Chapter Seventeen
Following mine and Liam’s conversation in the park—the one that I ran away from—I began to avoid Liam Ashford as if it were an Olympic sport.
That was because, aside from the humiliation that came from literally running from someone, I came to a realization that bordered on devastating.
I loved Liam Ashford.
I loved him in a way that made my heart both sink and skip a beat every time I thought about him.
In all the books that I had ever read, love was meant to be magical. It was meant to be warm and freeing. But love, for me, felt terrifying. It felt terrifying because I loved a man whom I couldn’t allow myself to properly love. Not while I still felt so inadequate and less-than.
What scared me even more than loving Liam was realizing that I desperately wanted to let myself love him.
But if I was ever going to do that, I had to finally confront the root of every messy and insecure thought that had rattled around in my brain for decades.
The Friday evening that followed mine and Liam’s conversation in the park, I had dinner with my parents, just as I always did on Fridays.
The night started as it typically did. I arrived. Dad said hello without looking up from the baseball game he was watching on TV. Then I made my way to the kitchen.
I could have found my way there with my eyes shut, from memory or from scent alone. The aroma of Mom’s lasagna filled the air. The scent was so strong that I could smell it before I even walked into the house. Lasagna had always been my favorite of all her recipes.
“Need any help?” I asked her as I settled into my usual seat at the kitchen island.
“You know I don’t,” Mom said. Her voice was brimming with happiness. It always was when she cooked. “How was work?”
“The usual,” I replied, digging into the candy dish she had set on the counter.
“Still not talking to Liam?”
Aside from Liam, Mom knew me better than any other person on the planet. I told her everything.
“We actually did talk,” I said vaguely, twisting the foil wrapper off a piece of candy.
“And?”
I told her everything. Everything that Liam said to me and everything that I was too much of a coward to say to him. By the time I was done, the lasagna was nearly finished cooking, and Mom was standing in her spot across the counter from me. A pile of candy wrappers sat between us.
“I see,” she said after a long stretch of silence. “And you think that this is what you need to do?”
I nodded. “I do. All of it. Even if it weren’t for Liam, I think that I would still need to do it for myself.”
Mom smiled. “Okay. I’ll sort it out then.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
Before she could respond, the kitchen timer went off.
There was no use in waiting. I had waited far too long as it was. So over dinner, when Dad asked me, “How is the shop doing, Jessa?” I used it as my opportunity to finally speak up.
“You would know if you ever bothered to stop by, Dad,” I said, looking him dead in the eyes. I had never spoken to my father that way before, but I was tired of the man who raised me treating me as if I were little more than a stranger.
His fork stilled, and for a moment, no one at the table moved a muscle.
I saw the faint upward twitch at the corners of Mom’s lips. Dad cleared his throat, “Ah, yes, well, you know how busy work can be.”
“Right,” I said slowly, narrowing my eyes at him. “Even on the weekends?” I asked. “The mornings? Evenings? I’ve told you before that you could stop by anytime. Why don’t you?”
It hadn’t always been this way. I still clung to the time when my dad had acted like a dad. Not the cold, indifferent man sitting before me. But that had been before The Prologue. Back when I was still ticking all the boxes of being ‘the perfect child.’
“Jessa,” Dad said, his tone deeper.
“Dad,” I mirrored the way he spoke. “The shop’s doing great, but why don’t you ever come around? Why is it that in the months I didn’t come over for dinner because I was too busy working, I didn’t see you once?”
Mom looked at Dad, the same questioning look in her eyes as was in mine. It meant the world to me that she always had my back.
“I—well…” he sputtered out, turning to Mom for help.
“She makes a good point, dear. I head over there at least once every week or two. I had to buy a new bookshelf to carry all the books I bought from The Prologue.”
Dad looked like a deer caught in headlights. “Right,” he said, turning back toward me. “Perhaps the next time your mom plans to go, I’ll tag along.”
I wasn’t done yet. I wanted him to care because he loved me, not because he was being told to. He needed to know how much it hurt me that he wasn’t around when I needed him.
“Okay,” I replied, shifting my focus back down to my plate. “It’s just…hard. All I’ve ever tried to do is live up to the impossible expectations that you and Grandma set. I’ve tried and tried, but it’s never enough.”
