Ashley Parker

Everything Will (Probably) Be All Right

Copyright © 2023 by Ashley Parker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

First edition

ISBN: 979-8-9896571-1-7

Cover art by Anna Bovi Diamond

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
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Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

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17

18

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28

About the Author

1

My mother didn’t speak to me for two weeks after I told her I was moving out of her house and into my very own apartment. I crept around her house wailing, begging her to just say something.

For two weeks.

I was twenty-one years old, hardly moving out prematurely, not even moving that far away – a grand total of ten miles. I moved closer to my work, my first big-girl corporate job.

I didn’t understand why she was so upset back then. We were close, yes, but it’s not like we were spending every day together. I moved out, loading the moving truck while Mom sat in the living room on her laptop in silence, not once looking up from her solitaire game.

She called me a few days later, asking if she could take me shopping for new home supplies. We never discussed her giving me the cold shoulder for two weeks. I never told her how hurt I was. I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, everyone moves out at some point, right? But still, I felt like I was the bad guy here. By the time she called, I had already apologized twenty times. She never did.

So, four years later, when I tell her I am moving to California for a new job, I expect another cold war, not the squeal of delight and well wishes.

It’s hard to tell the rest of my family that within the next sixty days, I will have a completely new life in California, but honestly, they don’t seem too surprised that I’ve finally schemed my way out of Georgia. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, I mean, Georgia is great and all, but I’m excited to go somewhere where my tattoos and nose ring aren’t considered breaking news. I’m excited to make a home with my boyfriend. I’m excited for my new job.

I’m excited for a fresh start.

* * *

I reduce my life down to two suitcases, an elephant-shaped hamper full of thriller and fantasy books, and my two cats, Biscuit and Midnight, both meowing incessantly in their crates in the backseat. Everything else was supposed to be donated or sold, but in reality, I called some guy from a ‘We Haul Junk’ company and paid way too much.

I’m heading out west a couple days before Logan, my boyfriend of six months. My new job wanted me to start immediately, while Logan is finishing up his Master’s in Computer Science and won’t graduate for another week. Hence his absence from my grand sendoff.

I slam the trunk of my blue sedan, freshly washed after a last-minute tuneup before I drive it across the country. I turn around to my mom holding out a card, the corner of a hundred dollar bill sticking out. We used to get the “you must be her older sister!” routine constantly and, honestly, if it weren’t for the past decade she spent in a tanning booth, I would still buy it. She has two inches on my five four, but we are both slim, with the same thin lips and big brown eyes. I keep my hair above the chin, hers a towering eighties fringe. She even has a few tattoos, but nothing compared to the assortment dotting both of my arms: a Hedwig illustration from Harry Potter, a brightly colored peacock, flowers here and there. But sometimes when I pass myself in a mirror, I jump, thinking I saw my mother.

The card trembles in her hand. “Just something to help out,” she says.

She’s been sobbing all afternoon. I pull her into a hug.

“I’ll come visit once you’re settled. Be safe, Sierra,” she whispers.

My body betrays me, a lump forming in my throat, eyes burning. I blink out the tears. “That would be great,” I murmur, and I think I mean it.

Look, I could pretend that I am brave or courageous, or generally not scared shitless, but I don’t have the energy. This is the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I hope it’s worth the stress and anxiety (and the exorbitant price of driving cross-country). I’m really counting on California to be the place where I finally feel happy. Content. I just want to be content.

My dad steps in for a hug, his chin wobbly. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. We already had a long conversation about how proud he was of me, but sad I was going so far away.

“I’ll call you when I get to the first stopping point, Dad” I promise.

The lump reappears as I drive away from my parents, the ten-foot distance somehow sadder than the 2,443 miles I was about to put between us. Mom gives me one final wave, her shoulders slumped in the rear-view mirror.

* * *

So… Logan.

I met Logan on a dating app six months ago. He is tall with generic attractive white-guy features: brown hair, blue eyes, a jawline. I was coming off yet another messy breakup, but Logan feels normal. He has an excellent job lined up in California - software engineer for a startup. He has a decent relationship with his family. He plays basketball and eats his veggies. A regular dude.

Three months into dating, I moved into the same block he lived on in downtown Atlanta just to be closer to him. My apartment was nicer, so he ended up staying with me most nights, retreating to his bachelor pad only after a fight.

And, boy, do we fight. Sometimes it’s heated arguments about him wanting kids and my adamant refusal, other times, the disagreements on why he should be allowed to have an open relationship while my side remains closed (I may have let it slip that he’s far from my first boyfriend. He wants to “even up the body count.”)

Don’t worry. We also argue about who should take out the trash.

There’s good times, too. He’s super fun – always down to go wander around until we find something cool. He showers me with affection. He’s smart and driven and likes to travel - qualities I want to have. I just love him so much, I feel literally crazy about him. So when he got this job offer out in Silicon Valley, I said yes. I’d been dreaming about leaving Georgia for months now, mostly to put some distance between myself and my parents. Ever since I’ve lived on my own as an adult, I just feel like there could be more to life, you know?

What if there was a place where I don’t feel so alone? I’ve never been one to have a ton of friends, probably for a lot of reasons.

What if my new job is better than doing data analysis for a scummy, subprime lender? I took my last job after my statistics professor recommended me to the role, but I hated it. All I did was analyze how many times a day we needed to call customers with overdue bills to ask them to pay us back.

What if all it takes to make me happy is to move across the country with this guy I’ve known for a few months? Yeah, I sure do set my expectations low, huh?

* * *

I keep my word and dial my dad only two hours later while I stop to stock up on caffeine and chips. “Hey Dad, I’m just outside of Birmingham. How’s Grandma Judy doing? I wish she could have been there today.” Yesterday Grandma fell and broke her hand while on her way to check on something in the oven. I reach my hand back and stick a finger in Midnight’s crate. She ignores me.

“Hey Sierra. She’s better. I just heard they’re releasing her from the hospital today with a cast on her hand. How do you think your mom handled the goodbyes? She didn’t seem too tore up.”

Dad has been living with his parents ever since my parents divorced twenty years ago. At first, it seemed kind of sad, him losing his independence and all, but, more and more, I can see how much my grandparents need him around.

“Honestly, I thought it was fine. I’m pleasantly surprised.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. I wonder who will make it out to visit you first, me or her.”

I can hear his smile over the phone.

I hope it’s him. I’d ask if Grandma Judy would ever make it out to visit, but I already know the answer.

* * *

The days blur together, the cacophony of crying cats fill every minute of the drive. I subsist on caffeine pills and whatever fast food is closest to my motel at night. Can’t wait until that Bay Area paycheck starts rolling in. Logan is finishing his exams, but he calls me every day. It is really a beautiful drive (except Texas, sorry Texas, you are just too large), but eight hours a day of cruise control and audiobooks isn’t exactly what I’d call a good time.

On the fourth day of non-stop driving, I lose cell service for the entire drive, so there is no one to call when I finally cross the border into southern California. I’m not sure if I am more excited or horrified. Motel prices double instantly.

My penultimate motel is tucked between a shady Mexican restaurant and a restaurant mysteriously labeled Asian. I opt for the former, and call Mom while I wait.

“Hey. Are you there yet?”

Her voice is bright and chipper, even though she is three time zones ahead of me.

“Almost. I crossed through the California border today. I’m so glad to only have one day left but Jesus, these motels are expensive.”

She scoffs. “Well, it’s not like you don’t have money. Must be nice to be able to afford these fancy motels.”

I roll my eyes. I am staying in a Motel 6. “Actually, I spent my savings to break my lease, so luckily Logan is helping me pay for the motel.”

I don’t tell her that Logan’s parents gave him ten grand for ‘moving expenses’ or that my new job pays six figures. I don’t tell her because my very first salaried job pays more than her teacher’s salary ever did, and she did not handle that well.

The line goes quiet.

Her voice returns, acid erupting into my ear. “Oh, well so glad Logan can help you. So sorry that I don’t help you enough. I’m just your useless mother, can’t ever give you anything. I hope you appreciate Logan more than you appreciated me.”

She hangs up on me. I pay for my dinner using the money she gave me and eat in silence.

* * *

I wake up on day five to two missed texts, one from Logan (have fun in the bay, see you in a week, love you), one from Mom (Enjoy ur last day of driving! Bet u r tired LOL). I dose the cats with their last tranquilizer, and we are on the road again.

Seven hours later, I pull into my fifth and final motel in Sunnyvale, just on the outskirts of San Jose, and prepay for seven nights. The motel is tucked between a Burger King and the LinkedIn campus – weird. It will take me some time to get used to this blend of suburbs and huge office buildings. At least the roads are easy enough to navigate. I unpack and check in with Logan, Mom, and Dad. Five days in a car alone, with no one to talk to, really makes me rethink the whole ‘I hate talking on the phone’ thing.

The cats begin their sniff-every-inch-of-this-grody-room routine as I scroll through pages and pages of houses for rent, balking at the prices. There is an open house the next day for a townhome in Sunnyvale, conveniently close to our offices. Two bedrooms, no air conditioning, and in-unit washer and dryer—how luxurious. The living room is huge, though, and it has a decently-sized kitchen and dining room. It even has its own little backyard with a ten foot by ten foot paved patio. I can already picture myself drinking a glass of lemonade on a cute little bistro patio set while Logan grills hamburgers on a shiny new grill. Sounds cute. Maybe I need to get my attitude in check and stop being so judgmental.

But really, no AC?

I video call Logan while I take the tour, but I spend the entire time doing math in my head and wondering if I’ll have any money left over at the end of the month. By my calculations, no. I may be gravely underestimating how far my fancy new salary will go out here. Feels a little scary to be on Day Two of California life and already experiencing some sticker shock. Maybe Logan will pay more than half. It really would be fair since he’s the one who wants to rent a big house. My vote goes to a smaller apartment downtown, but I was overruled by his desire for privacy (and his larger salary).

He loves the townhome, so I sign the lease. I send both of my parents a selfie, taken in front of my very own lemon tree.

My first night in my new home teaches me two very important lessons. First, I should’ve splurged and bought a better-quality air mattress. Second, as I attempt to bundle up into my one measly blanket, the air mattress squawking beneath me, scrolling through my phone in search of someone, anyone, to share my big move with, I realize that I am absolutely alone. I send my dad a text: ok, i’m ready to come home now LOL, silence my phone, and proceed to lay in bed for hours, willing myself to sleep and failing.

I don’t really have any friends. Probably because I got into a bit of trouble with weed in high school and the gifted program kids all stopped talking to me. Then, whoops, I dated an insecure alcoholic all throughout college and grad school who forbade me from making other friends due to his fear that I would realize how terrible he was, eventually, and leave him. As I lay in this bed, freezing (How did this even happen? I swore it was over seventy degrees in the daytime), I imagine myself waltzing through downtown Sunnyvale with a group of women. Making friends has always been hard for me. I’ve never felt like I am interesting, or fun, or normal. Luckily, I’ve always seemed to find one other loner and stick to them like a stage five clinger, but it’s not like they are my first choice. I haven’t gone shopping with a friend since high school. I haven’t had a girl’s night out. Ever. I spent my twenty-first birthday with my alcoholic college boyfriend and my dad. Actually, I spend a lot of time with my dad. As lame as it makes me sound, he’s the only good friend I have. I love being around him and his confident energy. I would love to be able to walk into a restaurant and just start chatting up whoever is in there. I swear, wherever we go, people just adore him. The opposite of Mom, who has always been, well, Mom.

My restless night does absolutely nothing to help prepare me for the whirlwind of the next three days—I have to unpack, obtain basic necessities, and figure out how to get to my new job. As I stand in line at Walmart with a buggy full of frozen dinners, I open my phone again to check if Mom misses me yet. Nothing. I feel like I’m back in high school, navigating the crowded cafeteria with nowhere to sit. I don’t know if I have even spoken a word to another human. I eat my frozen dinner, heated in the oven since I am waiting for Logan (and uh, his money) to buy a microwave. My final night of freedom before starting my new job is spent sitting against a wall in the empty living room, watching movies on my phone in the dark, wondering how this could possibly end well for me.

Here I go.

2

Forty-five minutes before I am supposed to meet my manager, Valerie, for my first day at my new job, I park my car two blocks away and double-check the time. Valerie’s welcome email says to dress casual, no dress code, which sounds unbelievable to me so I ignore her advice and wear black dress pants, a dark blue wrinkle-free button down, and a black blazer. My trick to managing first days is to wear extra thick makeup so my blushing is less visible (this doesn’t work) and drink double the caffeine, so my nerves come off as excitement (this does work). I make my way to the lobby at ten til nine.

Valerie, a bubbly brunette in a sleeveless sundress and flip flops, greets me in the lobby. I try to untuck my shirt slowly enough so she won’t notice.

“Welcome to MeTime. Let me give you the tour.”

Jesus, her smile is so big.

MeTime is a subscription service where, for the low, low price of $49.99, we send you a curated ‘Self Care Supply Kit’ every month. We have everything - bath bombs, cute little journals, empowering messages stamped on thick cardstock, you name it. You can also buy meditation pillows (for two hundred dollars), loungewear, and something called “manifestation candles.” Basically, if you want to look like you have your shit together on Instagram, you shop at MeTime.

Valerie leads me around the office, which was essentially one large room with fifty desks scattered about, a shelf with twelve kinds of cereal, a pool table, and a glass-front cooler full of beer. I thought they were joking about the beer in the job posting. Valerie deposits me at a desk surrounded by five others, training videos already queued up for me.

