SEVENTEEN Clarity
W yatt stared at me, agape. He looked both furious and sad enough to cry.
Already, with the last few minutes echoing in my head, I was beginning to regret my words and behavior. Now that Roman wasn’t here, the scene he’d left seemed harmless—more than that, it seemed sweet .
They’d been making dinner together. What had Roman said? That they’d wanted it to be ready when I got back. A nice thing for me—and for Wyatt, too. On top of that, I’d been late. Wyatt had been glad Roman was here—and he was furious with me for sending him away.
He’d been doing a nice thing, making my kid happy, and I’d torn all that down in seconds. But the nice thing was the reason I was upset. Why? I was no longer sure. My sense of righteousness was fading quickly, like morning fog on a sunny day.
“What is your problem ?” Wyatt sneered. It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me with that particular tone, full of rage and contempt, and it redoubled my burgeoning guilt.
From my emotional fog I snagged the reason for my hot entrance, if not the feeling that had supported it. Control. Roman had taken liberties in my home, while I was away, acting like he belonged there when we were still getting to know each other in the present and still figuring out who we might be to each other. That felt like— was —controlling behavior. Right?
Or had I projected my feelings about other people onto Roman? Like the way Darryl Manfred had stomped into the middle of my home as if it were his—and was literally trying to make my home his and destroy me? Though I felt miserably guilty to think it, Micah was wrapped up in this, too, wasn’t he? How he’d taken over, done what he’d wanted, left me in the dark and then left Wyatt and me with nothing.
And then there was my mother.
Okay, obviously I was hyper-protective of my boundaries, both literal and figurative, and I’d lashed out. But had I done so without cause? Had I truly overreacted or had Roman truly overstepped?
Wyatt was still glaring at me, expecting an explanation. I reclaimed my equilibrium and gave him one.
“Wyatt, this is our house. We need to be firm about our boundaries. It’s not okay that he just showed up and took over. He didn’t just drop by, he barged in and made a meal! He should have at least asked. But I’m sorry I embarrassed you.”
His brow drew in tight, and he crossed his arms. “He did ask!”
“What?”
“He came to the door and asked if I’d heard anything about your meeting. I told him no and asked if he wanted to come in. He said sure, and we talked for a little bit. It was my idea to make dinner for you. Roman just took me to his shop so we could get some meat. He was helping me!”
It was my turn to gape as I processed that change in perspective. “I didn’t know.”
“Because you didn’t give us a chance to tell you! Why were you like that?”
I did not want to burden my child with the fear that we’d lose what we didn’t even completely have yet. I needed to get my own head in order before I considered broaching the topic with him. So my answer was true, but not complete. “I don’t know. I’m just ... I think I’m just really stressed, and a bunch of old stuff is stirred up inside me, and it came spewing out.”
Wyatt was quiet for several seconds. He continued to stare, but the fury faded from his brow.
“I thought you liked Roman.”
Over the weekend, while we were in Eureka, Roman had asked Wyatt to use his first name, but it wasn’t until this fraught conversation, hearing Wyatt use it so naturally, that I fully understood what that meant: Roman wasn’t my friend only. Wyatt was building a relationship with him as well.
It scared me, frankly.
And right there was when I understood the real truth about my reaction to finding Roman grilling up dinner when I got home: I was scared.
After all the loss and turmoil of the past year and a half, the Sea-Mist had become a safety-net. The last thing between us and disaster. Now that was slipping out from under me as well.
Wyatt wanted to stay in Bluster. He wanted to keep the Sea-Mist. He’d lost everything, too, and it was even worse for him, dependent on me, blown about on the stormy seas of my choices. I wanted to stay in Bluster and keep the Sea-Mist, too. I had a chance to take the place I’d lived for the first eighteen years of my life and make it finally my home. I wanted a chance to make a good life for my son here, in this beautiful nook of the world, and give us something that was finally real and good and secure. But it wasn’t secure. I didn’t know how to get out from under this huge debt I hadn’t known about until last week.
No, I wasn’t scared. I was fucking terrified .
And Roman had gotten tangled in that line. Why?
Because he was a beacon, a bright light in my fog, already taking care, clearly ready to stand tall and strong beside me. It would be so easy to lean on him, to let him take my worries away. Just like Micah had.
That was the real truth, wasn’t it? Micah had been controlling because I’d given him control. He’d kept secrets because I’d been content not to know.
Oh shit. What if he hadn’t been keeping secrets? What if he’d been drowning under all those worries and hadn’t thought he could talk to me? Had he thought I wouldn’t want to know? Had he thought I wouldn’t be a good sounding board, a good partner in times of trouble?
Had he been right?
I looked out toward the forest. In the foreground of that view was the grill, the meat Roman had laid on it slowly turning into charred bricks.
“I’m sorry,” I told my son. “I was way out of line, and I’m really sorry, bud.”
