild moment Zoe had been scared that they were having an affair and that this conversation was something she should tell her mother about, but then they’d flown back home, and a few days later her dad had left and moved in with Avery. Which didn’t explain the conversation between her dad and Nicole but did explain another conversation she’d overheard a few weeks earlier.
And that was another thing she hadn’t shared with her mother. She felt bad keeping a secret, but she knew she’d feel worse if she shared it. So she was trying to accept that she was just doomed to feel bad.
One thing she knew for sure: adult relationships were so complicated she wasn’t sure she wanted one.