I applied to this job because it sounded way more interesting than my old bank job and the swag is probably amazing. I’m a data analyst, hired to analyze all the people who come to the website and figure out why they don’t subscribe to MeTime. Then I run experiments on the website to get them to subscribe, figure out what works the best, and boom, sell more subscriptions. Really doing the world some good here.

A slim blonde sitting on an exercise ball spins around. “You must be Sierra. I’m Nadine, your mentor. I joined two months ago. Do you want to go hiking with me this weekend?” She has a lovely Scandinavian accent, and smiles at me as I stutter through my reply.

(I said yes. And I did go hiking with her.)

By Friday, I’m already semi-comfortable querying MeTime’s data warehouse. I even build my first dashboard: a live feed showing exactly how many subscribers we have and their average purchase amount. I also know damn near everything about Nadine, including her favorite Burmese restaurant up in San Francisco, her mother’s health issues, and how—like me— her dude’s job brought her to California and this was the first place to give her an offer. She invites me to the work happy hour, which is hilarious to me. After spending nine hours a day in a room with these people, on Fridays they go to a different room to spend another several hours together, albeit with better supplies. Definitely gives me cult vibes.

Of course, I do my due diligence and check out this happy hour.

If it is a cult, I love it. The drinks are free. The food is fried, and also free. There is a chicken and waffles food truck parked outside in the parking lot, which I get seconds from. Inside the kitchen area, there are tables with board games and a countertop with bottles of wine, beer, gin, whiskey, tequila, and vodka. Once I am two glasses of wine and several tiny chicken tenders in, Logan calls.

“Hey babe. How was your first week? Can’t wait to see you.”

I step away from my game of Uno and press the phone into my ear and cup my hand over my mouth. “It’s so good. I’m actually at my first happy hour with my team. Say hi to Nadine.” I hold the phone out so Nadine can shout her greeting. She is so pleased. Girl loves to talk.

“You’re drinking without me? Are there men there?”

I grin at Nadine, but make my way out of the kitchen, and chuckle. “Of course, I work with men, so they are here. What do you want, me to sit at home and wait for you to get here?”

He ignores the rhetorical part of the question, his voice pressed up just a smidge to a whine. “I can’t believe you would betray my trust like that. I haven’t been out drinking with other girls, you know. I respect you. We can talk about this tomorrow when I get there. Try not to do anything stupid, okay?”

I get off the phone as fast as I can, annoyed. Leave it to Logan to ruin the vibe. I roll my eyes and dial Dad.

“Hey, Si,” he answers, hiccuping, “What’s up? How’s Cal-i-forn-i-a?”

His words are slurred. Mine probably are too.

“Dad, it’s amazing out here. I already made a friend. She invited me to happy hour.”

Even as the words leave my lips, I feel a pang of nostalgia, wishing to be laid up on the couch with Dad for the latest episode of Breaking Bad. My dad definitely does not look like the epitome of cool, with his beer belly and he-really-should-just-go-ahead-and-shave-the-rest hairdo, but he sure made my Friday nights fun.

“That’s great, uh, honey,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, but, I think Logan is mad at me, so I’m gonna go home soon.” I secretly hope he will take my side and tell me to stay out.

“He’s just jealous you’re havin’ fun and he’s stuck in the car. He’ll be all better tomorrow, prolly.”

I shrug but agree and tell him goodbye. I’ll just go home, I guess. Nadine will understand, it has been a long first week for me. On my way out of the door, Valerie waves me down.

“Come next week and bring your boyfriend, okay?” she shouts, even though I am two feet away from her.

I’m not used to everyone going so hard at happy hour - I’ve never seen so many people drunk at a work event. (I’m always one of them, of course.)

My heart swells up. One week into the new gig and I am actually making friends. I smile the entire train ride home.

* * *

My alarm shrieks at 8:30 a.m. I had planned to get up early to clean up before Logan’s arrival, but I managed to keep the place spotless. Just to be extra sweet, I drape the blanket over the air mattress, fold up the camping chair I’ve been using for… everything, and open the windows to air out the house. I waste time organizing my half of the closet by sleeve-length and color, until finally – Logan’s here.

He hugs me for what feels like eternity before letting go to pet the cats. They rub against his legs as his brother, Kyle, starts unloading the trunk.

“No, do that later, let me show you around.” I grab Logan by the hand and pull him into the kitchen.

“Looked bigger on video,” he says, “but this will be great.”

The boys finish unpacking and shower. After an ungodly long line at In-n-Out, we end up back at the Walmart, where we pick up another air mattress for Kyle, cheap lamps (I dealt with the dark house by just going to bed when the sun set), kitchenware, and, duh, champagne.

We work our way through the booze while Logan and Kyle replay their two-week road trip for me, pausing to ask me if I also stopped to see Walter White’s house or the drive-thru safari.

No. I saw nothing cool. I couldn’t really go off the route with the cats, not wanting to leave them scared and alone in the car for any longer than I had to. I even kept the car running while I stopped to use the bathroom. But that’s depressing.

I get up to carry the empty bottle into the kitchen. “No, I wanted to get out here as fast as possible,” I shout, the last unopened bottle of champagne calling to me, begging me to open it. I am jealous of their fun road trip, sure. But I am more jealous that Logan had someone else to help him drive out. That was brutal.

I shut the fridge door and tell the boys goodnight.

Although I am a seasoned air-mattress sleeper at this point, Logan is not, and he makes his discomfort very known - moaning and groaning about the bed, the noise, the lack of a real set of sheets. The next day, we visit furniture store after furniture store, a mattress store that has had its Going Out of Business sign up so long it is completely faded by the sun, two different grocery stores (how can Logan already tell that Safeway doesn’t have good produce?), before we finally stop for our first real dinner in California.

The restaurant is typical Millennial-bait, with exposed light bulbs, brick walls, and tons of plants. But hey, the blistered Brussels sprouts look dope.

Logan opens the calculator on his phone to calculate what I owe him for the furniture, as if I can pay for my half of the California King size mattress he insisted on until my first paycheck hit. Our server, a cute blonde with a cheerleader vibe, approaches us and rattles off the specials. I forget Logan and Kyle are new to California, new to how weirdly attractive everyone is. Logan shifts his body to face our server, Sammy, who is cuter than she is friendly, and sits up straighter. Kyle’s eyes meet mine and we share an eye-roll. Sammy glances at me, but keeps her attention on Logan.

“Celebrating anything special?”

Not that she cares.

Logan doesn’t even turn to look at me. “Well actually, I just got a big promotion and my job moved me out here.”

Cool, cool, nothing about me, his girlfriend. I order a $19 cocktail in defiance. Logan finally faces us as Sammy walks away.

“Don’t look at me like that, you know if I flirt with the waitress, she might give us drinks on the house.”

Another twin eye-roll for Kyle and me.

Dinner progresses from Logan “trying to save a few bucks off the bill” to Logan straight up asking Sammy for her number, to “get some recommendations from a local,” of course. Angry heat blooms in the pit in my stomach. I feel so fucking embarrassed. I can only think about what Kyle must be thinking – how I let someone, his brother, disrespect me so hard. I am used to Logan flirting with others. I’m not a super jealous type when it comes to harmless flirting. Not that I love it or anything. But hey, we’re all human.

For the first time all night, Logan reaches over to touch me, grabbing my hand and placing it in his lap. Just as I expect, he is rock hard. Nothing gets him going faster than humiliating me in public.

There’s nothing comforting or reassuring or sexy about being humiliated. The first time it happened, we were shopping for new plates back in Atlanta. I sat down on a display bench to tie my shoe and the rack of ceramic dishes behind me crashed to the floor, shattering.

Employees rushed over: “Are you okay, Miss? Don’t worry, just glad you’re okay,” shooing us out of the area so they could sweep up.

I buried my face in Logan’s chest, red as a tomato, eyes blurry with tears. He bent down to whisper in my ear that he was so turned on, let’s go home. He later said it was the best sex we’d ever had. I hated it.

I’m not looking forward to tonight.

* * *

Week two at MeTime ends up better than my first week. My team seems to like me; instead of staring at the floor when I walk past someone, I look up and smile. Sometimes I even say hello. So brave.

Nadine convinces me to bring Logan to happy hour, certain he’ll get along with her husband, leaving us to have more girl time. We are blessed with an hour of talk, free of computer specs, autonomous driving updates, and tech-stack dick-swinging contests.

No longer concerned about behaving in front of his brother, who left two days ago, Logan throws back drinks. Once sufficiently sauced, he saunters over to us, forcing me to introduce him. He gives Nadine a cheeky wink, but reaches for Valerie’s hand, holding on a beat too long after an awkward handshake. “Ah, you must be Valerie?”

She gives him a big smile.

“I am. Great to finally meet you, Logan. Let me introduce you to my partner, Quim.” She wipes her hand on her dress before slipping it around the waist of a tall, dark, and handsome.

Logan catches me chuckling. I’m not exactly sure when I became so petty, but somewhere along the way, everything I found attractive about Logan initially – his confidence, his touchy-feely attention – now grosses me out. I can’t fathom how he thinks someone like Valerie, arguably a catch, would even give him a second thought. Even though it worked on me. Food for thought.

As much fun as it is watching Logan get taken down a peg, it sours the rest of the evening. We stick around to finish our drinks, and once again I leave happy hour early. (Supposedly the week before ended with the crew at a dance club. Such a weird company.)

Logan plops onto a bench outside while we wait for our Lyft. “You didn’t tell me Valerie was sexy.” He licks his lips, back in his element in front of me, the très insecure girlfriend.

My upper lip curls up. Can’t help it. “Uh yeah, cause that’s a totally normal descriptor to use about your boss?”

If Kyle were here, he would roll his eyes with me.

“Why do you have to make everything so sexual?” I add. Maybe not the best choice of words for a busy sidewalk, but here it goes.

Logan sneers down at me. “Any other girl would love to have fun, try new things. You’re such a prude.”

By fun, new things, he means opening up our relationship. Swinging. Logan getting to ‘sleep with as many people as I had, you know, to be fair.’ I don’t want to do that. I can handle the flirting, but thinking about my boyfriend fucking someone else? Or worse, loving someone else? Not for me.

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

His disappointment is palpable. We ride home in silence.

The silent treatment extends into the night. I let myself into the backyard, another glass of wine in hand, and call my dad.

“Hey Sierra. Been waitin’ on you to call.”

He is drunk again. It is so much easier to be three thousand miles away from my dad’s drinking, but even now, I’m still a witness. All I can do is hope that he is still there. That he can still help me. A lot to ask from someone who can’t even help themselves. It feels selfish to even want anything from him.

“Dad,” I begin. “How do I know if Logan is good for me?”

He exhales loudly and smacks his lips. “You know, sometimes you don’t know. Sometimes what’s important is to not give up on someone, like,” he stops, hopefully to gather his thoughts and not to take another drink. “Relationships are hard work. You might not always see eye to eye, but you just make it work. That’s what’s important.”

That is not the answer I wanted to hear, but I can’t bring myself to tell my father that my boyfriend is obsessed with fucking other women so that he could tell me the answer I want to hear. I just want to know it’s okay to not be happy with Logan. That it is okay to leave.

3

After I hang up with my dad, I sit back in my camp chair, which has been dragged outside after being replaced by chairs that aren’t made to fold up into a bag. It’s the only thing I own in this house, if we’re not counting animals as objects. Logan hasn’t come outside to check on me yet, so I message Brian, my older brother by fifteen months who still lives back home (or, was this home now?) - Hello, how’s life? He just moved in with his girlfriend. I wonder how that’s going. Hopefully better than it’s going for me.

I work on crafting my reply in case he asks how I’m doing. What is the best way to combine how exciting it is to be in Silicon Valley and the creeping, existential dread that worsens daily? I need to strike the right balance of envy-inducing and mild concern. It’s too hard to concentrate. The only thing my wine-addled brain can think about is my dad implying I should stay with Logan, try to “work through things.” I drain my glass, pour another one. Drinking my feelings is not the wisest choice. But I don’t feel like being wise right now.

My parents divorced when I was five. According to Dad, they had just moved into a new house—a major upgrade from their starter home. Exactly thirty days after we moved, the day he unpacked the very last box, Mom served him with divorce papers, and he was gone the next day. She took him to court and won 80% custody of me and my brother and half my dad’s paycheck. Dad wanted to take two things from the house—the piano his father had given him and his toolbox. My mom gave him the piano and, after much argument, the toolbox. She made sure to take all of the tools out first, though.

Dad moved in with his parents an hour away, hauling ass to pick us up for dinner at six o’clock on Mondays and every other Wednesday, lest he face the wrath of Mom for being tardy. My brother, Brian, and I were passed back and forth every other weekend, every holiday, every celebration. Christmases were disjointed events, ending at exactly noon at one house to be shuttled over to the other. Dad never complained about paying for half of a house he never got to live in. Not a peep of disappointment when Brian and I refused to get ice cream with him one night, ten and eleven years old, just wanting to play our new game instead.

According to my mother, her ex-husband and ex-mother-in-law were evil devils. They abused her, told us lies about her. She had been trying to leave my dad for years, but he thwarted her attempts so that he could control her. My dad didn’t want any custody of us—she had to fight to get him to see us twice a week. He also didn’t want to pay child support, would rather she struggle to house and clothe us on her teacher’s salary.

She reminded us of these facts every time we were picked up and dropped off, every time he called the house, every time there was a father figure on television. What are impressionable kids supposed to do? I slowly began to resent my dad for hurting my poor mommy so much. Sure, he was nice to me, but so was my bully brother in front of adults. My dad’s mom, Grandma Judy, for sure was less merciful at times —she once called Child Protective Services when she learned Mom would leave me at home alone for hours (I was ten, not like I was going to burn the house down). And besides, why would my mom lie?

