AS I WAS slipping my sneakers and coat on at the front door, I reached out and peeked out through the curtain, seeing the same blue Astra parked at the end of my drive with the young blond guy sitting behind the wheel, looking bored. My heart sank, as it had the last three times I’d looked out to see it wasn’t Jamie sitting there watching the house. He’d been gone this morning, replaced by this guy I hadn’t seen before. The disappointment that Jamie wasn’t the one outside hit me a lot harder than I thought it would. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since last night when he’d hugged me on the grass just ten feet from where I was standing now. I’d fallen into a peaceful sleep, thinking about how nice it felt to be wrapped in his arms again, how incredible he smelled, and how that dimple in his cheek when he smiled made my heart ache.
Sighing, I called a good-bye to my nana and stepped out the door, walking to my car, ignoring the guy who was also starting his car, ready to follow me to my destination—the hospital.
We’d been trying to stagger visits to my mother so that she had someone at each visiting time. Nana had gone this morning while Kelsey was at school, I was going this afternoon, and tonight we’d most likely all go together.
When I arrived, Mom was sitting up in bed, her TV turned down low, but she wasn’t really watching it, just staring off into space absentmindedly. Nana had told me she was a little better today, that she wasn’t drifting in and out of sleep like she had been yesterday and that she hadn’t cried as much. This was the first time I’d seen her since I’d had to tell her my father was gone.
“Hi, Mom,” I greeted her, walking in and setting the grapes Nana had sent on her little table.
Mom looked up and gave me a half smile. “Afternoon, Ellison.”
I walked over and kissed the side of her head. “How are you today?” I asked, perching on the edge of her bed and watching her worriedly. Her eyes were red rimmed, her cheeks a little blotchy, like she’d been crying recently.
She reached up a shaky hand and brushed her hair away from her face. “I’m better. They gave me some different pain meds today; they’ve made me feel a little woozy, but the pain in my hip and leg isn’t as bad as it was.”
I nodded. “That’s good. Well, not about being woozy, but about less pain.”
“Yes,” she replied, eyeing me curiously. “Are you all right?”
“Sure I am,” I answered robotically, reaching out and opening the bag of grapes, helping myself to a few. I glanced up at the TV. “Whatcha watching?”
She sighed deeply. “Some terrible soap opera. I forgot how much I dislike daytime TV.”
I smiled, staring at the screen, my mind wandering to Jamie again without my permission. Mom reached out and touched my arm softly, catching my attention, and I realized she must have been talking to me and I’d been off in my own little world.
“Ellison, is something wrong? You seem a little distracted.”
I shrugged one shoulder, reaching out and plucking another grape from the bunch. “Nothing’s wrong. Sorry, what were you saying?”
She sighed, her eyes concerned as she watched me. “I said, when are you leaving to go back to London?”
I shook my head slowly. “I’m not. I’ve decided that I want to stay here. My home is here with you guys.”
She recoiled, her mouth dropping open in shock. “You’re staying here?”
I nodded, popping the grape in my mouth. “Yeah. I spoke to Toby about it last night, it’s all decided.”
“But what’s going to happen between you two?” she pressed, her eyes boring into mine.
“We broke up,” I replied. “It was amicable. There’s not much else to do, really. I want to stay here, and he can’t move because of his kids.”
She paused before she spoke, as if she couldn’t quite find the words. “Ellison, don’t think I’m not thrilled to hear you’re staying here, because I am. I missed you so much while you were gone, it felt like a piece of me was taken away with you. But if this is about me and the accident, I’ll be home soon and can look after Kels. You don’t need to do this. I just want you to be happy, I don’t want you to put your life on hold.”
I sighed, fingering the edge of her bedsheet. I hadn’t spoken to anyone else about this; I hadn’t even really fully accepted it myself. “Thing is, Mom, I’m not sure if that was meant to be my life. I’m wondering if maybe I was just running away from things and settled there because it was easier than coming back and facing everything.”
“What do you mean?”
I gulped, Jamie’s smile immediately flickering into my mind. How could I ever have thought that my life was supposed to be with Toby when I still had this space in my heart that was reserved only for Jamie? I frowned, voicing the question I’d asked myself over and over this morning. “Mom, do you ever get over your first love?”
