Chapter Fifty-Two
Mila
I go straight upstairs to my bedroom when I get home, wanting nothing more than to crash on my bed, pull the covers over my head, and let myself fall apart in a blanket fort.
But the sheets are in the laundry.
“Fuck it.” Kicking off my shoes, I dive beneath the comforter anyway, wrapping it around me until the world is just a sea of pale blue. Then I curl up in a fluffy ball and cry into my bare pillow.
I’m not sure how much time goes by before I hear my mother calling me. “Mila?”
“What?”
“Everett is here.”
Shit!
“I don’t feel good!” I yell from my cocoon. It’s not even a lie. “Tell him I’m not coming down!”
“Mila?”
Fuck. It’s Everett’s voice at the bottom of the stairs.
Still wrapped in the comforter, I shuffle to the top of the steps. The sight of him, in his jeans and plaid flannel, his brown boots and navy baseball cap, makes my knees weak. Even the smudge of dirt on his nose is hot.
But I can’t give in.
“Go away,” I say. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Mila, please come down.” He puts a boot on the first step. “Or I’ll come up.”
“No!”
“Can’t we talk about this?”
“What is there to talk about? You broke your promise to me.”
“I’m sorry. If you’d let me explain—”
“I’m not interested in your explanation. It’s obvious that we have different ideas about what this relationship is.”
“Mila, we don’t. Can you please come down?”
“What’s going on?” My mother’s voice butts in.
I roll my eyes and start down the stairs, still wrapped in my blanket cocoon. “Nothing, Mom. Everett, let’s go outside.”
Relief smooths the space between Everett’s eyebrows when I reach the first floor. He opens the front door for me. Reluctantly, I leave my comforter at the bottom of the steps and follow him out.
“I can explain,” he says when the door is closed behind us.
“Explain what? Why you hid something you knew would matter to me? Why you shut down and left me wondering what I’d done wrong? How you could look me in the eye and lie when I asked you if there was something you needed to tell me, because it was obvious to me you were pulling away?”
“I’m not pulling away, Mila. I love you.” He steps toward me and holds my upper arms. His brown eyes are dark and sincere. “You have to believe me.”
Everything inside me turns warm and liquid. My legs nearly give out. My heart splits wide open. He does love me.
The old me would melt at his feet or throw my arms around him or otherwise surrender the fight. Because that’s the win, right? Love is what I always wanted.
But in this moment, I realize there’s more to it.
And I love myself enough not to give in so fast.
“I thought I was losing it, Everett!” The dam breaks, and words pour out.
Miraculously, I keep the tears pressing to follow at bay.
“This whole week, I’ve been off balance.
Wondering if what I saw was real. Doubting myself at every turn.
Today felt like an ambush. And I get to be mad about it!
” Never in my life have I raised my voice to someone like this.
It’s terrifying and liberating at the same time.
“Give me your mad,” he says quietly. “I deserve it.”
“You should have told me,” I insist.
“I know. But Gabi made me promise to give her time to do it herself. I told her she should have come clean back then, but she thought she had good reason to stay silent.”
I shake my head. “I understand why Gabi acted the way she did. She was eighteen and terrified. She thought she was protecting you. She panicked. But you’re not a kid, Everett! And you made me a promise.”
“Fuck. Fuck, I’m sorry,” he says, closing his eyes for a second. “But sometimes family does things to protect each other, even when they don’t agree with the decision. Gabi and I have been protecting each other for a long time. It’s a hard habit to break, even once the danger has passed.”
I wrap my arms around myself. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had family like that.”
He takes my face in his hands. “You do now.”
“Mila?” My mother pokes her head outside. “What’s all the yelling about? Should I call the police?”
“No, Mom. Go inside. I’ll be there in a minute.”
When she shuts the door again, I take a breath. “You should go. I need to think.”
He searches my eyes. “Tell me I didn’t fuck this up.”
My throat tightens, and I take his wrists and push his hands down. “It’s not just you. Maybe this was too much, too soon. Maybe I’m not ready for it.”
“Don’t say that.”
The door cracks again. “Mila, are you coming in or not?”
“Please,” I beg him. “Just go. I’m overwhelmed. If you love me like you say you do, give me space to breathe. That’s what I need right now.”
He wrestles with it before relenting. “Okay.”
“Thank you.” And though it almost breaks my heart to do it, I turn away from him and enter the house.
My mother stays by the window, arms crossed over her chest, face pinched. “He’s gone.”