Right before our annual spring break trip with my dad’s family, when I was thirteen and in my last year in middle school, Mom called us down to the basement where she was often found smoking and grading papers. Normally, my brother and I would be asleep, but were up late packing to leave for Florida the next day. Nighttime was Mom’s time to relax, have a beer. Or six. We rarely saw her like this, loud and happy.

She gestured around the garage. “Sit, sit. Talk to your old mama.”

We batted the smoke away from our faces, confused.

“We need to talk about your bodies,” she said, a long and unnatural exaggeration on bodies.

Brian, always the bolder of us, perked up. “What, like, sex?”

Mom laughed, “Yes. Have you had sex?”

My mouth went dry, hackles raised.

“Uh, what—”

Brian interrupted me, “No I haven’t had sex, but Melanie Rose tried to get me to have a threesome with her and her friend Britney in the bathroom. I said no because I’m not ready.”

Brian was just one grade ahead of me, in ninth grade. Is this what high school is like? (Also, what the fuck?)

“That’s good, that’s good,” Mom replied, her head nodding along to some internal beat. “I had sex too soon, had to get an abortion. Only seventeen years old.”

She wet her lips. “Do you masturbate? Sierra?”

I coughed, trying to clear my throat. I was absolutely not about to tell my family that sure, I masturbate, love me a good bathtub. Instead, I stared blankly at her.

“What? It’s normal. Healthy.” Her eyes were glassy, red, scary.

“I’m going to go finish packing,” I whispered.

I closed the garage door behind me, my heart racing as I heard my brother’s muffled voice saying something about porn.

The next day, after a six-hour drive to St. Augustine, I walked along the beach with my dad. “Is Mom an alcoholic?” I asked, as nonchalantly as a freaked-out thirteen-year-old could.

He stopped abruptly and gently placed his hands on my shoulders. “I’m sorry Sierra, that you had to find out this way,” he said, his voice thick. “Yes, she is. What happened?”

I told him about the previous night, gory details included. I told him about the never-ending supply of beer in the fridge, a clumsy fall down the stairs, helping her out of a vomit-splattered shirt. Tears fell from both of our eyes. We spent the rest of the trip talking about my mom. Dad has suspected she has borderline personality disorder for years and that she divorced him because he wanted her to get alcohol treatment. He told me that he fought for joint custody, split down the middle, but couldn’t afford the caliber of lawyer she could.

I should have been mad at her. But I wasn’t. I was mad at him. How could he have hidden this from me?

* * *

My wine glass is empty now.

A light flips on upstairs. Logan getting ready for bed, or checking Tinder. I finally tiptoe inside, filling my glass with water once, twice. The phone call with Dad still has me reeling. I know what he was saying. He would have stayed with my mom forever, even after experiencing how crazy she was back then and how crazy she still is. Mom got sober a few years ago when I was sixteen. Nothing really changed. Whatever shit she had going on, minus the alcoholism, is still there. The paranoia, the attention-seeking behavior, the horrific depression, all make her tough to be around. I thought our relationship would get better, but it hasn’t.

Is Logan worse than my mom? Maybe I am just spoiled, expecting too much from others. It’s not like I am perfect.

* * *

Perhaps it isn’t a good idea to make any big decisions right now, knee deep in wine and emotions. Perhaps it is an even worse idea to look up my high school boyfriend, the drug addict, on Facebook.

He hasn’t posted a new picture in a while, but he still has the floppy brown hair and the same stubble that would rub my chin raw when we kissed. I wonder if he still drinks a lot.

Kurt was never afraid of my mom. He once told her to get back on her meds, right to her face. He was a bad boy, and not in the fun, leather jacket wearing kind of way. I only grew the spine to leave him after he lost his third job in a month because he would rather drink vodka at nine in the morning while I paid his bills.

But still, I had to admire how he stood up to her. I had crafted my survival strategy carefully: Avoid conflict at all cost. Don’t bring up past transgressions. Never point out aberrant behavior. And this punk just goes and breaks all my rules. He stood up to my mom’s harsh criticism. He called her out when she was rude. And it worked! She would back down every time. Beautiful.

It’s funny how much easier it is to deal with Dad, compared to dealing with Mom. Just don’t talk about money. He lost his department store sales job a few years ago, and while I don’t care that he can’t afford a birthday present for me, I know he feels bad.

I chug another glass of water and make up the couch, needing a night alone but unwilling to sleep on that damn air mattress. The cats squeeze in with me. My thoughts swirl around. I think about adding Don’t talk to Dad about relationships to my list.

I am about to fall asleep when my phone lights up. I see Mom’s name first, then her message: I booked a trip to come out in 2 weeks. Can’t wait to see you.

Just before I drift off, the perfect reply comes to me. SOS.

4

The day before Mom is set to arrive, I pace around the house, pausing at the window every few laps, until Logan wraps his hand around my arm gently and directs me into a chair. He’s heard enough stories about her to know that I’m incredibly anxious about the upcoming week, but I still feel the need to lay out a game plan.

“So, the first thing is, try not to be shocked by the way she dresses.” I’ve forgotten to warn friends in the past, making for some awkward first meetings.

Logan squints. “Well, how does she dress?”

The first of many sighs escapes me. “To start, she never wears a bra. And her boobs are, uh, quite large.” Most of the time I’m pretty grateful to have inherited her good looks. There was nothing natural in the breast department to inherit, however. She got breast implants as soon as I stopped breastfeeding.

Logan tries to suppress a grin and fails. “Okay, what else?”

“She talks a lot. Like, a lot. And only about herself. So don’t be mad if she doesn’t ask you about yourself or anything. She hardly even asks about her own kids.”

“Anything else?” Logan says, reaching across the table to take my hand.

I could go on all day, but I shake my head.

He smiles and squeezes my hand. “It will be okay. It’s only a week. We will survive.”

I take a deep breath. I hope he’s right.

* * *

I shift my weight from one foot to another, staring at the steady stream of people exiting the airport. Logan is back home, letting me and my mom have some mother-daughter time. Her plane landed almost an hour ago but… no Mom.

Her arrival is like a movie scene, except instead of the crowd parting to reveal the beautiful young girl post-makeover, there’s a middle-aged mother who didn’t get enough attention growing up. Her low-slung denim shorts are paired with heeled flip flops and a white tube top, her perennially hard nipples staring directly at me.

“Mom!” I shout, giving a small wave.

She totters over to me and hands me one of her three backpacks. The woman just can’t go anywhere with a normal amount of stuff. “Happy early birthday, sweetie.”

“Thank you. What took so long?”

She leans in, hugs me. “I had to fix my hair after the flight, you know, and there was this woman in the bathroom whose zipper broke, so we were trying to fix it…”

I pick up another of her bags and start our slow walk to the car.

“…And by the time we found someone with Vaseline to grease it up, someone had taken my curling iron! So then I had to chase down maintenance and—”

I sling my arm out to prevent her from stepping directly into the path of an incoming bus. She returns their honk with a middle finger.

Taking my opportunity, I interrupt: “We had a dinner reservation but we missed it. If you are hungry, we can just go somewhere nearby once we get you settled.”

She waves me off. “I kept my almonds from the flight, so whatever you want to do is fine.”

Mom requires so much attention. And management. Part of me thinks the reason I don’t want kids is because I did so much parenting when I was growing up and I don’t really want to do it again. I’ve never found anyone who can relate. That would be nice. Someone to tell me I’m not the world’s worst daughter.

Forty-five minutes later, the introductions between my mother and my boyfriend are quick. Not much more than an awkward hug. Logan’s eyes bounce from Mom’s chest to mine, as if he has never heard of plastic surgery.

Mom pulls up her tube top. “Can I borrow a coat or something? I didn’t know it would be so cold here! I thought it was warm all the time.”

I’ve already got my biggest hoodie for her. There’s nothing useful in the three bags she brought. “First rule of California is to bring a light jacket with you everywhere.” I grab a denim jacket for myself.

Look at me – three weeks in and I’m a local. Mom tousles my hair and laughs. I flatten it back down and we pile into Logan’s car, me in the front and Mom in the back.

No seat belt, Mom sticks her head between the front seats and looks around. “Wow. Fancy car.”

Logan drives a three year old Altima. Who is she trying to fool?

Logan looks pleased, a smile blooming across his face. “Oh yeah, thanks. Got her as a graduation gift from my parents.”

Mom gives a mock gasp. “Wooowee. Boy, I’d like me to have some rich in-laws. Sierra, if you don’t marry him, I will.” She laughs.

The flirting continues through dinner. At one point, Mom runs her fingers through Logan’s hair and calls him sexy. Tells me I am “so lucky.”

So cringy.

My upper lip moves higher and higher up my face. With my high school boyfriend Kurt, it was very much a parent-child relationship. She helped him apply to colleges, cooked dinner for us, even bailed him out of jail after his first DUI. Kurt snuck her half-smoked cigarette butts and smoked them in the parking lot, helped her carry in groceries. He spoke to her in the way you might talk to your friend’s new boyfriend—direct, without the shadow of romance coloring every interaction. Sometimes even bickering like they were siblings.

But this feels different, a mating ritual tinged with jealousy. My mom has always been known to happily reciprocate any attention received from an attractive man, a trait I shamefully inherited and practiced, until I once kissed a married man unknowingly in front of his wife. But, to flirt back with my boyfriend? In front of me? As shitty as she can be, I don’t truly believe she has the balls to steal my boyfriend, twenty nine years her junior, from right under my nose.

Logan, however, doesn’t deserve that level of trust.

* * *

Back home, Logan takes a shower before bed. The only bathroom with a shower is on the second floor, in the hallway between the two bedrooms. It’s small, not enough room for two adults to brush their teeth together. I lean against the door frame of the guest room, waiting my turn. Mom is trying to piece together a warmer outfit for tomorrow. She’s going up to San Francisco while we work, to do some sightseeing. The creaky old shower shuts off, one of the many charms this $3,500 rental has to offer.

Suddenly, a topless Logan swathed in a towel leans across me. He’s dripping wet. “It was so nice to meet you, Debbie. Hope you sleep well.” He grins.

I shove him hastily back into the hallway, my hands slipping on his slick arms. “What are you doing?” I ask through gritted teeth.

I march him by the arm back into our room, shouting over my shoulder, “Mom, you can shower next. Goodnight.”

I shut the bedroom door behind me.

Logan pulls me into him, his hands on my ass. “Babe,” he starts, leaning back to look into my eyes, as if this will be enough to persuade me to agree with whatever comes out of his mouth next. “I think your mom wants to fuck me.”

I wiggle out of his grasp. “No.” I just want to go to bed. I’m tired from playing defense against these two horny assholes all day.

“Come on, Sierra, just let me try! You promised we could try opening up.”

“No,” I say. Please lord, don’t do this to me. Just let me die. “She won’t fuck you, are you crazy?” I’m like, ninety percent sure she won’t fuck him. Eighty-five percent? Goddammit.

He steps closer to me, his hands stroking my hair. “Okay, then, let me try. I can go back in the bathroom, drop my towel, pretend I thought it was you showering.” His hands snake up the back of my neck and tighten around my hair for a brief moment, then go back to their gentle touch.

I close my eyes and rest my forehead against his chest. His heart beat is slow and steady, not even the slightest bothered by his proposition. My heart beats against my chest, frantic, begging for attention. I cross my arms, tuck my shaking hands under my elbows. “Logan, no.” My voice is barely a whisper.

His smile finally drops as he turns away, pulling on a t- shirt and boxers. He leans over, drying his hair with the towel, turning to peek at me.

“Then you’ll make it up to me by letting me pick someone from Tinder?”

I bite my lower lip between my teeth. Three months after our first date, Logan asked me the one question that I swore I’d never answer, the good little feminist I am. How many people have you slept with? There’s no correct answer to this. If I tell him, I’m a slut. If I don’t tell him, he will obviously assume I’m a slut.

In the end, I caved and told him something close enough to reality. I was quite proud of myself until he told me to name them all—in order—and I couldn’t come up with two names. He should have been impressed that I remembered the other twenty-seven.

Logan had been with two women before me – both long term girlfriends. His logic is, if I had sex with so many people that I forgot some names, clearly sex isn’t important to me, and he should be able to experience casual sex and different flavors too. So, his relentless begging and pleading eventually wore me down, and I agreed to take baby steps to a (one-sided) open relationship with the promise that his beautiful, kind heart would always remain mine.

Naturally, I cave. “Fine. You can get on Tinder. But I can veto,” I say, as he hugs me, pulling me down onto the bed.

Cuddling leads to more.

I think he is being loud on purpose.

* * *

For my birthday, I’m taking Mom to the aquarium. Logan couldn’t get off work (must suck to be so important), so the two of us drive down to Monterey. As we wait in line to enter the quaint building nestled into the coastline—such a boujee California staple— Mom reaches for her wallet.

I bring my hand up to stop her. “No, no. My treat. Since you came all this way.”

“No, silly goose, it’s your birthday.” Mom playfully slaps my hand away.

A twinge passes through me. I feel like a spoiled brat, letting her pay for me, when she’s the one who could use the help. She’s a single mother on a teacher’s salary. I can’t help but feel personally responsible for why she lives paycheck to paycheck, paying down her credit card only to max it out again the next day. Me and Brian drained everything from her. The least I could do is pay for her entrance fee.

I acquiesce and instead pay for our just-as-expensive lunch of pizza and tough chicken tenders. We lean over the stingray pool, letting our hands graze the cool water, hoping to be noticed by a baby ray.

