CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“How long are you going to stay in bed?” Meemaw asked as she lowered herself down onto a chair next to me. “I think we need to stage one of those intervention thingies.”
“I don’t need an intervention, Meemaw. I’m just sad.” My dog, Princess, was curled up in bed next to me. She’d been my constant companion since I’d returned home. As if she could sense how unhappy I was.
I tried to think of the last time I’d been sad before Max. It occurred to me that it was the day when my stepmother had posted that happy photo of my dad’s new family and when I found out Adrian was going to propose to Colette. But that same night I’d been able to joke, to laugh, to forget about him completely while spending time with Max.
But now? It was like all the color had gone out of the world and I would never smile or laugh again.
“It’s been a week, Everly,” Meemaw said.
Sometimes it felt like I’d been home for ten years. Or as if I’d never gone off to New York at all.
My mom came into the room and Meemaw turned toward her. “You know, the absence of a strong male father figure causes insecurity in women. I read the Google about it.”
“This isn’t because Dad sucks,” I said. “It’s because Max does.”
“Have you talked to Max at all?” my mother asked as she sat on the foot of my bed.
My plan had been to ignore him completely. Maybe even block him from my phone. But then I remembered how upset I’d been at him for shutting down and running off, telling him that wasn’t a way to deal with problems, and realized that I was doing exactly the same thing.
So I’d texted him after I’d arrived to let him know where I was and that I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. He had immediately responded.
I’m here when you are ready to talk. I want to explain if you’ll let me.
He continued to text daily, just to let me know that he was thinking of me and missed me. He didn’t pressure me or ask me to respond. It wasn’t like he was ignoring what I said, more like he wanted to let me know that he was still there.
It was exactly what I would have wanted him to do, if he’d asked.
Because he knows you, a voice inside me whispered. I ignored it.
“I texted him,” I said. “I’m not ready to speak to him yet.”
“But you love him,” my mom responded, her voice soft.
“It’s only been a month,” I said. I had decided that it was far too short a time for me to be in love with someone. It wasn’t logical. “You don’t love somebody you’ve known for a month.”
My heart didn’t agree with me, though.
Meemaw frowned. “I knew your grandfather for two weeks and we got married the night before he was shipped out to Vietnam. We were happily married for thirty-eight years until he passed.”
I had a lot of good memories of Meemaw and Papaw and how in love they had been, in sharp contrast to my parents’ marriage. My grandparents’ relationship was one of the reasons I believed in fairy tales.
Meemaw was slowly getting to her feet while muttering to herself. “We let her go off to the city and she manages to find a rich suitor but still winds up back here.”
When she’d left the room, I asked my mom, “Does this mean the intervention failed? Since half of it left?”
“You know, I dated your father for a year and I never felt about him the way you feel about Max. Sometimes I think time is irrelevant when it comes to love. We feel what we feel.”
“What I feel is like a total failure.” At love, at my job.
“You didn’t fail. You got fired because of a rule you were unaware of. That kind of thing happens sometimes. It wasn’t because you failed.”
This was the encouraging, supportive mother that I felt like I’d waited my whole life for. “Why aren’t you always like this?”
My mom seemed startled. “Like what?”
“It’s one of the reasons I love talking about royals with you. When we do that, we’re just ourselves and we enjoy each other. But any other time, you don’t ever ask me questions about my life.”
“I do ask you!” she said, sounding a bit indignant. “All the time!”
“No, you ask so that you can tell me what I should be doing differently. I know you love me, but when you do that, it makes me feel really small. I want to be able to talk to you like we are now. Where you listen to me and let me speak and don’t try to constantly tell me what to do.”
She twisted her mouth to one side and I recognized the gesture as one she made when she was trying not to cry, and now I felt worse.
“I guess because I want your life to turn out differently than mine. Meemaw used to do the same thing to me, only worse.”
“Meemaw?” I asked in shock. While my grandmother would make occasional comments, like the earlier one about me going to New York, for the most part she was a really great listener. I’d spent hours growing up pouring my heart out to her.
“She wasn’t always the way that you remember her. But now she’s old and worried about getting into heaven, so things have changed.”
I felt a hint of a smile hovering around my lips. It was the first time I’d wanted to smile in what felt like forever.
“And,” my mom continued, “I want you to be happy. I married someone that I shouldn’t have. He did give me you, and I’ll always be grateful for that, but we never should have been together. I had dreams that I gave up. I wanted to be a lawyer. But after your dad left, I had to find a way to support us. I’m proud of my salon, but it’s not what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve always wanted more for you, my perfect little princess. I wanted you to have a man who would respect you, love you, and be faithful to you.”
“Oh, Mom.” I reached out for her hand and she grabbed on to me tightly.
“I know I pushed you to join the salon. I thought it would be a good safety net for you while you figured out what you wanted to do. But you already knew, and I should have supported you in that dream. You are so much smarter, so much more talented, than I ever was. I want the biggest and the best for you and I’m sorry if I went about that in a terrible way. I would never want to hurt you. I want you to have the life you want. To have the life I never got to have.”
“You can still have all of that,” I told her. “You can still meet someone and have a life with them. You can even change careers if you want to. You don’t have to live through me.”
