Chapter 42 #2
My mom is prattling on about whatever the hell and I have zoned out completely but I know how to shut her up.
“Yes, mother. I will be there.”
At the last possible second.
I hear my mom clap her hands together in delight, at least they’re not holding a glass anymore. “That’s great, Danika. We’ll be so glad to see you.”
I roll my eyes. “Great, Mom. See you soon then.”
She rattles on about flight details and airline miles but I’ve already tuned her out. I hang up after promising to check my email for plane tickets and pull up right to the apartment.
I’m in such a rush to get out of the car and get into the apartment to talk to Arden that I don’t bother checking the parking lot to see if he’s even at home.
Most college professors give their students the week of Thanksgiving off class to travel home to their families. Not medical school professors though. No rest for the wicked.
But that does mean, however, that it’s highly logical that Arden has gone home to South Carolina already. And my suspicion is confirmed when I open the door to our apartment and he’s gone.
I desperately need to talk to him. I need to apologize for the assumption I made. And I also know I need to do it in-person. This isn’t something I can just shoot off as a text message.
Hey Arden, sorry I thought you were cheating on me. Also, heard you’re in therapy. What’s the diagnosis?
I physically face palm. This is insane. I can’t wait, god knows how long to talk to him. I walk further into the apartment, pulling my phone out to dial his number but I stop in my tracks when I see a note sitting on the kitchen counter. A note addressed to me.
With trepidation, I lift the plain white paper. His handwriting is like chicken scratch but I can read it perfectly. I don’t wait any further to open it up.
Danika, he starts. No greeting. No Dani. Not even brat. My heart jumps to my throat as I continue reading.
I’m sorry for my part in this. I never meant to hurt you.
You don’t deserve to feel an ounce of pain.
In fact, all you deserve is love and devotion.
I’ve always known that but I was never in a position to give it to you.
And when I finally was, I fucked it all up.
I want to tell you everything but I don’t think either one of us are ready for that so until then, I’ll leave you with this: We might’ve been a means to an end at the start of all this but now, you’re the only end I can see.
Arden
The tiny drop of water falls onto the page before I even realize I’m crying.
He hasn’t fucked anything up. It’s me. I’m the one who made all the ridiculous assumptions even though he’s really never given me a reason to doubt him at all.
I’m the one who kept him at arms length this entire time, even though I knew all he wanted was to be close to me.
I’m the one who hurt him.
He doesn’t deserve any of this.
God, I wish I could follow him right now to South Carolina, but I still have classes and playing hooky on Friday has already set me back.
But now I’m more resolved than ever to see him and fix this.
We belong together. A fact I’ve known since I was sixteen.
It seems like it took a broken heart to make him realize it as well.
By the time Thursday morning hits, I’m dying to get home.
I would’ve loved to be on a flight after classes ended on Wednesday but apparently, according to my mother, flights were much cheaper on Thursday morning so here I am, at the crack of dawn, ready to board a flight that will hopefully take me right to Arden’s door so I can apologize to him and cry on his shoulder and he’ll hold me tightly and hopefully forgive me.
I sleep the entire flight because otherwise my mind would spiral and we can’t be having that. Once we land, I grab a cab and tell the driver to take me directly to Margot’s house, an address I know by heart.
Within twenty minutes, I’m at the door, my fist poised to knock and my heart directly in my throat.
Do it, coward. Get ready to grovel.
I knock. Hard. The door is wooden, and it takes a little extra oomph to make a strong sound but I think I did okay.
I wait, the butterflies in my stomach racing around like Mario Kart.
Ten seconds, twenty, thirty seconds pass. Nothing.
Maybe they didn’t hear me. The house should be full of people, even if Margot and Alex didn’t come home, Memaw always has neighbors and friends around to entertain.
I knock again. Louder. And I wait.
Thirty seconds, one minute. Two.
What the?
Turning around, I look in the driveway and for the first time, I notice there’s no cars in sight. There’s no way…
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I call number one on my favorites list.
“Hey, Dani. Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah, yeah. Are you with Alex?”
“Yeah, we’re at his family’s lake house in Connecticut.”
“We?”
Margot answers hesitantly, like she’s not sure why my response is coming out so rushed. “Yes, we. Alex’s dad and brother and my dad, Memaw, and Arden.”