I turn to her, wiping my icy hand on my jeans. “How do you like Logan?” My tone is light, airy, inconsequential. No big deal. Are you trying to sleep with my boyfriend? Did you notice he’s crazy? I don’t even know why I ask. I can’t remember a single time I went to her for some motherly love or some sage advice or even just a modicum of sympathy and left feeling satisfied.

A sting ray makes a beeline for her outstretched hand, diverting at the last second. “Damn. Logan? He seems wonderful. The way he looks at you is so sweet.” She stretches her hand out, elbow deep in the frigid water.

“You think so? Sometimes I feel like we’re not meant for each other,” I try, also elbow deep.

She looks up at me. “Well, you better decide what you want. You don’t want to end up like me, alone. I’d give anything for someone to look at me like that,” she spits out, earning us a few glances from nearby families.

She doesn’t notice. “I mean, look at what I put up with for years, your dad never loved me. And then Chris, he’s out there cheating on me every weekend, acting like I’m too stupid to notice.”

Chris is her on-again-off-again boyfriend who, depending on the season, is a saint who puts up with her, or the devil incarnate who only cares about himself.

“Yeah, but…”

A sting ray glides directly underneath Mom’s hand, its silky wings flapping against her wrist.

Yanking her hand back in excitement, she squeals, “I got one!” She pulls me closer to the pool, placing my hand in the water.

I’m not as lucky, though. I don’t get any attention from either of them.

5

The next few weeks blur together. Between official work happy hours, unofficial work happy hours, day trips to restaurants I found on some blogger’s Top Ten of SF list, and shopping for our new home, my mood lightens and Logan calms down. It doesn’t appear that he’s getting many bites on Tinder; he’s shown me two potential hookups, both of which I politely pointed out were catfish, based on their highly suspicious (but beautiful) pictures and the sparse bios. He seems emboldened by the digital attention but won’t leave my side when we are in bars. I post a picture on Instagram of us in a bar, taken graciously by Nadine (“Let me take a picture, you both look glowing in this light”).

I scroll up and down my Instagram profile. It’s a wall of wide-grin selfies, rose bushes encountered on my daily lunch walks with my new work friends, cliffs overlooking the beach, generic good life stuff. I have to give myself credit: California is really starting to turn around for me.

The last time I was this happy I was twenty-three, finally making an okay salary, and had just figured out that with a little makeup and a short dress, men were actually interested in talking to me. The money and the attention all went to my head. I was invincible, trying things I had never tried before (mainly one night stands) and not taking life so seriously. My good fortune lasted six months before I had one too many drinks at a party (trying too hard to impress a guy who wasn’t even that cute) and ended up in jail overnight with a DUI charge, ten thousand dollars in fines, and enough community service to humble me for the rest of my life.

My dad was the one who bailed me out of jail and talked some sense into me – “Sierra, you made a mistake and that’s okay. But if you let it derail your whole life, well, that’s not okay.”

From then on, I swore I’d be vigilant, only letting good things into my life, doing whatever I could to preserve my happiness.

And nothing has made me happier than seeing a comment pop up on my photo: I just moved here too!

Alexis and I were best friends in a middle school slumber-party-every-weekend type of way, until we grew apart in tenth grade, after my dumbass was busted smoking pot in the bathroom at school in—yes—another attempt to impress somebody.

I am not the fastest learner.

After our friend-break-up—less dramatic than it sounds—I struggled to find someone like Alexis. One year for Halloween, we taped ourselves together in a three-legged contraption and rolled around in leaves, calling ourselves “nature.” We took pillows and blankets outside and slept in the back of Mom’s truck in the middle of a parking lot, oblivious to stares from passersby. I could be myself around Alexis with no judgment.

When she DMs me to suggest we meet up for dinner the next night, I agree immediately.

I’m early, of course, so I shuffle around the sidewalk in front of the sushi bar, first-date jitters tingling across my scalp. I’m nervous since, based on Alexis’s Insta, she has all her shit together. Then there’s me, still quite embarrassed about my whole situation. I know I need to make some major changes, but I’m so afraid to.

A dark blue SUV pulls up and I see a purple Doc Marten step down onto the asphalt. I know.

“Alexis!” I call, too excited to remember I had planned to act cool.

She calls back, “Sierra!” Although she doesn’t sound like she’s a six-year-old who has just witnessed Santa’s arrival, like I do.

I want to spin her around and observe her, replace the high schooler in my mind with this adult version of my best friend. Her hair is still strawberry blonde, halfway down her back. Her flowery shirt was probably thrifted straight from Stevie Nicks’ closet. I read once that you can’t just Botox your age away—that, even without wrinkles, your bone structure and face will always betray your age. In the same way, I know this woman. She looks exactly the same as she did ten years ago.

“You look the same,” she says, her hand reaching out to touch the rose tattooed on the inside of my wrist.

I want to hug her. Instead, I say, “Ready to go inside?”

We make small talk about the California weather and how nice it is until our server comes over to our table. I order a Sapporo and edamame to start.

“You know I didn’t ever have sushi until I was like, twenty-three?” I pop a salty pod into my mouth.

She fake-gasps. “What, you weren’t a big fan of the one sushi restaurant in Hiram?”

She gets it. We grew up next to a town called Hiram which has, you guessed it, one sushi restaurant. There is a movie theater and a Chili’s, though.

Alexis picks up an edamame pod from the bowl in front of me. “So, why did you move out here? We came for my boyfriend’s job—his boss basically begged him to come out here to lead a new team. You remember Seth, right?”

I shake my head, trying to remember if I’m supposed to know Seth. “Is he your college boyfriend?”

“We have been together eight years. We started dating when I was a senior in high school.”

Wow. A small (okay, big) part of me is so jealous. I literally cannot imagine.

Alexis smiles and raises an eyebrow. “Whatever happened to that guy you were with in high school, Kurt? I barely remember, didn’t y’all stay together for a long time?”

“Jesus. Kurt. I stayed with him for far too long. He was such a hot mess, drinking, drugs, other women, other men… Sooo… Yeah.”

Alexis does not look surprised. “But you are dating someone now, right? I saw your pictures. Did you move out here to be with him?”

The server interrupts (thank God) to bring us our sushi rolls.

I take a breath. “Yeah. His name is Logan. We actually met in Atlanta, but he finished his computer science degree and all of those jobs are here so here we are.” I want to tell her so badly that I want out. It would be amazing to take her apartment hunting with me. I did a few searches earlier today. Just in case.

“And he’s a good dude?”

Dang Alexis. Wasting no time cutting to the quick. Does she know that answer is complicated? I take my time on a bite of spicy salmon. “Uh, yeah, he’s a good dude. I’m glad to be out of Georgia too, though. Do you miss it?”

“Not really. I mean, I miss my friends, and the art scene, but Seth has an amazing job and we love the legal weed.”

Now it’s my turn to fake shock. “Alexis smoking weed? Who are you?”

Alexis was a straight-edge church girl back when we were fourteen. I also said I’d never drink alcohol, so clearly, I am aware people can change, but wow.

“Oh yeah,” she says. “I forget you and I stopped hanging out when I was still deep in the church. I guess I consider myself an atheist now and yeah, we smoke probably every day. Don’t you smoke still?”

“Not since I was expelled. I was traumatized.” The same way the DUI traumatized me and has prohibited me from driving after even just one drink.

Not once. Jail is terrifying. But alcohol’s legal status means I’ve never stopped drinking. I drain the rest of my beer. “What’s this about the art scene?”

Based on her Instagram photos, I already know she is a sculptor, but I would really love to change the topic.

“Oh, I mean, Atlanta has so many galleries and artists and meetups and San Jose is really lacking. So now I mostly create for myself at home, but I do miss having the community aspect. I had to get a part-time job for spending money. It was a lot easier for me back in Georgia.”

I’m absolutely captivated by Alexis. Something about talking with her just feels so real. Any awkwardness I felt is long gone. We talk about everything and anything. I feel like I’m home.

We split ways, our cheeks sore from laughing, with promises to hang out again soon.

Logan greets me at the door. “Did you have fun?”

“I did. We should hang out, the four of us, soon.”

Logan smiles. “Sure, babe.”

He’s not good at hiding his jealousy. In the months we’ve been here, I’ve made several friends, and brought Logan to all my work events. He hasn’t made any friends yet.

We spend the rest of the night together, Logan watching chess tutorials on TV, me texting my friends, trying to make plans to go bowling. I feel so effervescent, I text my brother Brian, back in Georgia, and ask how things with the girlfriend are. He calls me, not one for texting.

“Hey. I know it’s late, just wanted to say hi, ask how things with Ana were going.”

Logan gives me a side eye and I head into the kitchen.

“Things are good, it’s hard to get used to someone else always being in your space, you know?”

Brian lived with our dad and grandparents until two years ago. He moved into a cheap apartment with his work buddy, and based on his stories, they really lived it up in their bachelor pad. They didn’t buy a vacuum cleaner until nine months into their lease.

“What’s been the hardest part?”

“She turns the air conditioner down so low. How can she stand these utility bills?”

I laugh. “I’m glad Ana is treating you to the finer things in life. I would have been so surprised if she tolerated your ‘turn the fan on and drape a wet rag over your head’ method.”

“Yeah, yeah. How about you, how’s Cali? You have a double whammy, new state and new dude.”

I sink further into the kitchen. “It’s great. I like my job, I made some friends, so, yeah, I’d say I’m pretty good.” I glance up to confirm Logan is still entranced by the TV (which, by the way, is a five-thousand-dollar behemoth Logan bought with his first paycheck. I pay for the Netflix subscription).

Brian presses: “And Logan? He’s good to you?”

“Uh, yep. All good there. Or at least like, seventy-five percent. But who’s complaining? It’s great out here.”

The sound from the living room stops.

“All right, well, I’ll let you go, nice to hear from you dude,” I say as quickly as possible, hanging up as Logan enters the kitchen.

I hold my breath as Logan opens the fridge and pulls out a beer. He offers me one.

I shake my head. “Ah, I better get to bed. I have my first big presentation tomorrow after lunch, gotta be well rested.”

And pumped full of Klonopin, but I digress. Mom keeps me stocked up on the anti-anxiety med for the days I am too anxious to function or when I have to speak in front of tons of people. I kiss Logan goodnight, waiting for the sounds of the chess master to resume before creeping up to our bedroom.

* * *

I skip the lunch walk with the crew to prepare for my presentation. Even with two milligrams of Klonopin and an hour of practice, the bubble in my stomach refuses to settle. I send a message to Logan: im so nervous.

His reply is instant. Who were u talking to last night?

I do not have time for this. I put my phone back in my pocket and click back to the beginning of my presentation, muttering through my bullet points. I make it halfway before the incessant buzzing begins.

Answer me please.

I fire off a reply. my brother Brian, remember him? Gotta prep for mtg. love you.

Go ask Brian for support then.

Here come the waterworks.

Five minutes left. I lick my thumb, try to rub off the mascara that’s smeared. What’s the trick to breathing so that you look like a normal person again? I inhale as long as I can. I let it out in a big sigh.

The presentation goes fine. Valerie is next to me, fielding the tough questions, letting me take the softballs. She gives me a high five afterwards.

“Could you tell I was nervous?” I ask her.

“Not at all.”

Her smile is contagious. I don’t even care that she’s lying to me.

* * *

I come home to Logan swiping furiously, presumably scouring Tinder for his fantasy big-tit blonde, the exact opposite of me. Back when we first started dating, still in the cutesy What’s your type? phase, he described a tall model with long blonde hair and at least a D cup, no tattoos, who loves video games. Yeah.

“So, what did you tell Brian about me?” he asks without looking up.

Guess the Honey, I’m Home! times are over.

I kick my shoes off and curl up next to him on the couch. “Nothing, really.”

“What exactly did you say?” he asks.

Still hasn’t looked at me.

I scratch my head. “I said everything was great out here, that I’m good.” I reach over and trace the outline of his ear. “And you know you’re the main reason why I’m good.”

He finally breaks eye contact with his phone. I beam at him, give him a kiss.

He smiles back and puts his phone down on the sofa, face down. “So let me see your phone.”

“Are you serious?” I arch an eyebrow, daring him to press the issue.

He sticks his hand out, palm up, ready to receive.

Without breaking eye contact, I lay my phone in his hand. “Let me know if you find anything good.” I stand up. I really deserve recognition for this performance.

I sip a glass of water, while watching Logan thumb through my phone. I’ve already deleted the message threads from anyone I’ve ever even thought about sleeping with, any message about him that isn’t absolutely resoundingly positive, and my Google searches last week for studio apartments in the area.

My efforts prove fruitful as Logan hands my phone back to me, wordless.

I send a message to Alexis. Game night this weekend?

I follow with another, which I delete after sending.

I can’t spend another weekend alone with him.

* * *

Alexis and her boyfriend Seth rent a two-bedroom house in San Jose with a backyard for their dog Bobo and a studio for Alexis’s ceramic work. Their house is filled with real, adult furniture. Seth’s a big dude, with a shiny bald head and a well-maintained beard.

They usher us into their home, far homier than our townhome is, incense filling the air with a sweet, smoky fragrance, paintings and photos hung on the walls. Alexis mixes us Moscow Mules in real copper cups. I would have been happy with vodka in a plastic cup, but Logan will be more malleable if he’s catered to.

After a round of Space Invaders, I grab our cups to make refills while Seth pulls out a blunt from a tin box from below the coffee table.

Logan scurries over to me as I squeeze a lime. “Are they going to smoke in here?”

I swirl the drinks with a straw. “Yeah, it’s their house.” I pass him a drink.

“Sierra.” His tone is serious. “Can I smoke too?”

