I SHOULD’VE CHECKED the weather before I left for work on Wednesday. But when I heard Miles moving around his room, I ran for the front door.
I didn’t have the time or energy for a serious conversation.
So I left. Without car keys, or a jacket, or an umbrella.
At the library, things were a bit less frosty between me and Ashleigh. Her curt politeness feels even worse. We’ve fully reverted to coworkers.
And now I’m walking home in pouring rain, even though she offered me a ride, because I didn’t want her to feel obligated.
I stop at an intersection, and a soft-top Jeep flashes its lights, signaling that I can cross.
I dart to the far side of the street, managing to stomp through three oily puddles in the process.
As I’m passing the car, it honks, and I jump, readying myself for a debaucherous catcall.
The window slides down and the driver leans across the passenger seat.
A messy head of dark hair. An upturned nose. A scruffy face that makes my heart feel like it’s been double-bounced on a trampoline.
“Thought you might need a ride,” Miles says.
All I can think to say is, “Did you get a new car?”
“Long story,” he murmurs. “Tell you on the way?”
I don’t want to be furious and devastated. I want to be indifferent and dignified. It’s hard to be either with sewer rat hair and mascara streaks to your jaw.
“You can just take me to Cherry Hill and I’ll get a cab,” I say awkwardly, climbing in. “No need for you to be late to work.”
My teeth instantly start chattering from the AC. Miles turns the heat knob all the way up, the windshield fogging at the edges where the wipers can’t reach.
“They won’t be slammed yet,” he says. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not worth getting in trouble,” I say.
At a red light, he looks over at me. “I was trying to meet you at the library, but there was an accident on Tremaine.”
I focus on the world of blue, green, gray outside the windows, keeping him safely in my periphery. “Thanks anyway.”
“Daphne?”
“Hm?”
He pulls to the curb. “Can we talk for a minute?”
Our eyes tentatively meet. I look away, stomach dropping when I spot the taffy-green cottage two houses down, like a cruel joke: You thought you could be different, want something different, but you’re you.
“Daphne,” he says quietly. “Can you look at me? I want to apologize to you.”
“For what?” My gaze judders back.
“You know what,” he says.
“I don’t,” I say. “All I know is, I waited an hour for someone who didn’t show up. The rest—why you totally disappeared for twenty-four hours—that’s just a guess.”
A guess loosely drawn by Peter, in the most painful way conceivable.
“So if you want to apologize for something,” I say, trying to lean into the anger, away from the ache, “you’re going to have to explain what it is, exactly, that you did.”
“I panicked,” he says.
There it is.
I’m still the woman with too many expectations, and Miles is the guy who panics when they’re set on him.
“I didn’t tattoo my name on you while you were sleeping,” I say.
“I know that,” he replies.
“So, what?” I ask. “You changed your mind, and instead of just texting me, you left the state?”
“I didn’t leave the state,” he says. “I woke up and—something came up. A friend needed help, and I lost track of time.”
Something came up.
A friend.
Something better. Someone better.
He’s not admitting who it was.
And it shouldn’t matter, the same way whatever Dad wrote in that note doesn’t make a difference. Miles telling me he ditched me for Petra won’t change anything.
But I want him to say it. I want to push as hard as possible against all the bruises in my heart, until it changes me. Until I learn to stop fucking everything up.
“Who?” I ask.
He scrubs a hand up his forehead through his hair, shakes his head.
He’d be doing me a favor, putting me out of my misery, dropping a period at the end of this sentence. “Please,” I plead.
He breathes out. “Petra.”
Some part of me, I realize, was holding on to the possibility that Peter was misinformed, or outright lying. I didn’t know it was there, that ember of hope, and I hate myself for it.
My throat closes off, my chest tightening. I nod. And nod and nod, trying to think of even one thing to say.
“She just needed to borrow my truck to move some stuff,” Miles says, voice fraying. “And like I said, I got caught up.”
Caught up. There will always be a Petra. Someone more interesting, someone more fun, someone who needs less, or offers more.
