23. All In The Wreckage （Hattie） #2
Maybe he’s already met someone else.
The thought makes my heart pinch like a fist squeezing blood from it.
Mom carries the pie into the kitchen, and I trail after her like a lost puppy.
“Why don’t we open some windows? It’s so stuffy in here.” She takes off her tote bag and places it on the table.
Her tone isn’t what shocks me, but that pie leaves me gobsmacked again when I notice the label on it from a local, bona fide bakery.
“Mom—” I stop. Unsure how to continue.
I wonder if she’d have that drink with me today?
“What’s going on?” I ask as she walks around opening the windows, then digs in my drawers to find a lighter before she lights the ancient vanilla-scented candle on my bureau.
Yes, I have a bureau.
I bought it spontaneously at an antique sale a few years ago.
It seemed like the sort of thing Jane Austen would have. Back then, I could still pretend I was Jane, updated for the twenty-first century.
But Jane Austen didn’t get her butt kicked by a fake breakup. She was the one doing the breaking.
Now, my bureau is saddled with bills, books with loose pages and broken spines I’ll fix someday, and all the feather quills and old pens friends buy me when they know I like historical fiction and old things.
And, it turns out, an old candle.
It smells like burning dust when she brings it back over, but it’s supposed to smell like vanilla. There’s a harsh sweetness underneath the burning smell.
“There,” Mom says. “That’s better.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask again.
She waves me into a seat at the counter.
“I heard about you and Ethan,” she says sympathetically.
Well, no stopping that.
Knowing it was coming doesn’t make me feel any better.
“Hey, if you’re here to point out all the ways I should’ve behaved differently to keep him, I don’t want to hear it,” I say. “Not now. Maybe never. I know you’re disappointed, but—”
“Hattie,” she says, taking my hands and holding them in hers. “Hattie, honey, I would never say that.”
“Didn’t you say that about Jake?” I ask. “You know… how I should have been better for him so he’d stick around?”
She looks mortified. “Did I say that? When?”
“You said it again earlier this summer. Back when you were telling me not to mess things up with Ethan. So much for that.”
Oh, the tears are coming in hot.
I press my lips together firmly, so the sting stops at my nose and can’t make it to my eyes.
“Oh, honey.” It’s all she says, but she does the most un-Mom thing imaginable.
She steps forward and pulls me into a hug.
She smells like Chanel and my childhood.
The last time I remember hugging her like this, I was a teenager, late high school.
I hadn’t gotten the English grade I wanted on this paper about Hemingway. Maybe his macho, stripped down writing just didn’t connect with me, but I also wrote it when I was sick and my halfhearted efforts got me a C+.
Total disaster.
Especially back when the only people I idolized were authors. I figured I needed a good English grade to be like them.
And my personal brand was nerd.
That’s what people knew me for, the little niche I’d carved myself out at school.
Suddenly, I felt like a fraud.
Like I hadn’t just let myself down, but everyone else around me.
But instead of getting mad and saying I should’ve studied harder or been more focused during the exam, Mom just hugged me, stroked my hair, and told me there were more important things than grades.
Then she’d straightened up and braided my hair.
We watched an Audrey Hepburn movie with popcorn. For a moment, everything was right with the world.
I’m an adult now.
My problems can’t be fixed by a big hug and a movie night, but I have that same childlike sensation when I linger in her arms.
If she just holds on a little longer, maybe the heartbreak will go away.
Maybe I’ll be okay.
It’s tantalizing enough to hang on, to make this hug last.
My eyes burn and I know there’ll be no holding back my muffled sobs.
It’s like she senses the oncoming storm, rocking me from side to side.
“I know, baby girl,” she murmurs, just like she did when I was even younger—a child, really. When I’d scraped my knee and she had to clean the scrape and bandage it up.
The alcohol was the worst part.
I cried then, unashamed, never feeling like I had to hide my emotions from her like shiny rocks from a magpie.
She rocked me then just like she’s doing now, telling me she knows.
Calling me her baby girl.
Holy hell, I’d forgotten this.
The older I’ve gotten, the more she’d get hung up on my appearance, my weight.
Puberty came late, and she never had my body shape.
I doubt she ever had my self-confidence issues either.
But when I was a kid…
Oh, I miss that.
And I’ve missed my softer, loving, non-judgy Mom.
“I know,” she whispers again, one hand stroking my hair. “Let it all out, it’s okay.”