I squint at him and shrug. What, suddenly my opinion is important to him? Hell, maybe some weed will help him calm down.

“Hey Seth,” I call to the living room. “Would you mind sharing with Logan?”

“Come on down man, let’s fire it up.” Seth returns.

Logan trots back to the living room. As far as I know, he’s never been high before. He’s in good hands with Seth. Seth is a good guy. I’m totally not jealous of Alexis’s A+ boyfriend.

An hour later, Logan is stoned out of his mind. Any hope of playing another board game is lost. He giggles at everything anyone says. His red eyes find mine. “Sierra, ask me a question,” he says, breathy.

I know what he wants. He wants me to ask him about his fantasies, or his favorite time having sex. But I am drunk and bored of this.

“Uh, ok. Where were you during nine-eleven?” I ask.

Everyone but Logan chuckles – we were all ten years old in 2001. To our surprise, his lip trembles, and he starts crying. What have I done? I had no idea I would unseat some hidden trauma.

He sniffles, his wet, glassy eyes checking to make sure we’re all looking at him. “It was horrible. I’ve never been so scared in my life.” He pauses.

We wait in silence.

“I was so afraid. I was in elementary school, and they sent us home early, saying there had been an attack. I got home and, and…” a sob interrupts him. He blows his nose, takes a deep, shaky breath. “My mom wasn’t home. She wasn’t answering her office phone.”

My eyes widen. I had no idea his mom had been in New York that day. Come to think of it, he stayed with his mom last summer between semesters. And aren’t they from Ohio?

Seth clears his throat. “Was she, you know…?”

Logan looks at Seth. “With her work, she was out of town sometimes. So I didn’t know where she was. I thought she was dead.”

Seth presses, likely as confused as I am. “What was her job?”

Logan closes his eyes, bows his head. “She’s a travel agent in Cincinnati.”

Five seconds pass in silence. Ten seconds. Thirty. Then Alexis, Seth, and I erupt in laughter.

Logan is frowning, his story not getting the reception he wanted. “It was scary,” he croaks.

I cover my mouth to hide my smile. “I thought you were joking. I’m so sorry for laughing,” I say, in between laughs.

Alexis wipes the tears from her eyes. “I thought you were about to tell us this tragic story and give me nightmares.” She’s trying to slow her giggle as she sees his expression. She pivots. “So Logan, do you still talk to anyone from high school? I still can’t believe you two moved out here at the same time we did.”

Logan takes a long swig from his drink. “No, actually. I outgrew them. What was Sierra like back then? Was she into dating around as much as she is now?”

I blink slowly, turning to Alexis. She squints at me, trying to read my face. I shake my head, imperceptibly, once.

She smiles at me, answers to me, not Logan. “No, she only ever had the one boyfriend. She probably just did what most people do after high school and experienced life.”

The look on his face is, without a doubt, worth every insult he hurls at me when we return home.

6

The next day, I restart my apartment hunt. I can’t stop replaying Logan’s behavior in my mind. I just don’t feel any affection for him anymore. Three months into my brand new life in California and it’s already off the rails. My savings are still depleted. Even with Logan paying for big ticket items like our couch and TV, my salary doesn’t go nearly as far as I assumed it would. If I time it right, I can leave right before rent is due so I’m not paying double rent. For the deposit, I only need a few hundred dollars. I stop offering to pay for dinner when I’m with Logan. I finally let Valerie buy me a drink. I have no one to ask for help, but I’ll be damned if that’s what keeps me in this facade of a relationship. Being around Alexis and Seth, really seeing what normal couples are like at home, seals the deal for me. Maybe it’s because I feel more like Alexis than my shiny new California friends. Maybe it’s because it’s harder for me to hide what a dirtbag Logan is from her.

But I’m fucking tired of him.

Yeah, yeah, took me long enough. Deep down inside, I believe I stick around for these insecure, manipulative jerks because I’m scared. I’m scared to be lonely; I’m scared no one else will ever love me; I’m scared that I don’t deserve any better. I know, it’s so bad. But wasn’t I just talking about how I only want to let good things into my life now? Well lookie here, look how many great people I’ve met. Look how much fun I have. At this point, the only positive thing about Logan is that he got my ass out of Georgia. I’m not even mad that I moved across the country for this loser. I’m here now, and I want to make it worth it.

I don’t tell anyone about my plan, afraid someone will talk me out of it or that somehow Logan will overhear me. Sometimes I wonder if he’s hacked my email, even though he was the one to help me set up two factor authentication and a stronger password than Midnight100, so I use my work email address. Alexis seems suspicious of me, clearly unable to marry her memory of a smart girl with this stupid woman in front of her.

Mom never asks how I’m doing, so, no problem hiding things from her.

Dad calls more and more often, usually drunk. I’ve started answering every other call, but tonight I need someone to talk to. He answers on the first ring, like he’s waiting for me.

“Hey Sierra.”

The disappointment in his voice tugs at my heart. I don’t mean to let him down. “Hey Dad.”

“Well, what’s up?” He sounds better today.

I wrap a blanket around myself on the couch. Logan is working late. “Not much, I just feel a little homesick, so I thought I’d call you.”

He pauses. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is that why you’ve been avoiding my calls?”

Right to the chase. Okay.

“No, I—”

What do I say here? Anything would be better than the truth. But he deserves honesty from me. “It’s just been a little weird to talk to you sometimes. Like you’ve been drinking too much or something. It makes me a little sad.”

I hear ice cubes, a gulp. Water? Bourbon? Bleach?

“To be honest, I have been drinking too much. It’s so depressing here.” He chokes up. “Grandma Judy and Grandpa are getting so old, they forget things, and have to repeat themselves constantly. I miss having someone to talk to. I wish you would call me more.”

My eyes are burning. “I’m sorry Dad.”

He sniffles. “I know this is why you left, and I don’t blame you, I hope it helps and I’m glad you left, it’s just so damn hard without you.”

I used to eat dinner with my dad and his parents once a week, often staying the night so we could drink vodka margaritas and play cards. When one of our shows was on, I’d go over and watch the latest episode with him. Dad would take me on a motorcycle ride to Sonic, buy me a slushie, shoot the shit.

And I just left him. Alone.

My brother wasn’t filling in for me, having been at odds with Dad for the past, I don’t know, ten years. The logical side of me knows that I’m not responsible for my parents, but it doesn’t make me ache any less.

“I’ll be back to visit soon, Dad. I just got to save up some,” I tell him.

“Call me more. Please. Do it for your old man.”

“I will.”

We say our goodbyes. Now I’m homesick and sad.

* * *

I answer all of his calls now. I still haven’t told him that I’m planning to secretly move out… not that he’d remember. He only remembers half of our conversations now. You’d think my years of experience dealing with my depressive mother would have prepared me for dealing with a depressive father. But nothing in life has prepared me for the loneliness, the desperation, the hopelessness, of my father. Once again I am the doctor, the parent, and once again, I cannot handle the pressure.

And so I just live with it. I tell no one, not even Alexis, who I now text every day. I long ago mastered the art of spinning the pain into humor—screenshotting the outrageous texts my mom sends me and sending them to friends, turning any story into Ha ha, so crazy! instead of How sad, are you okay? But my dad’s rapid decline feels more like a reflection of my abandonment, not an independent, unrelated-to-me problem. I suffer in silence, lest someone judge me for my failures.

But as quickly as it came on, suddenly he’s calling to tell me he hasn’t had a drink in three days.

Busy eating lunch one day with Valerie and Nadine, my dad calls and leaves a voicemail. He’s not accustomed to me actually eating lunch with people, no longer eating sad leftovers alone in an empty conference room, with plenty of time for personal phone calls. I listen immediately, his short message a butchered attempt at Spanish, an inside joke from my high school days. Donde esta tu? Llamame, por favor. Adios amigo.

I smile, glad his sense of humor is back.

Nadine convinces me to stay late today so we can grab dinner. I shoot Logan a text, won’t be home for dinner, eat without me, then silence my phone in preparation for the shitstorm I will eventually receive.

After work, we put our names on the list for ramen, then go for a walk up and down the block to kill time.

“I think our esteemed colleague in HR might be dating one of the finance guys,” Nadine announces out of the blue.

“What? How do you know?”

She gives me the most coquettish smile. “I can never reveal my secrets.”

I burst out laughing. She’s too much. I’m feeling ballsy tonight. “How about you tell me a secret and I’ll tell you one of mine?”

There’s no one in the world this would work on except for Nadine.

She stops, considering my offer. She grins. Got her.

“Okay, deal. I’ll go first. I only have sex on Saturdays.”

I am howling. “Why? Your husband doesn’t mind?”

“Well, after work I am too tired. Especially if we go out on Friday, no way anything will happen! And then Sunday is the day for resting and preparing for next week, so it is too busy. So, Saturday. It’s perfect. Now, you.”

My giggles end. What can I tell her? I don’t have any fun or cute secrets like she does. Hmm. “I’m thinking of breaking up with Logan.” Oh my, we are ballsy tonight. “Please, don’t tell him.” I press a hand to my mouth.

Her phone chimes. Our table is ready.

“Want to tell more at dinner?” she asks, eyebrow cocked.

Now she’s got me.

Nadine walks me to the train station after dinner. She leans in for a surprisingly matronly hug. “Don’t be afraid, Sierra. You really can do much better than him.” She gives me a wink.

That’s the problem, Nadine. I don’t know if I can. The incoming train saves me from my awkward reply. I can remain in Nadine’s high esteem for at least another day.

“How was dinner?” Logan faces away from his chess tutorial videos, which may be the most boring utilization of a fancy TV ever conceived. His voice is flat.

Yes, Logan, I notice you’re pouting. “Great. Nice to have some girl time. What did you do for dinner?” I hold my breath, hoping my deflection works.

“I haven’t eaten, I was waiting on you.”

I roll my eyes. It’s not like I have ever cooked for him. This sounds like some bullshit from a How to spot a big whiny baby pamphlet—Section One: Does he get pissy when you go out for a girls’ night once a month? I slide my shoes off and sit as far away as I can from him on the couch. “I texted you to let you know. It’s almost nine, you should eat something.” I pull my phone out, seeing for the first time the twelve messages he sent me. I delete them without reading.

“Sierra,” he whines. “That’s not fair. You can go to dinner with someone else, but you won’t let me go out on a date with someone?”

Blood rushes to my face. “Yes, Logan, because having dinner with someone I work with, whose pants I’m not trying to get into, is exactly the same as you meeting up with some skank.”

I head toward the stairs, to get ready for bed, but pause on the bottom step. I spin around to face him. “But, let’s be honest, it’s not like anyone’s even wanted to go out with you.”

The fight lasts almost an hour. Fingers are pointed, voices are raised, egos are bruised. I concede after the third “whore” is fired. I run up the stairs, Midnight and Biscuit sprinting up the stairs beside me.

I snuggle down next to them in bed, scrolling through my bank account to check on my deposit progress. After next payday, I’ll be set. I dim the lamp and pick up my book. Nothing like reading about the problems of other people to distract me from my own.

My phone lights up next to me. My aunt is calling. It’s, what, midnight back home? I let it go to voicemail, avoiding either a butt dial or a drunk call.

My phone rings again. I answer. “Hello?”

“Hey, are you home?” Aunt Cindy asks.

“Yeah, bout to get into bed.” Why is she asking this? I hope she isn’t here. I do not have the mental energy to host a guest right now. And why are there so many voices in the background?

“Sierra, I need to tell you something.” Her attempt to hold her voice steady almost works. “Sierra, something terrible happened.”

My pulse quickens and moves into my neck.

“Your father passed away tonight.”

An unearthly scream, ripping through my body, sends the cats scurrying from the bed.

* * *

My flight lands in Atlanta eight hours later. I’m running on an hour of sleep and too many milligrams of Klonopin. The benzos quiet the pain, suppress the constant urge to scream, but do nothing to stop the free fall of tears and snot down my face. The middle-aged couple sharing the row with me moved to empty seats as soon as we reached cruising altitude.

I’ve never known anyone that’s died. My grandparents are all still alive. My high school had a few kids overdose but I only knew them peripherally. But now my dad is gone.

Forever.

It hurts. My chest hurts. I keep Googling symptoms of heart attack. I can’t stop crying. There’s nothing but echoes of ‘he’s gone, he’s gone’ ping-ponging around my brain and every time I think about it, about my dad being dead forever, it feels like the very first time.

I can’t grasp that I can never talk to him again. Ever.

Mom is waiting for me in the McDonald’s just outside of baggage claim. She rips off chunks of a hot, buttery biscuit and feeds me, the tenderness of this rare motherly affection making me sob even harder. Cindy pulls up thirty minutes later in her SUV. We load my suitcase silently into the trunk before I give Mom one final hug. I watch her wipe her eyes, after she has been holding it all in while in front of me, as I am once again swept away by my dad’s side of the family. There’s never been enough room for the two halves of me to coexist peacefully, and now that ship has sailed forever.

Cindy hands me a tissue from the center console. “How are you? Is your boyfriend coming?”

I can’t tell how she feels. Her voice is calm, measured, and the drugs slow my brain. I check my phone to see if Logan has texted. “He’s going to try to fly out for the funeral. He has a lot of work and couldn’t get off,” I admit, embarrassed. I’m glad he’s not here, but I know it looks bad that he’s not here to support me.

We arrive at the funeral home where Grandma Judy is sitting outside in a rocking chair, waiting for me. I envelop her frail frame into my arms, holding on for dear life.

“Sierra,” is all she can get out.