“And then I snapped out of it,” he says. “And I realized how badly I’d fucked up, and I left. Traded cars with her so she could use the truck and booked it—and I had this big plan for how to make it up to you. A surprise. But I couldn’t make it happen. I tried and I couldn’t, so I came home with this stupid fucking box of fudge, and I know it’s pathetic, and it’s not enough—”
“Miles.” I close my eyes, rubbing my heels against the sockets as I organize my thoughts. “I don’t need a better apology present.” My hands fall to my lap. “This is my fault.”
He balks. “What? No, it’s definitely not.”
“You did exactly what I should’ve expected,” I say.
He jerks back, as if I slapped him. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not trying to be hurtful,” I say quickly. “I’m saying you’re off the hook.”
“Off what hook, Daphne?” he demands.
“You told me you don’t do expectations or obligations,” I say.
“I said they make me panic,” Miles replies, sounding vaguely panicked now too.
I turn in my seat, the windshield wipers still squeaking against the glass, rain pattering the roof. “And you did panic. Even though you didn’t want to. And I did expect something, even though I tried not to.”
“Good!” he half shouts. “Expect something! You want to put me on a hook? Put me on the hook. I freaked out, Daphne, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
My stomach lurches, heart clenching like a fist. My skin goes from fiery hot to clammy and cold, and that word lodges itself between my ribs like a poison-tipped arrow.
I need it out, know the wound will gush when it’s gone, but don’t care.
“No,” I stammer.
“No?” Miles gives a hoarse laugh. “How is that a response to what I just said? I just told you I love you, Daphne.”
“And I’m telling you no.” I undo my seat belt with trembling hands. “You don’t get to say that to me. You don’t get to disappear, and then show up and buy me fucking fudge and pick me up from work, and tell me you love me—”
“I do love you,” he cries.
My breath comes fast. “You can’t just throw that out there like it makes everything better. I didn’t need an I love you or a box of fudge or whatever big plan you had to make it up to me. I don’t even like surprises! None of that stuff matters when you don’t show up for the little things, and if you loved me, you’d know that.”
I fumble with the lock on the car door, shove it open.
“What are you doing?” Miles asks, his voice wrenching upward.
“I’m getting out,” I stammer.
“Why?” he says.
It’s mostly stopped raining now. Even if it hadn’t, the storm wouldn’t have stopped me.
“You know the worst part?” I force out as I turn back to him on watery legs. “I wasn’t even worried when I walked out of work and you weren’t there. I didn’t worry for the first hour. And when I did, it was for you. That’s how much I trusted you.”
How safe I’d felt.
His lips part, the hard lines of his face going lax. “And, what?” he says, his voice so thin it’s nearly a whisper. “All of that’s just gone now?”
The softness in his eyes and voice makes me feel like something inside my rib cage is tearing. I don’t want to hurt him.
I just don’t want him to hurt me either.
I can’t let myself be absorbed into this.
“There’s a job,” I blurt. “Close to my mom. I’m interviewing, next week.”
His mouth falls open again, his eyes oily dark. He presses his lips together again, swallows. “So that’s it. You’re leaving.”
“That was always the plan.” The words quiver out of me. I steel myself to go on: “We knew this wouldn’t work. No matter how much fun we have together.”
His features flash first with hurt, then acceptance. After a second, he says, “Got it.”
The clouds overhead are breaking up, and the tears are working their way down my face. “Storm’s over,” I whisper. “I’ll walk from here.”
He looks back to the steering wheel, and quickly wipes at the corner of his eye, which makes my heart feel like it’s shattering.
I shut the door and turn away, listening to his engine receding, unable to watch him disappear.
After a minute, I start to walk. The fairy-tale cottage’s drapes are open, its windows aglow.
Inside, three people amble past. A blazer-wearing woman slightly ahead of a young couple, arm in arm, laughing at something she said.
A Realtor selling a couple on the life they could have there.
