Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
I wonder if she’d have that drink with me today?
“What’s going on?” I ask as she walks around opening the windows, then digs in my drawers to find a lighter before she lights the ancient vanilla-scented candle on my bureau.
Yes, I have a bureau.
I bought it spontaneously at an antique sale a few years ago.
It seemed like the sort of thing Jane Austen would have. Back then, I could still pretend I was Jane, updated for the twenty-first century.
But Jane Austen didn’t get her butt kicked by a fake breakup. She was the one doing the breaking.
Now, my bureau is saddled with bills, books with loose pages and broken spines I’ll fix someday, and all the feather quills and old pens friends buy me when they know I like historical fiction and old things.
And, it turns out, an old candle.
It smells like burning dust when she brings it back over, but it’s supposed to smell like vanilla. There’s a harsh sweetness underneath the burning smell.
“There,” Mom says. “That’s better.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask again.
She waves me into a seat at the counter.
“I heard about you and Ethan,” she says sympathetically.
Well, no stopping that.
Knowing it was coming doesn’t make me feel any better.
“Hey, if you’re here to point out all the ways I should’ve behaved differently to keep him, I don’t want to hear it,” I say. “Not now. Maybe never. I know you’re disappointed, but—”
“Hattie,” she says, taking my hands and holding them in hers. “Hattie, honey, I would never say that.”
“Didn’t you say that about Jake?” I ask. “You know… how I should have been better for him so he’d stick around?”
She looks mortified. “Did I say that? When?”
“You said it again earlier this summer. Back when you were telling me not to mess things up with Ethan. So much for that.”
Oh, the tears are coming in hot.
I press my lips together firmly, so the sting stops at my nose and can’t make it to my eyes.
“Oh, honey.” It’s all she says, but she does the most un-Mom thing imaginable.
She steps forward and pulls me into a hug.
She smells like Chanel and my childhood.
The last time I remember hugging her like this, I was a teenager, late high school.
I hadn’t gotten the English grade I wanted on this paper about Hemingway. Maybe his macho, stripped down writing just didn’t connect with me, but I also wrote it when I was sick and my halfhearted efforts got me a C+.
Total disaster.
Especially back when the only people I idolized were authors. I figured I needed a good English grade to be like them.
And my personal brand was nerd.
That’s what people knew me for, the little niche I’d carved myself out at school.
Suddenly, I felt like a fraud.
Like I hadn’t just let myself down, but everyone else around me.
But instead of getting mad and saying I should’ve studied harder or been more focused during the exam, Mom just hugged me, stroked my hair, and told me there were more important things than grades.
Then she’d straightened up and braided my hair.
We watched an Audrey Hepburn movie with popcorn. For a moment, everything was right with the world.
I’m an adult now.
My problems can’t be fixed by a big hug and a movie night, but I have that same childlike sensation when I linger in her arms.
If she just holds on a little longer, maybe the heartbreak will go away.
Maybe I’ll be okay.
It’s tantalizing enough to hang on, to make this hug last.
My eyes burn and I know there’ll be no holding back my muffled sobs.
It’s like she senses the oncoming storm, rocking me from side to side.
“I know, baby girl,” she murmurs, just like she did when I was even younger—a child, really. When I’d scraped my knee and she had to clean the scrape and bandage it up.
The alcohol was the worst part.
I cried then, unashamed, never feeling like I had to hide my emotions from her like shiny rocks from a magpie.
She rocked me then just like she’s doing now, telling me she knows.
Calling me her baby girl.
Holy hell, I’d forgotten this.
The older I’ve gotten, the more she’d get hung up on my appearance, my weight.
Puberty came late, and she never had my body shape.
I doubt she ever had my self-confidence issues either.
But when I was a kid…
Oh, I miss that.
And I’ve missed my softer, loving, non-judgy Mom.
“I know,” she whispers again, one hand stroking my hair. “Let it all out, it’s okay.”
“…does everyone know?” I mumble against her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about that now,” she says softly.
That’s a yes.
Instead of crying my eyes out, I pull back before the tears hit full force.
As much as I missed being comforted like a little girl again, so much has happened between us.
This can’t be as comforting as she might want it to be. But she touches my face with the tips of her manicured fingers.