We walk into the funeral home together, her bony hands clutching my arm. We’re led through a corridor, the atmosphere changing from a cozy living room to a sterile hospital. Dad is laying on a metal table, the white sheet covering his body, too bright for the occasion.

I deposit my grandma into a chair and stand before my father. I stroke his hair, his inhuman cheeks. Something is wrong. I look around the room, searching every horizontal surface.

My pulse jumps. My hands are shaking. “Where are his glasses?” I ask, my voice cracking. I spin around. Who are these people near me? I just want to be alone with my dad, for fuck’s sake. I raise my voice and ask again. “Where are his glasses?”

Cindy steps to me, his wire frame glasses in her hand. She presses them gently into my hand, my body trembling so hard I almost drop them.

“Let’s sit down for a second yeah?” She steers me into the chair next to Grandma. The mother and the daughter, inconsolable.

My grandfather, eighty-five-years-old, stands stoically next to my grandmother. Even with his dead son laid out before him, he gives no indication that he’s at all bothered.

He clears his throat. “I had just checked on him a few hours before, he was in bed, sleepin’. Must have been nine or so.” His southern drawl drags out his words, words I don’t want to hear now, or ever. “I went back in to tell him goodnight and he was just layin’ on his side. See that nick on his nose? That’s where his glasses were diggin’ in.”

I can’t stop myself from looking for the small cut.

Grandpa Wally coughs, nasty, loud, before continuing. “His face was purple. I yelled to Judy to call nine one one, they got there within, oh, say five minutes. They pronounced him dead at the hospital, by that time it was past midnight.”

Cindy crosses the room to stand next to her father. “Dad, let’s not talk about this right now,” she says gently.

He shrugs. “They said it could be a stroke or a heart attack. Complications from diabetes.”

Diabetes comes out in three words. Dia. Bee. Tees. I lean forward in my chair to look at him, my face completing the journey before my eyes. I blink, trying to focus. This old man, a shell of his former jovial self, doesn’t remind me of my daddy at all. I doubt I could even get any good stories out of him, about me, about my dad, with the way his memory has declined. I take another Klonopin half.

I can’t stop picturing my dad. Lying there. Dying. Did he call out for help and no one could hear him? Did he know what was happening? The lump in my throat grows until I feel like I’m swallowing softballs. Was he scared? Did he think about me at all?

I sit against the wall until my breathing is relatively normal again.

Grandma Judy picks out an urn, ruby red, with a gold filigree band around the widest point.

The funeral director turns to me. “Do you want to purchase two smaller urns, so that the kids can keep one?”

My brother nods, so I do too. Seventy-five dollars for a miniature urn the size of a pill bottle. I’d spend every penny I have if I could etch him into my brain, bottle his essence, remember every word he’d ever said to me. I’d rob a bank if I could see him for just five minutes.

* * *

The Klonopin carries me through the next few days, putting me to sleep when it’s too much to be awake, drying the tears from my eyes before I dehydrate myself. I sleep in my dad’s room, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars we stuck to the ceiling twenty years ago. I spend the days sitting with my grandma, holding her hand, eating small bites of whatever food is placed in front of me. I sneak off every now and then to go rifle through his drawers, pressing his t-shirts into my face so I can memorize the smell.

Logan arrives the night before the funeral. I drop his bag into the guest room. He’s not welcome to taint my memories. Nor would my conservative grandparents let us share a room, heaven help us.

As I tuck Logan in, his hand grabs my waist. “Can I sneak into your room after everyone’s in bed?” he asks, his voice low.

“No.” I shut the door behind me.

The funeral is horrible. My guts twist inside me so hard I can barely sit up straight. Through my puffy eyelids, I watch stranger after stranger walk up to the podium to say nice things about my dad. I know I’ll regret not speaking at his funeral. I know it would disappoint him. But I hope he will understand.

I also know he would find my brother’s speech hilarious but touching. Brian reads a poem he wrote. He manages to include his favorite drink: Mountain Dew. I cry during the whole thing.

Mom finds me afterwards. She’s wearing a long, bright orange dress with an inappropriate amount of cleavage, garnering plenty of scoffs and stare. I don’t know who invited her.

“Are you okay, baby?” She slips a Ziploc bag with a tissue inside of it into my hand. “In case you’re running out.”

I run my hand over the tissue, feeling the tiny lumps where the pills are. Sweet. More Klonopin for me.

Logan leaves the next morning after providing me exactly zero comfort during this difficult, shitty time. Nobody offers him a ride to the airport.

* * *

Grandma Judy, nursing a coffee mug of wine, finds me in my dad’s room. She sits on the bed. “Take whatever you want home with you.” She picks up one of the band tees, The Who, I’ve been sleeping with and lays it out against the bed. Tracing the outline of the lettering, she sniffles. “He wore this as a teenager. He always kept everything in such good condition.”

“Can I have it?” I ask.

I want to take home every item in this room. I want his cup of pens, the murder mysteries on his shelf, his grass-cutting shoes. I want every deck of cards he’s ever touched. Every CD he’s ever played. If I preserve his life, maybe he’ll come walking back into it.

“Of course,” Grandma Judy says, folding the shirt into a neat rectangle.

I lift it to my face again instinctively and take a deep inhale.

“The top shelf of his cabinet has some things you might want too,” she says, gesturing weakly at it.

Tucked between the side of the cabinet and a beer stein from his trip to Alaska is every card I’ve ever made for him. On the back of each card, he’s written the year. Behind the stack of cards sits a clay pot I made for father’s day—when I was seven, according to the etched date on the bottom. Not a speck of dust on it.

Grandma Judy’s sniffles have turned into sobs. “He really loved you, Sierra,” she chokes out.

Agony snakes through my veins, escaping my lips in a wail. I drop my head into my hands. I just remembered that I forgot to call him back.

7

The hardest part about leaving Atlanta isn’t saying goodbye to my Grandma Judy or cramming my suitcase full of trinkets and photos or the long, cold plane ride spent clutching the miniature urn. It’s the return to California, the opposite life I’ve chosen for myself.

I walk through our townhouse, noticing for the first time that we don’t have a single picture frame on the wall, none of my magnets collected while traveling displayed on the fridge, no houseplant clinging to life after enduring daily nibbles from cats. There’s a brand-new couch, a brand-new rug, a brand-new bed frame. All picked out by Logan. He refused to let me bring any of my furniture with us because other men had sat at my dining table, drank from my cups. I had donated the decor I spent years accumulating, after Logan convinced me we could make our own home together. I feel a little shame heat up inside my gut. I really gave up my whole life for some guy. I didn’t even see it until now. How spineless can I be, honestly?

I stand in the doorway to our bedroom. I gave up my rainbow striped sheets, soft as butter, for Logan’s choice of an ‘adult appropriate’ style. The black comforter with gold embroidered filigree, plucked from the shelves of Kohl’s, looks more fit for a middle-aged Martha Stewart die-hard than two young, fun twenty-somethings. Looks like Logan couldn’t be bothered to make the bed without me there, either.

“Hey,” Logan says from the doorway, his head bowed slightly, as if he has something to be sad about.

I “hey” him back.

“Do you want to put your suitcase down?”

I detect something in his voice. Is it anger? Or fear?

The wheels of my bag touch the floor, my hand on the handle.

Logan cocks his head. He probably can’t read my emotions because I am feeling all of them, right now. I feel so much, I might as well feel nothing.

“I’ve missed you,” he says, testing the waters.

“Yeah.”

“I could get started on dinner soon..?”

I maintain eye contact, but don’t acknowledge his question.

“If you could just do the dishes first?”

I blink at him, standing in the doorway across the room, my eyes narrowing slightly. Is this a joke? Welcome home from your dad’s funeral, can you do the dishes? I don’t detect a shred of remorse in his voice.

His eyes jump to my hand tightening on my suitcase handle. I tilt it forward, shifting the weight of the band tees and board games into the handle, and make for the door. Logan flattens himself against the wall as I pass him, babbling after me. “Wh- wha-?”

I cross the hallway to the guest bedroom, parking my bag in the corner. I strip the bed, still rumpled from Mom’s visit and drop the sheets into the washing machine.

Logan follows me like a puppy that’s been kicked by his owner but doesn’t know why. The only difference is that puppies, when you rub their nose in their mess, eventually realize they aren’t supposed to do that. I stoop to pet Midnight and Biscuit, jangling my keys in my hand to get them to play with me.

“I’m gonna stay in the spare room for a few nights,” I tell Logan, hoping he doesn’t hear the knock in my voice. “I’m going shopping now.”

I leave him in the living room before he can answer.

* * *

I take some time off from work, unpaid, as I’ve only been there for three months. The only thing that stops me from crying all day is drugs, but they make me too sleepy so I spend most of my days in bed, turning the urn over in my hand. I write in a journal every day, a suggestion from my new therapist, Daniela. She said to write letters to my dad, tell him things, document my memories. The entries start off sad, mad, distraught, begging this piece of paper to explain to me how someone can just die. This pain I feel is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Nothing anyone says offers any comfort or relief. I am the only person in the world who has ever lost someone, who hurts, and nothing will ever help me.

My therapist, Daniela, disagrees. “You need time to take care of yourself, and slowly you will feel better. It’s only been two weeks, this is absolutely normal.”

Daniela is fortyish, a short Peruvian woman with a sweet voice. Her office is just one room in an office building, a hard plastic chair in the hallway serving as her waiting area, but plush chairs and lavender potpourri await inside.

“I know,” I lie. “It’s just hard.”

“How is your home life? Are you back at work yet?”

I shift to the other side of my seat. “I’m back at work part time now, I still sleep through the morning, but I go in after lunch.”

Daniela smiles. “Great!”

The praise of this woman I’ve met three times is strangely comforting.

“Yeah, it’s nice to work, everyone is nice to me,” I say.

“And your boyfriend?” Her hand rests against her notepad, waiting.

I shift again in my chair. “Well, to tell the truth, I’m thinking of breaking up with him.” There. I’ve said it. I have announced my intentions. Now the universe will take my will and manifest it for me, right?

Daniela scribbles a few lines. Maybe she’s bored, drawing a picture of my snotty face. “Oh really? Why are you thinking about that?”

My cuticles suddenly become very interesting. I turn my hands over, inspecting them. “He wants things that I don’t, and I think it’s just time to end it, I guess. But I don’t know if I’m of sound mind to decide, you know, moving out will be expensive and I’m… scared.” I stop picking at my already-chipped nail polish, holding my breath for the approval I desperately crave.

“It might be a little stressful for you to make any big decisions right now, so soon after your father’s passing. Are you safe there? Can you wait a few weeks and revisit this decision?”

Why can’t anyone just tell me the answer I want to hear? Why do I, an adult in most senses of the word, need someone to approve my choices? How long will I be in therapy for grief and when can I start therapy for my complete chicken-shit lack of independence?

Of course, I cave immediately. “Yeah, no, it’s fine, I can give it a few weeks.”

During the rest of our session, Daniela suggests, heavily, that I see a doctor about my Klonopin dosage and, surprisingly, that I reach out to my mother, let her be a crutch for me during this time. But all I can think about is how much I hate going home, how much I despise being in that house. My life is so small, spent alone in the small guest bedroom on a cheap mattress and a squeaky metal frame, the most I could afford without digging into my apartment fund.

I leave therapy conflicted—everyone tells me to stay, so maybe it’s me being the difficult one, maybe I need to adjust my own attitude. Maybe I need another few milligrams of numbness.

* * *

A wave of garlic and starch envelopes me as soon as I walk into the house. I creep into the kitchen, where Logan is waiting for me with a glass of wine and an enormous plate of spaghetti. The lights are off. Several tall candlesticks cast a golden glow, making everything look welcoming, nice. Even Logan.

He pulls out a chair for me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been so nice to you lately, I don’t know how to handle this situation, it’s new for me.”

Well this is unexpected. I give him a tight-lipped smile. Did he somehow bug my phone and overhear my therapy conversation? Is Daniela a traitor? I try to read his body language, my wine glass kissing my lower lip. He seems pleasant enough, or he’s an amazing actor. I bring the glass up to my nose and inhale. If he’s mad and about to chop me up into a thousand pieces, at least he served good wine.

The tension in my shoulders decreases with every sip. Our conversation is light, easy. He doesn’t bring up me sleeping in the guest room; I don’t bring up his atrocious bedside manner. I even laugh a few times.

I feel like I did a year ago: dating someone new, on our best behavior. But the sadness lies just beneath the surface, a slow, steady ache in my chest, always present. I can be telling a story, totally focused on the other person, while my brain is working overtime to distract me, reminding me that I’m supposed to be distraught. Even the spaghetti Logan made is a downer. He doesn’t know that it’s actually my favorite meal because it’s the only meal I’ve seen Mom make without using a microwave.

When I start crying over nothing, Logan pulls me into his lap, stroking my hair. I can feel his face burrow into my neck, his eyelashes getting caught in my hair. I let him hold me until my breathing slows. He leads me up the stairs and tucks me into my rock-hard mattress. He plants a gentle kiss on my forehead, whispers his goodnight.

I move back into our bedroom the next morning.

* * *

I bring Logan to happy hour on Friday to celebrate my first week back at work full time. Valerie is out of town and Nadine’s husband is here, so I feel pretty confident tonight will go well.

As expected, Nadine greets Logan with a smile and a hug, passing me a glass of champagne. “So nice to see you! We’re just so glad Sierra is back too,” she coos.

As soon as Logan makes his way to the drink table, she cocks an eyebrow at me. “So,” she begins. “How are.. things?” Her blue eyes sparkle at me.

I’ve missed other people. Especially other people who like me. I take a swig of my champagne, trying to hide my blushing. “Ah, they’re okay, I guess.”