The late nights binge-watching The X-Files on the couch they picked out together, the early mornings making toast while they’re still too tired to speak, the kids who will earn their first scars in the backyard and badly practice instruments at inconvenient times, and the way their favorite candle’s scent will gradually infuse the walls so that every time they come back from a trip, exhausted, and dump their bags inside the door, they’ll smell that they’re where they belong.
All those moments throughout the days, weeks, months that don’t get marked on calendars with hand-drawn stars or little stickers.
Those are the moments that make a life.
Not grand gestures, but mundane details that, over time, accumulate until you have a home, instead of a house.
The things that matter.
The things I can’t stop longing for.
There’s only one place that feeling exists for me, only one person with whom I belong.
“You’re busy,” I say.
“No, no, hold on a second.” The voices fade, then cut out as she closes a door. “What’s up?”
“Mom. You’re clearly in the middle of something,” I say.
“I’m never too busy for you,” she says. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Where to start? “Dad came to visit.”
“Oh, shit,” she says. “That’s what he wanted your address for? I thought he was just mailing you something.”
“Same,” I say. “But no, he was stopping by.” I leave out the with his new wife part. He’s out of her life, and she prefers it that way.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should’ve asked you, but he just wanted to confirm the address. If I’d had any idea—”
“No, Mom, it’s fine,” I say. “I would’ve told you to give it to him.”
She hesitates. “So, how was it?”
“Great,” I admit. “And then terrible.”
“So the usual,” she says.
“Basically.”
“He’s always been great, for a while.” She sighs. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know it sucks.”
“It does.” Tears well in my eyes. “It sucks so much.”
After a pause, she says, “You deserve a better dad. I wish I could give that to you.”
“You did.” I wipe my eyes dry, but my voice is tearier than ever. “You’ve always been my mom and my dad. And my best friend. You’ve always been absolutely everything for me.”
“Oh, baby,” she says softly. “I love you more than everything else on this planet combined. But no one person can be everything we need. Sometimes I couldn’t even really do a good job at being your mother, let alone those other things.”
“You were perfect,” I say. “You were amazing.”
“Amazing, maybe,” she says. “But far from perfect. Do you know how many school recitals I fell asleep during?”
I sniff. “No.”
“However many you had,” she replies.
I chortle. “That’s like drifting off to the tune of forty-five street cats in heat.”
“I wouldn’t know!” she says. “In my dreams, the fifth-grade class sang beautifully.”
I sink onto my rug, face in my hands, quivering with laughter.
“If I could do it again,” she says, after a second, “I wouldn’t have moved you around so much either.”
“You did what you had to,” I say.
“I thought so at the time,” she says. “But the truth is, I think we both could’ve been happier with less. We were, in that first apartment, just the two of us, remember?”
“I do.” Warmth brims in my chest. That place had thin walls and leaky pipes, but Mom made it feel like an adventure we were setting out on. We were the kids camping out in the Met in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, or the titular children from The Boxcar Children living in the titular boxcar.
“I was just so scared I couldn’t really do it on my own,” she goes on. “And so many decisions I made were based on the fear of what could go wrong, instead of my hopes for what might go right. Every time that fear got tripped, I picked you up and moved you away, rather than facing the possibility of discomfort. I never took any chances.”
“You were a realist,” I tell her.
“Honey.” She laughs. “I’m a cynic. And a cynic is a romantic who’s too scared to hope.”
It feels like a nail driven into my sternum.
“Is that what I am?” I ask her.
“You?” she says. “You, my girl, are whoever you decide to be. But I hope you always keep some piece of that girl who sat by the window, hoping for the best. Life’s short enough without us talking ourselves out of hope and trying to dodge every bad feeling. Sometimes you have to push through the discomfort, instead of running.”
I know right then what I need to do. As badly as I want to run, this is my mess, and first I have to face it.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say.
“What did I do, exactly?” she asks.
“You’re here,” I say. “Whenever it counts, you’re here. When I grow up, I want to be you.”
She laughs. “Oh, god no. Just be you. The best you. The most you.”
When I get off the phone with her, I text Harvey right away: Think you can talk Ashleigh into an impromptu poker night next time Mulder’s with Duke?