“…does everyone know?” I mumble against her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about that now,” she says softly.
That’s a yes.
Instead of crying my eyes out, I pull back before the tears hit full force.
As much as I missed being comforted like a little girl again, so much has happened between us.
This can’t be as comforting as she might want it to be. But she touches my face with the tips of her manicured fingers.
“You’ve lost weight,” she whispers.
“Thrilling. Maybe I should get my heart beaten to a pulp more often,” I throw back.
“Oh no, honey. It’s not a compliment.” Her brows knit together and the corners of her meticulously outlined lips turn down. “Look, Hattie, I know I’ve been worried about your weight before, but starving yourself because you’re unhappy is never a good thing.”
My jaw drops like I’m ready to swallow a hummingbird.
“You need some cheering up,” she whispers, opening the blueberry pie box and finding a knife in the drawer to carve two big slices. “If anyone’s earned this, it’s you.”
I slump down in my seat.
I’m still slack-jawed.
All the ugly tears I’ve been pushing back return with a vengeance.
God, if she’d just come at me with one of her smarmy comments, I would’ve been prepared.
I would’ve been protected.
But my heart has no shield just now.
We’ve bickered for so many years over appearances and health, it almost feels second nature.
Now with one kind gesture, she’s turned me into a heap of hurting gravel. I don’t know how to deal with it.
My face crumples.
“It was never real,” I moan as she hugs me again. This time, it feels more like embracing an old friend I’ve missed forever. “What I had with Ethan, it—it was fake, Mom.”
She shakes her head, staring at me.
“I don’t follow, honey. This is as real as anything I’ve seen. None of your boyfriends ever upset you like this.”
Way to rub it in.
But she’s also right.
I don’t know how to explain why it shouldn’t be worse than a tiny needle prick.
Sure, he sped up the breakup timeline, but this was always the plan.
“I don’t know the full story,” Mom says, rubbing circles on my back, “but I do know Ethan’s a troubled young man. There’s been plenty of talk about him fighting his own demons for years. He was always too much for you.”
He was, but he wasn’t.
It’s so confusing.
Ethan broke things off because he couldn’t cope with the fact that he’s not who he thought he was.
Margot filled me in on all the gory details the minute she heard about the breakup—after she fumed for ten minutes straight, cursing her ‘braindead ego-freak of a brother.’
I just listened because it was better than talking over the ice ball lodged in my throat.
She impatiently explained everything she knew, how pissed he is at his parents and Leonidas for keeping it from him.
And now the big identity crisis, just when he was getting his crap together.
I feel for him.
I do, and I’d sympathize more if he hadn’t responded by going scorched earth and exiling me from his existence.
One minute, he says he doesn’t trust me—all because I let my usual doubts take over and asked Margot about his past dating life.
The next, he wants me out of his house so much he’s risking a direct lightning strike.
I hate it.
I hate that I could have helped him, if he’d let me.
But nothing like the way I hate that he wouldn’t give me a chance.
And now I’m back to my acid fantasies, imagining how fast he’d dissolve away with his anger and regrets and allergy to love.
It shouldn’t matter who he is or what’s in his DNA.
If he loved me, he would have checked his anger.
He would’ve stayed.
Even so, in my twisted little acid daydream, I always try to pull him out before the tips of his shoes melt.
I always take him back, and he gives me that kicked puppy look before he whispers, “Hattie, you were right. I’m sorry and I love you.”
Yep.
I have no self-respect left in my tank.
It doesn’t help that Mom’s wrong.
Before all this stuff came between us, he was my perfect man. And he still could have been, even after all this, if he’d just talked to me.
If he actually wanted me, that’s what he’d do… right?
It’s an odd pain, the kind that skins me so slowly.
Sharp and dull simultaneously.
The way it pierces swiftly and then gets replaced by the ache of scar tissue.
Over and over again.
It’s been days. Well over a week, I think.
Time heals all, they say, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be over him. No matter how much I want to be.
“I don’t know what’s going on with Ethan,” Mom says gently. “But supposedly he’s vanished and left his company. It’s safe to say his issues go a lot deeper than anything that happened with you.”
But I wasn’t enough .
I was just one more issue he couldn’t handle. One more lie he had to run from.
It’s a rogue thought I can’t banish.
“I never should’ve acted like I deserved him,” I whisper. “Even if it was just pretend.”