Nadine sat with me for over an hour on my first day at work since the funeral. She listened to me cry, rhythmically patting my back the entire time, never stopping, or interrupting me. It was her idea to start therapy immediately, rather than wait for the depression to sink in and strike when I least expected it. It wasn’t too long ago I confessed how shit Logan is, so she can probably guess I’m not having the best time in life right now.

I inhale, sigh it out. “Actually, things have been pretty good lately. I’m just taking it day by day.”

She smiles, gives my forearm a pat, pat, and launches into a story about her father taking his boat out to scuba dive in the middle of a storm. Logan makes his way back to us, laughing along.

I really should not be mixing alcohol with medicine, but the benzos strip away my anxiety, and the alcohol makes me feel fun. The glass of champagne turns into three, plus another vodka sprite at the bar next door. Plus half a shot of tequila, the other half spilled on the bar. Our foursome take turns playing songs on the jukebox, Nadine and Michael sticking to eighties pop, Logan to twangy country, and Lady Gaga for me.

We dance around our high-top table, trading partners, not a single thought wasted on how silly we look. Soon enough, the bar starts to fill up and we lose our personal DJ.

Nadine pulls her sweaty blonde hair into a ponytail, her laugh a loud bray. Michael swoops in to her, planting a kiss right behind her ear.

“Yeah, yeah, you two kids get outta here!” I holler across the table.

They both flash mischievous smiles and slip out of the bar.

Logan drains the rest of his drink, bottom shelf bourbon that makes me crinkle my nose. He slides a straw across the table, his hand stopping mere centimeters from mine. I can feel warmth radiating off him. That, or I am hallucinating.

He flexes his fingers, dragging his fingertips across my hand. “Should we get out of here too?” he asks under his breath.

I suck my bottom lip in through my teeth. This really is like dating again. Does this man have the honor of taking me home tonight? Dare I hang my hopes on this man, drunk as a skunk, who probably can’t even get it up right now?

I do, and he can.

The sheets tangle around us, winding our bodies close together. I gaze up at him, propped up on an elbow, smiling down at me. I trace the contours of his face, his thick eyebrows, square jaw, the slightly crooked nose from a baseball accident, until he takes my hand in his, squeezing gently.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about your dad, and uh, the importance of family,” he confesses.

Here comes the sadness, always waiting.

I roll onto my side, our hands still clasped. “Yeah?”

Logan clears his throat. “Ah, yeah, you know like, I want to be closer to my family and try to talk to them more,” he shares, sounding slightly embarrassed.

“Yeah, that’s good,” I offer, my heart swelling with this sudden change of attitude I’m witnessing.

Thank you, Daniela.

He brings our hands to his mouth and presses them to his lips. “And, you know, like how children are part of a family.”

My heart drops. I twist my hand out of his grip and wipe the sweat from my brow. It’s okay, I tell myself, this is a knee jerk reaction to facing mortality. My vision swims, turning my stomach sour.

Logan rolls onto his back. “So, are you still like, totally against having children?”

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t want kids, you know that.” I close my eyes.

Logan rubs his sweaty palms on his precious fancy sheets. “Well, we don’t have to decide right now, but if you don’t want to have kids,” he pauses, tries to find my hand, gives up, “then really I should be allowed to have another girlfriend who does.”

Buzzing fills my ears. I’m not even sure if he’s talking or not. I run my hand over the cramp in my stomach. “You mean like, two girlfriends?” I ask, barely audible.

He’s quiet for so long, I wonder if I even spoke.

“Logan?” I prod.

His words come out fast, like they’d been held back behind a door I just opened.

“Well, yeah, you can be the wife and the primary, and I have a girlfriend who bears my children. Although it might make sense for her to be my wife, since we’ll share kids, and you be the girlfriend. You don’t have to be involved, and this way you don’t have to have kids.”

His excitement washes over me, like I’m witnessing this happen to somebody else. Surely he doesn’t think I will stand for this, that I would be fine with my husband having another girlfriend?

I slide out of bed, collecting my clothes as I leave. He follows me to the guest room, until I slam the door in his face.

* * *

Logan follows me around the house as I pack. Thanks to his promise of our new life together, I don’t have much. I stack my plates and cups in a box, dig out my fridge magnets from the closet. He haunts me throughout moving day, always two steps behind me, blubbering like a baby. Alexis and Seth help me load the cheap, stiff mattress into a U-Haul, Seth blocking Logan from grabbing my arm as I carry out the last box from the townhome.

Like déja vu, my car is stuffed to the brim with clothing and two crying cats. Alexis and Seth wait to make sure Logan doesn’t try to follow me, then turn into the street and escort me to my new dwelling. When I arrive, a tree with a huge canopy of magenta flowers greets me. I clasp my hand around my daddy’s urn, buckled into the passenger seat.

Let’s try this again.

8

My second attempt at finding housing in California is proving to be far more successful. Luckily for me, Alexis and Seth’s roommate gave notice a week before I broke up with Logan. I found myself back in the motel for another nine days, my things waiting for me in the garage of Alexis’s rental.

Alexis’s house—our house—sits in the middle of a sleepy neighborhood, the kind where kids ride plastic tricycles on the sidewalk and neighbors wave to each other as they pass by. My bedroom is smaller but filled with natural sunlight every morning. I hang a photo on the wall on my first day of freedom. Succulents line the windowsill within a week. I buy the same damn rainbow sheets. My new housemates make room for me, not only by clearing a shelf for me in the freezer to house my frozen dinners (goodbye home-cooked meals), but by including me in their plans, inviting me out to dinner, asking my opinion on the lamp they want for the living room.

I wait for the regret to creep in, the late-night messages sent to Logan asking to talk. But it never comes. I get a few i miss you texts from him before finally blocking his number. It took me almost a year to break up with Kurt, breaking up for a week or two at a time, tearful reunions bringing us back together for another month before the next disaster came. I pined over my college boyfriend Kevin for six months after he dumped me with no warning. The only thing I miss about Logan is having someone to share litter box duty with.

I stay busy now. Instead of spending every weeknight at home, reading, watching whatever is new to Netflix, I’m now playing board games with my housemates, taking a spin class with Nadine, shopping with Alexis. We head to Ikea after work one evening, hoping to find solutions for my overflowing closet and bare walls.

Passing through the kitchen section, I pause to look at the price tag of a blue bar cart. “Wow, it’s on sale. I should get this, Logan vetoed it last time.”

Alexis stops looking at the magnetic knife strips and meets me at the cart. “He, what now?” she asks, eyebrows raised.

I drop the price tag. “He said it didn’t match our kitchen, so we shouldn’t get it.” My words grow quieter as I speak.

Alexis writes down the item number on our list. “You should get it now,” she says, definitively.

We pass through the tables, the patio sets, ending in a three hundred square foot model apartment.

I cram my body beside Alexis on the world’s smallest loveseat. “I could never live here. I’d be so miserable.” I laugh.

She picks up the tiny vase with the tiny fake flowers. “Why did you live with Logan for so long?”

I freeze the shape of laughter onto my face, hiding behind it. “It wasn’t that bad,” I offer.

She puts the vase back on the tiny table. “But like, what happened? Obviously, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to but,” she glances up at me, noticing my waning smile, “you’re like a different person now. Even Seth’s noticed.”

My mind fires up, running through excuses I can use. I could say that he changed his mind about having children, or that I caught him cheating, but Alexis will see through that. She saw us together, saw how timid I had become.

I could tell her the truth. But it’s too embarrassing. What will she think of me? I’m no stranger to being judged or being embarrassed. All my life, I’ve been embarrassed to learn that something about my upbringing, my family, myself, is not exactly normal.

The first time it happened was the Child Protective Services incident with Grandma Judy. When I was called into the counselor’s office, my little ten-year-old self was already nervous, never liking attention. The CPS agent, looking like a sweet old grandma without the attitude to match, asked me what I would do while home alone. She grilled me. How often did it happen? Did I ever feel unsafe? Was I hungry? I had no idea how to answer her questions with anything but the truth, unsure why she even was asking me these things.

When I gathered the courage to ask my neighborhood friends how often they were home alone, I was met with gaping mouths which slowly turned into excited clamoring.

“You get to stay home alone!? Cool!”

Needless to say, I did not feel cool. I was moved one step further into the ‘others’ group, already separated by my divorced parents (taboo in WASP-y neighborhoods in the nineties, I guess), a loud mother, and my extreme shyness.

I started trying to hide my differences, retreating even further into myself. Too embarrassed to tell my friends that my mom was dating someone twenty years her junior, I parroted her own lie of someone living with us “to help out around the house” but I’m pretty sure my dad did not believe me.

That guy left after a few weeks and a man with two teenage boys moved in, supposedly on their way up north from Florida. I don’t even know if Dad knew about them.

It still happens now. I had assumed all parents were jealous when their child makes more money than they do, that all mothers solve disagreements with three days of the silent treatment. When my friends hear this and start berating Mom, I don’t feel the same outrage. Just embarrassed that once again - I’m not normal, she isn’t normal. And I just lie down and accept it, no questions asked.

I sit on the little couch and exhale sharply, drawing Alexis’s attention. “Well. It just happened so quickly. At first he was so charming and fun and it was great. Yeah, we moved in together way too fast, and that was a huge mistake. Right after that he got so crazy jealous and insecure and, um, weird.”

Alexis joins me on the couch. “Weird how?”

I breathe in, out. “Ugh. This is horrible to talk about. Like you have such a normal relationship with Seth and normal parents and tons of friends, and I feel like a complete idiot for what I’m about to say, but whatever. Um… he was into some kinky shit. He trickle-truthed me about wanting to sleep with other women. If I had known he wanted open relationship stuff I would have never bothered.” I lower my voice, conscious of our fellow Ikea patrons. “He even wanted to sleep with my mother once!”

Alexis’s eyes widen. “Holy shit. I’m glad you got out of there.”

“I’m like, so embarrassed right now.”

She shifts to face me even more and smiles. “Sierra, you do not have to be embarrassed around me. Sure, Seth is the only boyfriend I’ve ever had but literally everyone else I know has dated some shitty people. It’s ok. It happens.”

Alexis was around in middle school, during some of the weird times with my mom. She didn’t judge me then. I don’t know why I thought she’d judge me now.

“Just like, how did I let myself end up like this? I don’t even know.”

“You will be all right. Now you know what to look out for.”

God, I hope I’ve learned my lesson.

Alexis takes my hands in hers and drops her voice. “Don’t worry! Now you have me to help you pick through the losers, with my incredible taste and all!”

I smile. Lucky me.

* * *

We leave Ikea empty handed after too many disapproving glances from picture perfect families, our faces red, cheeks sore from laughing.

I park on the street in front of our house. “I’ll be right in, gonna call Grandma Judy.” I reach for my phone, scrolling through my call history. As soon as I hear the front door close, I search the bottom of my purse for a stray pill, dry swallowing the half-crushed tablet. I wrap my shaking hands around the steering wheel and squeeze as hard as I can.

I dial my grandma. I hope she doesn’t pick up.

“Sierra?” she answers, her voice a warble.

My throat constricts immediately, the air in my car suddenly thick and heavy. “Hey, just calling to see how you are,” I mumble.

“Oh,” she sniffs, “I reckon I’m doing okay.”

Grandma Judy’s slow, southern voice soothes me, something familiar to hold onto. I let her ramble about her pastor coming to sit with her, the flowers her bridge club sent, how my brother has been cutting the grass for her. Both of us are crying, neither ready to acknowledge it. I translate her stories into an admission of suffering, her way of passing each day by. We’re similar in this—I’ll do anything to make each day end sooner, for the sweet release of sleep to take his turn.

“Grandma,” I begin, “me and Logan broke up.”

She can draw her own conclusions.

She tuts at me. “Well, that’s too bad, isn’t it? He just wasn’t right for you, that’s okay,” she purrs. “We’ll just have to find you a new boyfriend!”

I laugh as my tears stem their flow. “Yeah, I guess so,” I admit.

We say goodbyes, hang up, successfully dancing around our grief. I don’t know who wants to talk about Dad more—her, or me.

* * *

Dating turns out to be way less fun than regular life.

Could I have spent a little more time being single and processing through the dumpster fire that was my last relationship? Yes. But could I also be mildly afraid to be alone? Also yes.

I make it through a string of first dates, but no one makes it to round two. Even the tiniest of flaws removes you from the running. You’re fifteen minutes late? Sign of disrespect. You drank four beers in an hour on a Tuesday and tried to order shots? Alcoholic. You maybe want kids, are open to the idea later on in life? Absolutely not. You think I’m beautiful and hilarious and smart and can’t wait to see me again? Too desperate.

Well, maybe that one’s on me.

Then I meet Adish through mutual friends from work. He’s brown, with long curly black hair he’s pushing back off his face constantly, and a motorcycle. It doesn’t take long until I’m double texting him and crawling out of bed to get dressed to go, ahem, ‘hang out’ way past my bedtime.

It’s fun for the first few weeks. He’s my first real ‘casual’ thing – the other lucky players in my past were mostly one-and-done. We don’t discuss our thoughts or feelings or dreams or goals. We talk about work once and never again. Sometimes he doesn’t text me back for three days and I go a little squirrely.

Even though he is gorgeous and the sex is great, I don’t really know if I like him. Still, I can feel myself wanting him to like me more. I know he won’t.

I cut things off with him before he gets around to it. A tragedy.

One Friday night, Nadine accompanies me to a Mexican restaurant for a pre-date Margarita, eagerly listening to me mope; clearly entertained by having a single friend again. My date, Nikolas, shows up forty pounds heavier than his photos suggest. Nadine bulges her eyes at me as she leaves me for the evening.