She held on to my hand with both of hers. “I didn’t mean to try and live through you. And I don’t know about trying to change what I’m doing. Or dating. I think I’m an old dog and don’t have time for new tricks. But I am sorry.”
“You had to be my mom and my dad and I love you for doing that. You always made me feel really loved and I think that’s the most anyone can ask for.”
“I will do better, though. I promise.” She stayed quiet for a moment and then, like she couldn’t help herself, said, “And I can see how much it’s hurting you being apart from Max. And it’s up to you whether or not you want to talk to him. And if you do, it’ll go one of two ways. Either you’ll end things completely and get closure, which will make it easier for you to move on. Or the second option could mean something pretty great might happen.”
Her words filled me with hope. “I know I can’t hide out here forever. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and I know what my next steps are going to be.”
Using the phrase next steps made me think about Max, again. And my heart throbbed with grief.
“That’s good. And I know you’re trying to pattern your life after Kat’s. Just remember what her mom told her when she broke up with Nico. She ran home and climbed into her bed and her mom told her to get back out there and make sure that Nico knew what he was missing out on. Maybe that’ll work for you, too.”
“You’re thinking of the British princess, Princess Caitlin. The one married to Alexander. Kat wasn’t close to her mom back then, and she stayed away from Nico for months after they broke up. But they worked things out.”
That led to a twenty-minute conversation where we discussed royal breakups and how the people involved had dealt with their heartache.
Surprisingly, it made me feel a bit better.
The plans that I had spent the past week forming in my mind were also making me feel better. By day two it had occurred to me that if I was this sad without Max, why was I continuing to be without him? I was going to talk to him. But not over the phone. In person, the way he had wanted to when he was going to tell me that he wasn’t from Monterra.
There were other things I had to work out first.
“Well, Meemaw and I are here if you want to talk some more,” she said. “I’m going to go start dinner.”
She got up and came over and kissed me on the forehead. “I love you, baby girl. And we will always be here for you, anytime you need us.”
“Love you, Mom.”
She left my room and I lay in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. I was glad I’d told my mom how I really felt and how I wanted things to change. I knew things were going to improve between us.
Because I had talked it out with her.
Just like I needed to talk things out with Max.
Now that I’d finally been able to have that conversation with my mom, it was one thing I could cross off the list I’d been crafting since I’d arrived home.
My phone rang and I looked at the caller ID. It was Vella.
Which was weird because Vella never called me. If we ever talked on the phone, it was because I had called her.
She always just texted. In fact, she had texted me every day since I’d come back to Alabama just to check in on me. Strange coming from her, but it was nice.
It made me worried that something serious was going on. I answered. “Vella, are you okay? Why are you calling me?”
“So, what Max did was bad, but it wasn’t he-murdered-somebody or cheated-on-you bad.”
“You know those two things are really different, right?”
“Well, sometimes one necessitates the other,” she replied. “But yes. I was just trying to say that there are really horrible violations of trust and what Max did was essentially a harmless lie. He wasn’t trying to hurt you. He did mislead you, which sucks, and he knows he shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why are you standing up for him?”
“A couple of reasons. The first is that he’s come over every day at seven o’clock at night to see if you’re back yet, and the other day I felt bad, so I invited him in. We got to talking and everything just spilled out of him. I don’t think he has anyone else to talk to about this situation. Sunny is not speaking to him right now.”
That made me feel sad. I hadn’t wanted to come between Max and Sunny. I knew how much they meant to each other.
“The second reason,” she went on, “is because while my heart has slightly softened toward Max, I still hate everybody and I’m mad at him for hurting you. But you love him and you’re my best friend, so I want you to have everything you deserve that will make you happy. Even if what you want is a stupid person.”
“I’m so glad we’re friends.” I was also glad she wasn’t here to see my eyes getting all misty. I also thought about how much closer I’d felt to Vella since she’d shared all of herself with me, and given that I was in love with Max, I knew that I owed him that same chance.
“Yeah, yeah. When are you coming back?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. I’d already booked my ticket.
“Good. Will your accent be back to normal then? Because you’re a lot like this.”
“At least I didn’t ‘y’all come back now, ya hear’ you.”
“Stop,” she said.
“I could say ‘bless your heart’ and tell you I’m fixin’ to come home soon, so stop pitchin’ a fit, because I’m happy as all get-out to be headed back up north!”
“I’m going now,” she said, and hung up the phone.
Despite what all of my loved ones seemed to think, I hadn’t been curled up in my bed stuck in an endless misery loop.
No, I had done what I was best at. I’d planned.
I’d made backup plans for my backup plans, preparing myself for every contingency and problem. I was deciding what I wanted because the event I was planning was my actual life. I would make those calls, and I would live with the consequences of those decisions.
I knew what I would do when I got back to New York, and I had weighed out the pros and cons of each action. I couldn’t control other people, but I was in charge of my life. I had needed this trip home to catch my breath. To be able to hear my own thoughts and to pay attention to what I wanted.
While I didn’t know how things with Max would go, I would give him a chance to explain himself.
I wanted to smile and laugh again. And I knew the only way that would happen would be for me to hear him out.