I nod, a sob catching in my throat.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she says cruelly.
“Warn me?” I stand up a little taller.
“About men! They can’t be trusted, not a single one of them.” She points her finger toward the street. “I ought to call the police. Have him arrested for harassment!”
“Mom, he wasn’t harassing me. He was trying to apologize.”
She sniffs. “Don’t believe a word he says. He waltzed into your life when you were heartbroken over your divorce and took advantage of you.”
“No, he didn’t.” I fist my hands in my hair. “Stop saying negative things about him. And about me.”
“Oh, so now I’m the villain?” She shrinks back, hand on her chest. “It wasn’t me who made you cry.”
“Not today, it wasn’t.”
Her eyes narrow. “If there’s something you want to say to me, Mila, out with it. You’ve been acting like a sulky teenager for weeks now.”
I swallow hard. Take a breath. This is it—the confrontation I’ve been too scared to have my entire life. “I don’t think you love me, Mom. I never have.”
She scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m your mother. Of course I love you.”
“The only time I’ve ever pleased you was when I was dancing. And even then, you pressured me so much to be perfect.”
Her open mouth makes it clear she believes she is the injured party. “I was hard on you because you were good, Mila. I wanted you to have the career I had! The career I gave—”
“Yes, I know—the career you gave up for me. I’ve known it all my life, Mom. I cut my teeth on the story of your magnificent sacrifice. And for a long time, I told myself that meant you loved me. But it didn’t.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she huffs. “Once again, you’re my daughter. Of course I love you.” Coming from her lips, the sentiment is sharper than a razor.
“But you blamed me for ruining your life—and I believed I did. I worked so hard to make it up to you, as if that was ever really possible. Tiptoeing around your moods. Doing every little thing you asked. Running when you called. But nothing was ever enough. I was never enough.”
“This is all very dramatic, Mila.”
I shake my head. “I know now that I’ll never get what I’m looking for out of you. So I need to stop looking for it.”
“What are you looking for?” she explodes, throwing her dancer’s arms in the air. “Proof I love you? How about all these albums? All those photos on the mantel? That tiara I kept all these years, until you stole it from me?”
“Where are the orchids, Mom?”
“What orchids?”
“The ones I drew for you. I gave them to you for Christmas. Where are they?”
“I don’t know.” She looks around the room, like maybe she hung them on the wall and forgot. “They must be somewhere. Oh, I know! They’re at the frame shop. I wanted to change out the dark wood for gold.”
I shake my head. “They’re not at the frame shop. They’re at Everett’s. I gave them to him.”
She gasps. “You gave him my orchids?”
“You didn’t want them.”
“But they were mine. You had no right to just give them away! You could have at least asked.”
“You’d have said no, Mom! But it was obvious you didn’t care about them. They weren’t really yours,” I say, mimicking her inflection. “They were a piece of me that I gave to you. And I found them gathering dust in a box in the basement.”
“I was going to hang them! I just forgot they were down there. Is that what all this fuss is about? Some silly flowers?”
It’s almost laughable, her cluelessness. “It’s not about any one thing, Mom. It’s about how I’ve lived my entire life believing that something is wrong with me. That I’m too flawed to be loved. That I’m to blame for your unfulfilled life.”
She sidesteps my point. A nimble pas de chat. “You’re mad about your father, is that it? You want to punish me for keeping him a secret?”
This time, I do laugh. A choked gurgle escapes as another truth hits me. “No. It’s not. I used to be desperate to know about him, but now I realize it doesn’t matter—it wasn’t really him I wanted. It was the connection. It was the relationship. It was someone on my side no matter what.”
She looks at me as if I’m speaking nonsense. “I don’t know what you want from me, Mila. I suppose I never have.”
“It wasn’t complicated, Mom! I wanted you to love me unconditionally!” Tears flow down my cheeks. “Instead, you made me feel like love was something I had to earn, and I fell short time after time.”
Another eye roll, accompanied by a heavy sigh.
“Oh, now we’re back here again. It’s my fault you didn’t tell me you wanted to quit dance.
It’s my fault I couldn’t read your mind.
Somehow you probably think it’s my fault you didn’t get accepted to Juilliard, after I dedicated my entire existence to making sure you had superior training. ”
I look her right in the eye. “I did get accepted.”
My mother goes still as a stone. Her voice is a whisper. “What?”
“I did get accepted. But I hid the letter and lied to you about it.”
“You…” She leans forward and puts a hand on her throat. “You got in?”