3. Come on, Mom. Give a girl a break
CHAPTER THREE
come on, mom. give a girl a break
Thankfully, the rest of the questions directed at me focus on books I’ve already written, and the signing line is the perfect mental reset. The store set up a Halloween backdrop for photos with fun props from all our books and almost everybody dressed up.
As we wrap up, after the other panelists and I take some group photos and part ways, I do a sweep of the emptying room, looking for Forrest, and find him grinning beside a man and a woman.
My parents?
“Mom, Dad!” I say as I hurry toward them and get swept up in a Viottolo family hug. “What are you doing here?”
Joseph Viottolo is on the shorter side but broad and strong with thick black hair and an equally thick mustache. His stern brow makes him look kind of intense and a little mean, but he’s actually the jolliest person you’ll ever meet.
While Dad looks like the more intimidating parent, everybody who meets my mom quickly learns Viola is the one you need to win over if you want a chance of being welcomed in the Viottolo house.
She may be smaller than Dad, but she is mighty.
Her umber eyes see everything, and she can hold a grudge like nobody’s business.
Once she knows your transgressions against her family, you might as well cut your losses and just leave.
“Surprise,” Mom says before pressing a kiss to my hair. It would be just like hers—large, dark, and curly, even if cut short—if I hadn’t straightened the crap out of it to become Mia.
“You should have come over earlier,” I say, wishing I could have thanked them in front of all the readers. They’ve always been my biggest supporters, no matter what hairbrained idea I brought to them. I want the world to know that.
“Nonsense,” Mom says, waving me off. “We wanted to watch you work without bothering you.”
“And we got to catch up with Forrest,” Dad adds, dropping a thick hand on Forrest’s shoulders. I hide my smile when Forrest’s knees buckle a little.
“Oh yes,” Mom says, her eyes sparkling with joy that can only be brought about from meddling. It’s her favorite pastime, and though it comes from a place of love, it’s my least favorite trait of hers. “Did you know he’s an architect now? Isn’t that so impressive?”
She loops her arm in mine and turns me toward Forrest like it’s the first time we’re meeting and she’s presenting him for me to evaluate.
I think she may have taken it the hardest when I broke up with Forrest. He’s been part of our family since we met, and I expect she started planning our wedding years before we even started dating.
“Yes, Mom. Thank you,” I say the words through clenched teeth, trying to telepathically tell her to knock it off before I melt into the floor from embarrassment.
Since reconnecting, Forrest and I have basically pretended we never dated in the first place.
It started as avoiding difficult conversations, and eventually it felt like too much time had passed to parse through it all.
Instead, it’s like we were best friends who were separated by vague circumstances entirely out of our control and then miraculously brought back together.
Sometimes it hurts when I think of one of our million shared happy memories as a couple and have to keep it to myself, but for the survival of our friendship, it’s worth it.
The most important thing to me now is that I keep him in my life.
Even though the breakup was my choice, I almost didn’t survive losing him.
The avoidance probably isn’t healthy, but that sounds like not my business.
Our little fantasy retelling of our past is also why I haven’t encouraged a reunion between Forrest and my parents.
I knew Mom would be unable to let things lie.
While Forrest and I seem happy to pretend we never had a relationship, Mama Viottolo looks like she wants to pretend we never separated. To her, we’re still the perfect couple.
“I’m not licensed yet, Mrs. Viottolo,” Forrest says, looking down and shrugging his shoulders. “I have to finish my exams and pass them.”
“Ah, a few tests aren’t going to stop a smart man like you,” Mom continues, keeping an arm around me while she pulls him to her other side, giving him the same kiss on his temple that she always gives me. “A smart mind for a smart husband to a lucky partner.”
“Mom, please!” I beg, dragging my hands down my face.
Forrest flushes beet red. I’m familiar with the pressure of Mama’s praise.
Like you’ve got no choice but to be what she says you are.
Disappointing her would be too unbearable.
In this case, while I don’t support Mom embarrassing Forrest with the husband talk, I do agree with her about his license.
I know Forrest’s got that in the bag. He’s just being modest.
“What are your plans for the rest of your night?” Dad mercifully cuts in, directing the conversation away from what great husband material Forrest is.
“Food. Home. Couch,” I say simply.
“On Halloween?” Mom asks, her eyebrows raising with surprise. “I figured you’d be going out somewhere. You’re both so young!”
“I’ve done all the dressing up I need to today, and I left candy on the porch,” I say with a glance down at my outfit.
I had to pop out the fangs before the panel, so I’d be able to speak, but I’m still itching to put on the leggings I’ve got stowed out in Forrest’s car, even if just to be more comfortable for the drive back home.
“Not me,” Forrest says evenly, with a completely straight face. “I’ve got two ragers to pick between as soon as I’m fueled up.”
My parents both look at him with surprise, my mom with a bit of glee, likely trying to figure out how to get me to go with him, but I see the joke. We know each other too well for even the most convincing delivery to trick me.
“Sure, old man.” I smirk. “Go find yourself a discotheque.”
Forrest is precisely two hours and twenty minutes older than I am, and I intend to never let him forget it.
When Forrest cracks a smile, my parents catch on that he made up the parties. Mom bumps her elbow against his side like he’s the funniest rascal she’s ever seen.