The breath hurries from my lungs, emptying them completely. I feel as though I can not possibly fill them again if I tried.
“We…,” I say resigned. Of course her family is with Alex’s family.
Margot is talking again. Apologizing for not telling her the plans. Apologizing for not being home for Thanksgiving. I rush her off the phone, wanting nothing more than to get back on that plane and fly to campus so I can bury myself in my sheets and never escape again.
Now, not only do I need to spend this weekend alone with my parents, I’ll be here for my birthday as well.
Kill. Me. Now.
I can’t help but compare the last two years.
Last year, on my birthday, Arden surprised me by showing up at the bar and buying us all drinks.
This year, I’ll be sitting on my couch, listening to my dad yell at my mom about the weather or the dinner she made or some other mundane fucking shit that he’s always nagging her about.
I can’t do this.
Just as I’m about to high tail it out of there, my phone vibrates with a text from my mom asking where I am. She must’ve been tracking my flight and saw I landed a while ago and yet I’m not home.
This is why I’m here. To see my mom. I can put my own feelings aside for one day to spend time with the woman who gave birth to me. With a sigh, I start down the path from Arden’s front door and head home.
Luckily, we live only a few blocks from each other so it’s a short walk.
As I wander up the familiar walkway, my front door opens and reveals the happiest face I’ve been in a while. My mother beams from ear to ear in the doorway and I can’t help but smile back.
“Hey, Mom.”
“My Danika,” she says, pulling me in for the tightest hug I’ve ever had. She throws the bags she took from me onto the shoe rack and pulls me in again.
“Need. Air.” I struggle to say beneath her embrace and she grips me tightly one more time before letting me go.
I pull away before she can do that “let me get a look at you. You’ve grown so much” thing.
Because that’s absolutely something she would do even though I’ve only been away four months and I’m twenty-two years old.
She ushers me into the kitchen, leaving me to sit at the island while she puts together whatever snack tray she’s prepared from my arrival.
“Your father’s—”
“Don’t care,” I say, grabbing a stick of celery from the tray and chomping on it.
“Danika, I’m not doing this with you all weekend.”
“Fine,” I say as I take more and more bites of my celery. I chew none to gently and talk through my garbled food. “As long as he doesn’t interact with me, we shouldn’t have a problem.”
My mom rests her palms on the counter across from me. “What do you expect me to do here, Danika? He is your father. You need to show him some respect.”
“The same respect he shows you? No problem. I’ve had insults filed away for years. I’m happy to break them out.”
She sighs deeply and I know I should give it a rest. It’s not very fair to her that she gets the brunt of my anger toward him. But it’s also not fair to me to watch him take bits of her spirit from her every chance he gets.
“I will sit at the table with him for Thanksgiving. But I will not smile and nod along with his brutality. Not like you do.”
My mom’s eyes meet mine and she knows how hard this compromise is for me. She doesn’t push it. Instead, we share a brief moment of coming together.
We spend the next few hours cooking our Thanksgiving meal, putzing around the kitchen, drinking wine and gossiping about neighbors in town.
My mom fills me in on the people she sees from my high school that are still around and I tell her about Nico and how much he’s been bothering me in medical school.
I very conveniently leave Arden out of every conversation. My mom doesn’t know that we’re living together and she definitely doesn’t know that we’ve been pretend dating, if we even are anymore. I’d say our pretend dating has very much turned into real dating without either one of us even realizing.
For all my mother knows, I’m still living with Margot and Sydney, that’s how out of touch she is with my real life.
I wish I could tell her about Arden. I want to be able to share these things with her.
My life at school and living with him. The relationship we’ve been not so slowly tumbling toward these months.
I want to be able to confide in her about it all but I know that she wouldn’t understand.
Or worse, she’d tell my father and then I can kiss my school’s funding goodbye.
I can practically hear him now. “My daughter is not shacking up with some asshole to attend the college that I pay for.”
I roll my eyes and cut another slice of turkey off the bone and onto the plate. It’s almost time for dinner but Kevin is nowhere to be found.
Thank fucking god. Maybe I’ll actually be able to enjoy my Thanksgiving at home for once.
My mom is fretting over her phone, calling my dad and being met with voicemail but I couldn’t be happier.