“Is this about Miles?” she asked.
I snorted a laugh and shook my head. “No.”
Her lips pursed. “Jamie?”
I nodded. He had been my first love and, I had come to realize, my only love. “Yeah. I saw him the other day and we talked. It brought back all the feelings from years ago. We spoke about what happened and why we broke up. He told me some stuff that made me see the situation a little differently.”
She settled back against her pillows, watching me like a hawk. “Like what?”
I frowned down at the bedsheet. I couldn’t tell her what he’d said. She didn’t know anything about his past. I had always kept his secret because he didn’t want anyone else to know. I couldn’t admit to her now that he’d been arrested that night. Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I wondered what I could say to explain without having to actually tell the truth. “He said that he’d made a huge mistake breaking up with me and that he had actually wanted to come traveling with me, but he was...” I tried to think of a word to fit that wasn’t arrested. “Scared,” I finally settled on. “We were moving so fast that he got a little scared and that’s why we broke up. He regretted it, but by then it was too late to take it back because I’d already gone, and I didn’t come back, so...”
My mother had fallen silent. I looked up at her now, expecting her to be angry about it, but instead she looked deep in thought. “I always thought it was weird. That boy was so in love with you, even I could see it. I never saw anything like that coming. I thought you two were solid. Your father even said that he thought you two would be married within a year or two. I always wondered what prompted the breakup, and you would never tell us the entire story,” she said thoughtfully. “Do you still love him?”
I gulped. “I’ll always love him, that’s the hard part,” I admitted.
She nodded. “What about Toby?”
“We had a different kind of relationship. I love him, I do, but...it was different. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I latched onto him just because he treated me nicely and because he was the first one I felt close to after Jamie,” I said. “I don’t think I ever really got over Jamie.” There was no real confusion about it for me; I hadn’t gotten over it and probably never would.
My mom cleared her throat awkwardly. “Does Jamie feel the same?”
I shrugged in answer. “I don’t know. I think so, maybe, yeah.”
He hadn’t said he still wanted to be with me, but some of the things he’d said had led me to believe we had a chance as a couple.
Mom sighed deeply, pulling the sheet up higher around her as her eyes became a little dreamy. “Ellison, did I ever tell you about when I met your father?”
A corner of my mouth twitched up as I shook my head. “I know you met him in college, but that’s about it.”
She smiled sadly, her eyes glazed over with tears. “When I met Michael, I never would have imagined that just a couple of years later I would marry him. He was everything I never wanted in a man, everything I always thought I hated and would never settle for,” she started.
I sat enraptured, listening to her every word because I’d never heard her speak of my dad this way.
She smiled. “As you can probably imagine, I was very prim and proper, my clothes pressed and hair perfectly styled. Your father, he was grungy, there’s no other word for it. He played guitar in a band that was simply terrible. He would wear the same raggedy Star Wars T-shirt for three or four days in a row without washing it, he barely styled his hair, and he liked going to festivals and camping in tents, for goodness’ sake.”
She laughed and shook her head. “I guess before that I’d been a little sheltered. The boys I knew from high school were nothing like your father. They were snobby, self-righteous trust fund babies who thought the world owed them a living because of their family name. Your father opened my eyes to possibilities I’d never considered, made me see the lighter side of life that I’d never appreciated. I’d never met anyone like him before. Within a few weeks, I fell so deeply in love with him that I basically gave up everything to be with him. My parents never approved of Michael. They never saw what I saw in him, but that didn’t stop me. You can’t help who you fall in love with. When you find the one you’re supposed to be with, everything else just clicks into place and you’d do anything for them.”
Her sad smile made my heart ache. I always suspected there was something off between her and her parents; there was always an unease and an awkward atmosphere when we would visit them—which wasn’t very often. Now I knew why. My heart swelled with love for my mother because she’d loved my father so much she’d basically turned her back on the life and society she was expected to go into. This new information also went a little way toward explaining why my grandparents hadn’t come to visit their daughter who was critically ill in the hospital, or made it to their son-in-law’s funeral—they’d blamed poor health, but if they really wanted to, wouldn’t they have moved heaven and earth to be there for her, poor health or not? Maybe the old resentment was still there, just not admitted. It was their loss, not ours.