“What? No! Hattie, you stop that.” Mom’s tone sharpens. “Listen to me—you’re a smart, funny, gorgeous, generous girl. You deserve so much better than a shit-bird who can’t tell up from down.”
“Mom!” I half laugh. “I thought you liked him?”
“I did. Clearly, I thought he was better than he really is, dear. Now, eat.” Mom hands me a fork, gesturing to the pie on my plate. “When I first found out about you guys, I thought he’d be a good match. I let Blackthorn money dazzle me. Never again.”
“Yeah,” I agree sadly.
“So let’s just eat some pie and forget his stupid lying face for a few minutes. And I want you to remember it’s never your responsibility to save a man from himself. You offered to help and he still walked out, didn’t he?”
There’s old resentment in her voice. Everything that happened with her and Dad burbling up through years of hardened pain.
I smile weakly and dig into my pie. It’s so good and fresh it distracts me for about five seconds.
“It’s not quite that simple, Mom. Ethan, he was shocked out of his skin. He found out his whole family lied to him.”
“Well, I don’t know much about that drama, but the way he’s handling them, that’s his choice,” she says firmly.
“There’s no denying he’s a tortured soul.
Perhaps through no fault of his own. Still, you shouldn’t be dragged along on his train of suffering.
I’m proud you have a backbone, Hattie. That’s a lesson I learned too late. ”
“Oh, Mom.”
We quietly stuff our mouths with blueberry heaven.
I don’t dare tell her I’d let Ethan drag me through a hundred miles of absolute horror if it meant he’d apologize.
If it would bust open the vault around his damaged black heart and show me he feels something for me.
If he has to suffer and upend his life, I’d rather do it together, right by his side.
But there’s no point in outing childish fantasies.
I may dream a lot, but I’m too old to be a daydream believer.
This is real life, not a romance novel.
Ethan isn’t riding back on a white horse to throw himself down at my feet and gush out his sappy, secretly obsessed-with-me heart.
I don’t mind Mom being weirdly nice and supportive, though. Or watching her inhale blueberry pie like a desert dweller who hasn’t seen a drop of water for months.
I guess years of hardcore sugar denial and kale juice gutrot finally caught up with her.
And yeah, she bought it instead of making it, but it clearly came from a real bakery.
That’s worth indulging this mother-daughter moment.
Despite my shattered heart rattling in my ribs, I smile.
If my breakup with Ethan fixes the relationship with Mom, that’s something.
“Never settle for anything less than the one who’ll treat you right.
You deserve a man who will love you and stick by you through anything, no matter how awful,” Mom says sagely.
“Even if you don’t run a marathon or—or if you don’t want him inflicting his snotty billionaire money problems on you.
” She says the last part with healthy bitterness.
Obviously, she wishes I was going to be a billionaire’s wife.
That makes two of us.
“Thanks for coming today,” I say. “For real.”
“Oh, honey.” She reaches over and I take her hand, feeling her squeeze. “I know I haven’t always been the best at that. I haven’t always had the clearest head… But I always loved you. I just want the best and I want to see you happy.”
“I know you do, Mom. It’s just—my best isn’t always yours.”
“And I should’ve realized that sooner, sweet girl. Thanks for the reality check.”
This is going too well.
I nod and give her a weak smile.
Having her love bolsters me in a way I wouldn’t want to admit a few weeks ago. I suppose every girl just wants their mother to love and accept them deep down.
The thing that’s harder is taking her advice.
Maybe she’s right and I do deserve better, but if that’s the case, why didn’t Ethan, who saw all of me, realize that?
Why couldn’t he want me when it mattered most?
Why wouldn’t he stay and fight?
And why can’t I get his flipping face out of my head?
“Want to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s ?” Mom suggests brightly. It’s her favorite Hepburn movie, and it takes me back to being a kid.
Audrey Hepburn won’t fix my life. Especially when I think Mom wanted me to be more like her growing up—including unhealthy Hollywood thin—but I accept the offer and get up to fetch us more pie before we regroup on the couch.
She doesn’t comment on the piles of books or the second serving. She doesn’t tell me all the ways I could handle this better or healthier.
She just opens her arm for me to snuggle into her side, and she picks up the remote and turns on the TV.
Someday, I could see this becoming the new norm, and that’s awesome.
I just wonder when I’ll stop missing Ethan so fiercely, even though our entire relationship was an illusion.
He’s never coming back to salvage anything.
The sooner I get used to it, the better.