“Yeah, you were,” Wyatt replied, not giving me an inch. “I thought you liked him.”
“I do. A lot. But ...” I sucked up some courage in a breath and told him, “but I’m scared, too, about getting too close to anyone too fast. This past year or so feels like one disaster or tragedy after another. I feel like we’ve been carried away on a wild current, and I’m afraid of grabbing something I think is solid and having it pull free in our hands.”
Wyatt’s look had morphed into something like irony. “That was a very English-major answer, Mom.”
I laughed, and so did he. “Yeah, okay. But do you get my point?”
He nodded. “But I don’t think Roman is going to pull free.”
Fifteen-year-olds feel far more grown-up than they are. They are children, no matter how mature they think they are, no matter how quickly they might feel they’ve had to grow up. I’d thought I was grown when I’d left here at eighteen, but once on my own, I’d quickly discovered the depth of my naiveté.
What Wyatt truly understood about the world could fit in the palm of my hand. I shook my head. “You don’t know that. I don’t, either. And even if he’s rooted in place, how fair is it to ask him to pull us to safety?”
“What if we’re not asking? What if that’s what he wants to do?”
“I don’t want to be saved, Wyatt. I want to find a way to save us myself.”
Frowning, he sidestepped and took a seat on one of the benches of the picnic table he and Roman had set for dinner. “Remember when I started seventh grade, and I had to take Spanish for the first time?”
I was at a loss to see how that was remotely relevant, but of course I remembered. “Sure I do.”
“Remember how it was so hard for me and I hated it so much, and then Senor Adams started that ‘Fiesta Club’ thing?”
I nodded. The Fiesta Club was an after-school thing the Spanish teacher—‘Senor’ Adams—had created as a fun way to give struggling students extra help. He’d intended it to be a cool thing, but in the ancient ways of middle-schoolers, they’d quickly caught on to the ‘extra help’ focus, and within about two weeks a lot of kids were calling it the ‘Feeb’ Club.
Middle school deserves its own circle of hell. Plenty of middle-schoolers are already demons.
“I remember,” I said, still unsure what it had to do with now.
“I really liked it at first, and it helped. But then Tyler and those guys started calling us feebs and ruining it, and I wanted to stop. You asked me why I wouldn’t do something I liked and get help I needed. You said it was dumb to let some ingrown dirtball like Tyler Jacoby make my choices for me. It seems like you’re doing the same thing now.”
The analogy wasn’t perfect, but it was a solid effort from a tenth-grader. Certainly it got his point across. Choices made out of fear and shame would never be good choices.
I went and sat beside him. “I called him an inbred dirtball, not an ingrown one. But I like that, too. Still fits.”
“What’s inbred mean?”
“It’s when people who are closely related have kids, so they’re ‘breeding’ within the same gene pool. A lot of weird birth defects, physical and mental, can happen.”
“Oh. That’s even meaner. Kinda too mean, I think.”
What a treasure this boy was. “Yeah, it is.” I bumped shoulders with him. “Stick with ‘ingrown’ when you tell that story, okay?”
“Okay.” After a beat he added, “Why don’t you want help?”
I meant absolutely not to make my son my confidant. There was a difference between being honest and forthright about a life that was his as well as mine, and dumping all my fears and worries on his young, unfinished shoulders. I picked my words carefully when I gave him my answer.
“It’s hard to put my trust in anybody but us right now, bud. Things I thought were secure for years disappeared out from under us so fast. It feels like the only sure thing is you and me.”
Wyatt laid his head on my shoulder, and a burst of pure, unfiltered love tightened my throat and filled my eyes.
“It seems lonely to me,” he said softly, “not to have anybody we can trust. I don’t want to live like that, and I don’t want you to, either.”
I kissed the top of his head, pausing for a moment to take in the smell of him. My boy. “You think Roman is somebody we can trust.”
He lifted his head and looked me in the eyes. “Don’t you? Really?”
“Yeah, I do. I think. I don’t know.” I sighed. “I’m scared, Wy. I don’t want to make a mistake.” I didn’t think there was anything Roman could do to help me with the humungous bill that was due in the next six weeks, regardless, but that wasn’t a burden to share with my son, who was already trying to be a man too soon.
However, I knew what I had to do next. “I should apologize to him, huh?”
He nodded. “In person. You should go to his house and tell him you’re sorry. I’ll clean up this and make myself a sandwich for dinner.” He gave the blackened steaks and kebabs a wistful look.
I stood up. “Sorry I ruined the surprise dinner. Let’s clean up together, and then I’ll go up to Roman’s house and grovel. Okay?”
Wyatt nodded, stood, and then hugged me. I wrapped my arms around him and held on as long as I could.
Whatever happened, I had to make sure this boy had a good life. The life he wanted.
Whatever I had to do.