Mom reached up and swiped a tear away as it slid down her face. “I guess what I’m trying to say here, Ellison, is I know I never gave you and Jamie an easy time of it, and I apologize for that. I guess I kind of forgot what it felt like to fall in love but have expectations on you from your parents. I’m sorry I put such pressure on you to be someone who you didn’t want to be. I never should have done that. I should have trusted your judgment and treated you with more respect than my parents afforded me. You’re a good girl, Ellison, and all I want for you is to be happy.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I croaked, tearing up myself now, too.
She smiled and reached for my hand, holding it tightly as she looked directly into my eyes. “If you love someone, don’t ever be afraid to show it. Shout it to the world if that’s what you want to do. Life is fleeting, Ellison. True love is rare, so if you find it, you hold on to it so tightly and never let anything or anyone get in the way.”
True love. That was what I always felt Jamie and I had. “So you think I should talk to him about it?” I asked, unsure how this conversation even got started, it had escalated so quickly.
She nodded. “I followed my heart and I never regretted it, not for one single day. That’s all I want for you, too. I just want you to find someone who makes you feel that kind of heart-stopping, epic love, even when he hasn’t shaved or leaves the toilet seat up or can’t manage to put the milk carton away after using it. All of those things, they don’t even matter, because once you’ve fallen for someone, you love the person within unconditionally. Flaws and all.”
She was right, I knew she was right. Jamie was the other piece of my puzzle, just as my dad had been hers. “But what if he doesn’t feel the same? What if he hurts me again?” I said the words before I’d thought them through.
Mom smiled sadly and patted the back of my hand. “That could happen, but if you don’t try you’ll never know what you could be missing out on. If you love him, Ellison, you need to be brave enough to give him that chance.”
Again, I knew she was right. She’d spoken nothing but the truth, and it echoed my feelings of the last day or so, too. The trouble was, this situation was more complicated than I could ever explain to her. Jamie’s flaws I could live with, but his new-found career as some sort of local gangster was a different story. I wasn’t sure I could be with him, always wondering if he was going to be taken away from me because of his job. I didn’t want to forever have that fear hanging over my head. It would eventually drive me crazy, I knew it would. It would be something we would need to talk about before we could even think about moving forward—if he even wanted to move forward from here, that was. He’d been willing and eager to get out of that lifestyle once; maybe he would want to again. Like my mother said, I just needed to be brave enough to open up the conversation and see where it led.
I sighed. “You’re right. I need to talk to him,” I agreed. “When did you get so wise?”
“Must have been the bump to the head,” she joked, reaching up and touching the healing scar above her right ear. “Whatever you choose, I’ll always support you. I’m just sorry it’s taken me all this time to see things clearly.”
I leaned in and wrapped my arms around her, hugging her tightly, some of the tension leaving my shoulders. I hadn’t realized what a weight I’d been carrying around with me, and how much I had desperately needed to talk it through with someone. She was right, I owed it to our memory to be brave enough to give him that chance.
Mom hugged me back, her arms tight around me as her breath fanned down my neck and I felt her tears wet my shoulder. “Seriously, though, talk to him soon. Don’t waste a single moment. Enjoy every precious second of your life and make it count, because you never know when it could all be ripped away from you.”
I pulled back and planted a kiss on her cheek as a rush of adoration for her washed over me. I’d never had this kind of conversation with her before, and her baring her soul about my father made me see a completely different side of her than I’d seen growing up. “I love you,” I said softly, meaning every word. It was probably the first time I’d outright said that to my mother, but somehow it just felt right confessing it now.
Her lips pulled up into a grin as she reached out and stroked the side of my face. “I love you too, and I’m sorry I never told you enough. From now on, that’ll change. I’ll change. And I’ll always support you in everything you do. I’m so proud of you, Ellison, and the beautiful young lady you’ve become. You remind me of your father in so many ways.” She sniffed and her smile grew. “And I’m secretly over the moon that you’re staying.”
“Me, too,” I admitted, hugging her again.