My father frowned. It was a look I had grown used to over the past few months, but it was different this time. Instead of the usual disappointment in his eyes, a glittering of sadness shimmered in them.
“I didn’t realize that I made you feel that way, Jess.” His gaze shifted from me to Mom, then back to me. For a moment, I thought that was all that he would say.
Dad continued, “I know I have never been the best at—” he cleared his throat.
“Well, I know that I have made mistakes, but I do love you. Unconditionally. That never changes. That love never stops even when—” He shook his head, like he was trying to rid himself of a thought he would rather not say out loud.
“You’ve grown into a wonderful young woman.
No matter what path you decide to take, you are still more than I ever could have dreamed you would be. ”
I tried to blink away the tears that made my eyes sting, but I couldn’t. It had been over a year now of me longing to hear my father say such a thing.
“I love you,” he said once more. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been on your side the way that I should have been. I never had any intention of hurting you—I only wanted what was best for you. I always have.”
My heart raced as I tried to burn his words to memory.
Dad let out a slow exhale. Shame was etched so deeply into the wrinkles of his aging face.
“Your grandmother is… persuasive. She’s reminded me more times than I could count over the years that your mother and I won’t be here to look out for you forever.
You’re our only child—I needed to be sure that you would be okay. ”
His words sat heavy in the air like a thick layer of smoke. I had spent a good portion of the last year believing that Dad had stopped caring about me, but that wasn’t true. He cared. Even if he did a terrible job of showing it.
“You got your degree. You had a great job. You were set. And then you weren’t. In the blink of an eye, you had quit your job and poured all of your savings into that bookstore and—” he cut himself off and let out another slow breath. “And I should have supported you, but I was just…”
“Afraid?” Mom chimed in when he fell silent.
Dad nodded. “Terrified. I was so scared that this whole shop thing wouldn’t work out. That you’d have quit your job for nothing—that you’d be left with no savings, no home, no—”
“Well, she would always have a home,” Mom said softly. “With us.”
“You’re right. She would.” Dad’s eyes met mine. “The point I’m getting at, Jess, is that I was scared. And, it’s not wrong to be afraid, but it is wrong to take that out on others. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, Dad,” I said quietly.
That was all it took.
One conversation, and I had already begun to heal from the months of hurt.
By the time our evening came to a close, Dad had already promised to stop by the shop the next day. I had rattled off a whole to-do list of things that I wanted his help with.
Just like that, the tension that had lingered between us for so long now had dissipated into nothing. I could only hope that my next conversation would go even half as smoothly.
* * *
The following Friday, when I came over for dinner again, Grandma and Grandpa were there, precisely as I had planned for them to be.
From the moment I stepped into the house—or, really, from the moment I asked Mom to invite them, I felt almost sick with nerves.
As a child, I would sometimes wonder if Grandma believed that she was a god. She seemed to carry with her this belief that she had a divine right to judge others.
If Grandma were a god, then Grandpa was her most devout follower. He would kneel at her feet and pray before he would ever consider disobeying her. That was how it had always been.
She demanded perfection. And I learned from a very young age that life was easier if I tried to force myself into that idea of perfection.
Perfectly respectful, perfectly smart, perfectly skilled, perfectly beautiful.
I had to do it all. It was the only way she would ever stop judging.
It was the only way that I could get her to love me.
Only I could never reach it.
Her expectations had always been so unattainable. That fact never stopped me from reaching, though. As if I stretched my arms long enough and stood on my tiptoes, I could touch the stars. And that, if I did, she would then finally accept me.
I was done reaching for the stars. I was done begging for someone to love and accept me for me. I was done letting myself be walked on and hurt for the sake of self-preservation.
I walked into my parents’ home, just as I had all the weeks before, but this time with more stride in my step.
From the moment I stepped into the house, I could almost feel it in the air—something was off.
The television wasn’t on. Dad wasn’t in the living room at all. I couldn’t smell anything cooking yet, which meant that Mom hadn’t even started on dinner. That had to be a bad sign. She never ran behind when Grandma and Grandpa came over.