“Then, would you like to grab a bite together?” Mom suggests, still holding me and Forrest to her sides. I don’t think she’s going to let go unless we agree. “It would be nice to catch up more with you”—she nods to Forrest—“and see you”—she looks to me—“before you leave for your trip.”
It’s a simple, passing comment, but it drops on us like a ton of bricks.
Well. It drops on me.
Shit.
The lingering smile from Forrest’s bad joke slips from my face. Even though I’m looking at my mom, I can see Forrest lean around her to stare at me, and the look of Oh? clear in his expression.
“Especially since you’ll be gone for Thanksgiving,” Mom continues, oblivious to the new tension around her.
Double shit.
“Dinner sounds great,” I say stiffly, praying to the heavens she’ll shut up about the stupid trip.
“Yeah, I could eat,” Forrest says, just a beat slower than would be considered normal. I know he won’t ask what’s going on while we’re with my parents. He’s too nice to call me out in front of them, but this conversation isn’t over.
I thank the bookstore staff one last time before hurrying to meet Mom, Dad, and Forrest by the exit. Forrest must have run out to his car because he’s holding the bag with my change of clothes and has lost his costume props.
We’re about to follow my parents out when Forrest stops me with the lightest touch against the side of my hand.
“All good?” he asks, still reading me like a book.
“All good,” I assure him.
As soon as we get to the Thai restaurant across the parking lot, I hurry to the restroom to change, shoving my vampire costume back in the bag.
I forgot makeup remover, so my face is a little pink from being scrubbed with a paper towel, but when I pull my dark hair back into the littlest ponytail, I can finally recognize myself again.
When I get back to the table, Forrest and my parents are laughing about something. Without a word, Forrest takes the bag from me, wedging it in the corner on our side of the booth before sliding in to give me a place to sit. It’s like a silent dance that we know without needing to talk about it.
Dad is telling the story about the time he got yanked off a fishing boat trying to reel in a big one, only to discover it was an enormous blob of seaweed.
A year ago, when they gave me the house I grew up in, my parents started traveling the world, visiting Italy for the first time, seeing their siblings who have spread out around the globe.
Their lives are full of stories like this one now. I guess I got my wanderlust from them.
Dinner is good, and I let the other three carry conversation while I come down from the high that accompanies events like tonight’s.
When Mom tries to bring up my trip—she and my dad will be staying at the house and watching Jigsaw while I’m away—Dad places his hand on her leg and uses my exhaustion as an excuse to discuss it later.
I steal a glance at Forrest out of the corner of my eye, but he doesn’t react to the topic, focusing intensely on his pad thai.
We make it all the way back to my house without him asking. But when we pull into the driveway, time’s up.
“Cam, what’s going on?” Forrest asks, looking out through the windshield and keeping the car idling for warmth. He looks like he’s trying very hard not to look scared.
“I’m going on a trip for some writing stuff. A long one,” I say, my voice suddenly small. “It’s, uh, to Arizona.”
Forrest looks at me now, his expression unreadable. He looks sad, nervous, hurt.
It makes sense, but I feel like shit anyway.
When I left all those years ago, Arizona is where I ran to.
Along with talk about our relationship, Arizona has been strictly off-limits.
While he knows it’s where I went, I’ve always been confident Forrest doesn’t want to know the details.
I wouldn’t even know where to start without it sounding like I was throwing it in his face that I left him for a new place.
I didn’t just leave. I abandoned Forrest, and I didn’t even have the decency to do it to his face. I don’t blame him for not asking about it, for not wanting to know. I keep those stories in a box. A box I keep far away from Forrest.
I shift in my seat, waiting for Forrest to say something. As I watch him, his gaze shifts to the window over my shoulder. Without looking, I know what’s there. I know he can see our treehouse, even in the dark. If we both were blind, I think we’d still always know where that tree was.
We’ve spent years climbing up there, even long after it was probably safe for teenagers of our size and weight to be in that house.
We met in that treehouse, shared secrets in that treehouse, cried and laughed and—it’s an important place for us.
I think it helped bond us, make us as inseparable as we were.
We became a couple in that treehouse. Had our first kiss in that treehouse.
As far as I know, back then, there was nothing we didn’t talk about.
Not like now.
“You still could have told me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, but I’m not sure I could have so easily. I’ve been trying to bring it up for weeks.
The car is quiet now, but it’s not the peaceful kind of quiet we usually share where neither feels the need to yap just to fill the empty air.
This is why we don’t talk about Arizona. Now everything is uncomfortable and sad and painful.
“I should get to bed,” I say abruptly.
We can do a reset tonight and start tomorrow again without ghosts of the past. It’s the human version of try turning it off and back on again.
“Ok,” Forrest says, but he still looks troubled, like he’s battling with himself over whether to say anything. He shifts his hands on the steering wheel and the leather squeaks just a little.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow?” I ask, looking for a sign telling me we’re still ok.
Forrest nods before turning toward his door. Is he going to walk me to my door?
“I’ve got it,” I assure him, and he stops. “Good night, Forrest.”
“Night, Cam.”
Just before I close the passenger door, I pause and peek back in the car.
“I need you to know I wouldn’t have gone without telling you first,” I say.
His eyes seem to finish the thought I won’t say.
Not like last time.