Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Addison’s dad didn’t say anything to her when she came home that night, but in the morning, he was waiting with strong coffee, and Addison sat down and took it gratefully, even though she felt hungover.
“What’s going on?” her dad asked.
And here she was, faced with a choice. Did she admit that she had done something her dad would be disappointed in? The idea made her feel like hiding. But that wasn’t who she was anymore. So she knew she needed to be honest.
“I fell in love with Walker Grayson, and he rejected me. So I’m feeling kind of awful.
” Her dad sighed heavily, and she kept talking quickly.
“I know that that’s not what you wanted for me.
I know that you’re probably disappointed, and I tried, Dad.
I really did try, my whole life, to only do things that you would approve of, but that was about to lead me into a marriage that I really shouldn’t have been in, and I came to the conclusion that I’m thirty and I don’t know myself, and I kind of hate that.
And I was trying to figure myself out, and unfortunately, the answer seems to be that I love him, but he doesn’t want me, so it doesn’t matter.
Except that I know myself. But the thing that I know about myself right now is that I’m sad. ”
Her dad didn’t say anything for a long moment. He took a sip of his coffee. And then he set his cup back down. “I owe you an apology,” he said.
She looked up at him intently.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel like you couldn’t make a mistake, Addison.
When your mom left, I was scared. I was scared that I wasn’t going to do a good job, and I think it made me react with more intensity than I should have.
I think me putting pressure on myself ended up as me putting pressure on you.
And I won’t lie, it wasn’t like my intentions were always pure.
I wanted to prove that I could do it without her, because she wasn’t here, and I was angry that she hurt you.
I think by doing that, I did a good job of proving why she couldn’t make it work with me in the first place. ”
“Dad... You make it sound like you were some kind of drill sergeant, and you weren’t.
But you were the parent that I had left.
And I wanted to please you. It was really important to me.
I wasn’t what Mom wanted, that much was clear.
So it felt really important to me to be the thing that you wanted.
” She had fallen out of the treehouse. It was her dad who had put the bandage on.
So she had spent her life trying to please him.
“I was just scared, though,” he said. “I’ve owed you an apology for a long time. Because I’ve realized over the years that sometimes I was too strict, too hard on you, and it was all...”
“You were a little bit afraid that I would go off the rails like Mom.”
“I was. And that was wrong of me, too, because I never should have made in the issues your mother’s and my relationship spill into my relationship with you and Jackson.”
“Jackson has reconciled with her.”
Her dad nodded. “I’m glad. I’m never going to be okay with what she did.
With leaving you two. And that’s gotten tangled up in the way that I feel about her leaving the marriage over the years.
But the reality is, we weren’t good together.
And I am much happier with Linda. I know your mom is much happier with her husband.
But leaving you two, that’s something I’m always going to struggle with. ”
“I know. I struggle with it, too. But she’s sorry.
And I think... I don’t think I can do this sadness anymore.
I just think I don’t want to be sad like that.
” She took a deep breath. “Not because Mom deserves for us to forget about it, or to let it go, just because I think I need to. Like I don’t want to cut any more people out of my life. ”
“I think that’s good.”
“So you’re not disappointed in me?”
He reached across the table and pulled her up for a hug. “Addison, you make me so proud I don’t even have the words.”
And even though her heart was broken, she felt something mend.
She spent the next few days trying to figure out what she was going to do with the fundraiser. She got as far as looking at other venues, nearly calling and sending inquiries and either hanging up or closing out the screen before she could.
This was messy.
So messy, and it didn’t feel like there was a way to make it neater.
It would be very valid to not have it there. It would be so fair of her to want to just not do it. But there was a stubborn part of her that didn’t want to fold now.
This was about her.
Not about them.
Even though every time she breathed it hurt because of them.
There wasn’t a ton of time until the fundraiser, and she should prepare.
But she kept thinking about her mom, and how much she missed her. She kept on wondering if she showed up to her mom’s house, like she had her dad’s, with no notice, with no phone call, would she let her in?
It was an ache inside of her she couldn’t let go of. She’d gone so many years without her mom. Because of anger, fear of rejection, so many things, and she was just tired of it.
Which was how she ended up on a road trip to California, blasting Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter, singing along with them about the evils of men, and feeling no nuance at all in her personal heartbreak, just giving in to her sadness, her anger.
It was cathartic.
But the catharsis stopped when she reached the driveway of her mom and Thomas’s little blue house on the corner of a quiet street in Vacaville.
She got out of the car and walked on numb legs to the front door. Then she pressed the doorbell.
It took a moment, but when her mom answered, her eyes went wide. “Addison? What are you doing here?”
Addison tried to speak but no words came out, and then her mom reached up and just hugged her, held her close while Addison cried and cried.
She needed a mom right now, so badly. And she was so glad she had one.
“I’m sorry,” her mom said. “I’m so sorry.” She leaned back and looked up at Addison. “This isn’t about Alan, is it?”
Addison sniffed. “No, very definitely not.”
She told her the whole story. About everything that had happened with Walker. About how it was supposed to be fake, but had become real. About how she’d confessed her love for him and he’d rejected her.
“Wow,” her mom said, now sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of tea for Addison, and one for her. “That’s a big heartbreak.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It is.”
She paused for a long moment, tapping the side of her mug. “Fear is the biggest threat to love, and it sounds like he’s very scared.”
“Yes.”
“Fear is what kept me away from you kids. Once I had made the decision to leave... I had to cut myself off for a little bit. But then I missed you, and I wanted to go back, but I was afraid that you would reject me. I was afraid that I had left it too late. And leaving it even longer only made it worse. It robbed me of so much. It robbed you of so much.”
Yes, fear. But also anger. Walker had talked about that too. About holding onto his anger because it fueled him. She had held onto anger at her mom and right now she just felt like even if some of it were justified, it wasn’t an important thing to keep.
“Do you want to stay here for a few days?”
Addison nodded. “I’d like that.”
Her mom made pot roast, and cookies. If she had to be heartbroken, she was glad she was doing it in her mother’s house.
Then when she went to bed in the guest room that night, Addison couldn’t help but reflect on what her dad had said. About how his fear had prompted him to be stricter, to crack down on them, to parent the way that he had.
Fear was the greatest barrier to love.
And that was Walker. He was afraid. Of course he was.
Walker was choosing fear right now.
But the thing about Walker was that he was brave.
So in the end, she hoped that he would choose love.
Because that’s what she was going to do.