Chapter 27
Miles
Thursday
I turned the key in my front door.
Feeling like I’d been punched but I couldn’t tell where.
My body was reacting poorly. My insides felt crushed.
Ella was the one thing that always made my days brighter. And when I saw those flowers, it was like my anger switch — already simmering in boiling water for a while — had suddenly short-circuited and exploded.
I couldn’t help the jealousy.
But it wasn’t just that.
I felt hurt, rejected, misunderstood, and then mad.
I leaned against the china cabinet, arms crossed, staring into nothing.
Ella had accepted flowers from Nathan.
Simply the thought of her never looking at me that way stung.
We did everything together. And yet, at the end of the day, she still saw me as just another friend. A friend from whom she could live at a distance without sorrow.
As someone she wouldn’t accept flowers from.
“Miles?” My mom must have heard me walk in. She met me in the kitchen.
I looked at her despondently.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you earlier,” she said.
And that was all she was going to say to me about that topic.
I felt like going to bed. There wasn’t much patience or strength left in me for the rest of this day.
“And I want to tell you that soon me, you, and Gaston will be a family,” she added.
“We’ll live together. The three of us. As a family. ”
She said it like an apologetic solution to what she knew I had been feeling. She could have been serious, or just saying it without meaning it; I never really knew. Still, it wasn’t a solution for me.
“I’m moving away, Mom. I’ve decided to accept the scholarship.”
My mother stood motionless. She didn’t look upset. She didn’t look excited either. I had the feeling we were both simply devastated by the day.