“Is she your friend?” he asks.

I expected a sexy German accent, not a lisp.

I wonder how terrible I’d feel if I lied about going to the bathroom and ran away. Probably more terrible than this mediocre date is worth. “Uh, yep. Should we order another round?” I sit back down on the outdoor couch, the dark wood of the arms pressing into my side as I put as much space between us as possible.

Nikolas ain’t all that bad. He’s almost as funny as he was in text messages, but he doesn’t laugh until I do.

We finish our drinks quickly, which is absolutely on purpose. I’m dying to get home so I can send a recap to Nadine.

“Shall we go for a short walk before we leave?” he asks, producing a joint from somewhere in his jacket before hiding it behind his ear, his shaggy blonde hair covering it completely.

I shrug. “Sure.”

How long could smoking a joint take?

The answer: Five minutes.

We walk down the side streets, where the trees and the setting sun hide us from any nosy neighbors, before finding a park bench.

I don’t want to sit—he clearly likes me, I don’t like him back, and I’m high as balls so I’d like to go home now, thanks. I negotiate with myself in my head. If I behave and stay ten more minutes, I can have ice cream when I get home.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” Nikolas asks as I pull my hand away from his.

I force the lower half of my face into a smile. “Of course. Are you?”

His eyes are so glassy. “Definitely. Do you want to play a game?”

I glance around the park we’re sitting next to. There are two families with strollers, facing each other like they’re about to duel. Two kids are swinging from the monkey bars. It’s not even that late, I guess.

“Okay.” I lick my lips, but my tongue is dry too.

“Face that way,” Nikolas instructs me, his finger pointing away from him.

I shift on the hard bench and look to my right. I try to glance down at my phone to check the time, but my vision goes dark as Nikolas’ fingers cover my eyes, smelling like burnt marijuana. My heart rate picks up as I feel every muscle in my body stiffen.

A whisper in my ear. “I’m going to describe what I want to do to you and you tell me how it feels.”

Well, this is it. He’s going to kill me.

He leans in again, but I can’t hear him over the buzzing in my ears. His fingers tighten around my eyes.

I gasp for air and pull on his wrists, freeing my eye sockets from his stinky hands. I speed walk away, mashing my fingers into my phone screen to call an Uber.

“Sierra? Are you okay?” he calls after me, while the other park patrons watch me walk past them.

I don’t say a word until my ride pulls up next to me. The ache in my chest goes away only after I’ve locked the front door behind me.

Well, maybe dating right now just isn’t for me.

* * *

Instead, I ratchet up the scheduling, turning into a real Yes Man. A new girl – Caitlyn – joins my team and I immediately take her under my wing, adding her to the daily lunchtime walking club, introducing her to other transplants. I never eat alone. Take that, high school.

Nadine even passes the scheduling of unofficial happy hours over to me, impressed by my quasi-manic obsession with networking and building friendships. She doesn’t know I’m just trying to undo all my failures over the years. I don’t want to be embarrassed anymore—for not having friends; for spending nights alone watching pirated television on my laptop in bed; for being too scared to talk to strangers.

I rebrand Nadine’s happy hour to ‘Tequila, Lime, and Salty Bitches’ and send out an official agenda each time - 5:00 leave for bar. 5:05 commence bitching. We grow from a few regulars to many. Valerie brings the rest of her reports; Nadine drags along Trent, a software engineer who turns out to be hilariously charming and invites me to an EDM concert up in the city; and Conor, who’s been at MeTime for five years and a total hippie, also up in San Francisco, just shows up one day and never leaves, always somehow finding a seat right next to me at the table.

My plan works. I’m too busy to be sad.

9

“I think he likes me,” I divulge, unloading the glasses from the dishwasher as Alexis wipes down the kitchen counters.

She flicks the rag at me, cooing, “Oooh, someone has a cru-uuuush!” She makes disgusting, wet kissing noises.

I flip her the bird, but my lips reach cheek to cheek. I don’t know how I feel about Conor, who is fourteen inches taller than I am (fourteen!) with dark, curly hair, and a dad bod. Not my usual type, but not-not my type either. But there’s something about the way he shows up to events, never shy about speaking up during a lull in conversation, sharing some off-the-wall fact he just learned about the volcanoes in Hawaii, or even just his seriously feminist views.

I reach around Alexis as she is still pretending to make out with an invisible man, for the grocery list. I straighten my posture, like I’m the mature adult here. “I’ll be back in like, an hour? Say a prayer for me, maybe I’ll get everything you need.”

We’re really leaning into the housemates situation. I eat dinner with Seth and Alexis every night now, offering to do the shopping and cleanup if they do most of the cooking. Sometimes I even hover in the kitchen, hoping to learn some cooking skills via osmosis. I can make a mean scrambled egg now!

I can still feel the smile on my lips—Alexis knows exactly how to make me laugh. Or should I be giving Conor credit? No. I’m being ridiculous.

I attempt to navigate through the crowded vegetable section of the grocery store, not entirely sure what a butternut squash even looks like. I ask a nearby woman, perusing a table of beige-colored vegetables, how to tell if they’re good or not. She shrugs, I shrug, selecting the two nearest squashes for my cart. No problem.

As I look down to mark off my shopping list, the skin on my arms prickles, picking up someone coming too close to me out of the corner of my eye.

“Sierra.”

My head snaps up and my mouth instantly goes dry.

Logan stands not two feet away from me, a basket hanging from his right hand, occupied by a single box of cereal. My tongue works my mouth, trying to produce a drop of saliva. I open my mouth, but no sound comes out.

“Is this okay?” he asks, his voice low, clearly not trying to draw the attention of people around us.

Except there aren’t any people around us. The store was crowded just one minute ago. Where’s my squash-buying co-conspirator?

I take a step back, my hand finding the edge of a display of twenty kinds of apples, my heart thumping in my ears so loud I can’t hear his next question.

“No!” I sputter out, louder than I wanted.

Logan cocks his head, confusion clouding his eyes.

I swivel my cart between us, standing as tall as I can. “Don’t talk to me.”

The disappointment on his face fills me with joy, replacing the sand in my extremities with air. Sweet, bubbly air. I hold my ground, defending my territory, watching as he walks away and leaves his sad basket by the door.

The helpful woman, since moved to the onion tower, glances over at me. I must have missed how kind her eyes were before. I shrug at her, wondering how much of that she caught. She shrugs back.

I leave my car running when I get home to dig around in my purse for a loose pill. Or half. Or even a crumble. I unearth a half in the folds of the fabric but leave it there. I’m fine.

I’m fine.

The grocery bags tumble into a pile at Alexis’s feet in the kitchen, so amped to tell her about my outing that my words come out too fast, jumbling together.

She plucks the block of Parmesan that I’ve been waving around like a crazed dairy enthusiast from my hand. “Can you please slow down?”

“You will not bel—” I begin, enunciating my words, only to be interrupted by the soft buzz of my phone. “One sec.” I swipe my finger across the screen.

New message from Mom.

What would she have done if she had been with me in the supermarket today, I wonder? Surely if this random person could sense my distress pheromones, Mom could muster up some concern. I often wonder what my mother was like as a young woman. By my age—a ripe old twenty-six—she was married with a baby, about to be pregnant with me.

Every story she tells involving men revolved around their deceit, their exploitation, a warning of the hordes of sadists roaming the earth, looking for smart, beautiful, talented women on whom to prey. Everyone from her boss, a high school principal, to my own father, abused her, raped her, stole pieces of her for their own.

Had she experienced the wonder of a friend whispering in your ear, “Jonah thinks you’re cute,” the fleeting heartbreak when your fifth-grade crush doesn’t like you back, the tiny voice in your head congratulating yourself for finding love so early, only sixteen, lucky you?

Trying to connect the dots between the stories she tells of her high-school days and the young, vibrant, popular tennis star and this bitter adult is both a daunting task and a scary one. If something major didn’t happen, didn’t suck the life out of her like a human vacuum, can anyone just turn into a miserable sop?

I open my messages. Do you think your dad died of loneliness?

Leaving Alexis and Seth in the kitchen, I sequester myself in my bedroom with the lights off. If she’s accusing me of being a neglectful daughter, her approach seems ill thought out; shouldn’t I just leave her to be; see how that fares for her? If this is a cry for help, she has the opposite of my attention.

I reply immediately, trying to remain neutral: Why do you ask that? I press the cool glass of the phone against my forehead, no idea what’s coming back to me. All I can count on is that it won’t be the response I was expecting.

My phone rattles against my skull, not strong enough to shake my brain into oblivion. Trying to figure out if he was sick or just alone. Buzz buzz. Did he know if something was wrong? Buzz buzz. Why do you ask why I ask? Buzz buzz. Did you sense something wasn’t right?

The screen glows brightly into my eyes, the fury glowing in my stomach. In a move Daniela will be thrilled to hear about, I reply: This isn’t something I really feel comfortable talking about.

Hooray! Boundaries!

My celebrations are cut short by one more message.

I bet I will die of loneliness.

The first time Mom threatened suicide was after the night she spent in jail for assaulting Brian, yanking on his shirt collar when he tried to walk away from her drunken yelling. My brother and I were twelve and thirteen. After her release, she sat us down and showed us the crappy toothbrush, the tiny, bland toothpaste they gave her. She described, in detail, how she had to squat and cough, naked in front of the cops. She told us how she would lose her teaching license which means she would lose her job and we’d likely lose our house.

Brian, rightfully angry, left us two crying, clutching each other, retreating to his bedroom to call our father and provide the latest update.

Mom hugged me. “Sometimes you should quit when you’re ahead. And sometimes, you accept defeat. It’s just a part of life,” she said, her riddles going over my head. “This life just isn’t good for me anymore, and it’s okay that it should end.” She loosened her grip on me as I squeezed tighter. “You’ll be all right, baby.”

I spent the next year waiting for the day to come. Every bit of bad news came with stomach cramps, dizziness, late-night check-ins on my sleeping mother.

After the fifth or sixth threat, I stopped caring. Much later, I learned the definition of histrionics.

Every nerve in my body is screaming at me to say fuck it, reply, and tell her that she’s right. I roll over on my bed and press my pillow onto my face. The thick pillow muffles the scream.

Well, maybe not. My door creaks open. I flash a thumbs up to whomever is watching me, apparently satisfying their curiosity. I remove my pillowy muzzle when I hear the latch of the door click into place.

My response, unlikely to convey my true emotions, but hopefully enough to hint at my displeasure, is brief. Please stop.

A barrage of messages fills my screen, too fast for me to read them all. Putrid paragraph after paragraph, I’m just as hateful as my terrible father, she loves me too much, I don’t deserve it, I’ll regret this when she’s gone, blah blah blah.

I shove my phone under the sheets and go down for dinner.

* * *

Daniela is scribbling notes as fast as she can, her curly head nodding along. “Well, it’s good to have boundaries,” she explains.

“I mean, if telling her to stop saying shit and her exploding on me is a boundary, I guess that’s what we do.”

She doesn’t say anything, so I continue.

“Otherwise, we’re gonna be stuck on this absolutely insane cycle of, she says something horrible, I ask politely to not say horrible things, then she says even more horrible things AND drags my dad’s name into it!”

“How do you think we can stop this cycle?” Daniela asks.

Therapists are so annoying. Can’t she just tell me what good boundaries are? Is subjecting your clientele to verbal abuse part of the process?

Exasperated, I sigh. “I don’t know, tell her we can never talk about Dad again, only allow her three messages at a time? None of it matters, she won’t follow the rules.”

Daniela’s sweet smile does nothing to placate me. “Maybe you can try changing the conversation or redirect your mom to a more productive topic?

We spend the rest of our session brainstorming topics to talk about with my mom, things that won’t set her off. I walk out with two ideas: my cats and her dogs. Sure to be riveting conversation.

* * *

I receive a message while I am in therapy. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.

Did anyone ever hurt her feelings?

Did she ever say the wrong thing to her parents?

Did she also hate her mother?

I block her number and text Conor. Sure, he says, he’d be happy to let me crash after the concert with Trent tomorrow night.

10

I pick a wedgie out of my ass, courtesy of my homemade Daisy Dukes that fit more like underwear than shorts. I wrap the white faux-fur coat tighter over my pink lamé bodysuit, cursing the chilly San Francisco night.

Trent, the software engineer on my team, laughs and tries to pry my coat open. “Come on, you need to show off your outfit!” he squeals.

I suspect large quantities of drugs are keeping Trent warm, unless there is some magical property to fishnet that I’m unaware of. He strokes his huge, muscly biceps, smearing glitter around.

He’s such a pretty man. Every girl’s heart is broken on day one of work when they learn that Trent is gay.

I’m stone cold sober, the train arriving too late into the city to make it to the pre-game. Looks like I’ll be getting drunk on watery cocktails, only twenty bucks a pop, if I’m lucky.

The line slowly inches forward, but Trent’s babbling about the married couple he’s been dating keeps me entertained. All I can think about is how my ex-boss back in Georgia never mentioned his husband, only his “partner,” and we had to draw our own conclusions. Meanwhile, Trent is standing next to me in a jockstrap that says GAY AF on the waistband.

What a world.

The snaking line of half-naked, glittery humans, finally presses us into the venue, a huge, standing-only auditorium with three levels of balconies. And yes, twenty-dollar cocktails. I sip my very overpriced vodka soda as we make our way to the pit in front of the stage. Why you need to stand so close to watch someone DJ, I don’t know. Why I agreed to take a ninety-minute train up the city on a weeknight to see some techno dude I’ve never heard of, may be a better question.

The buzzing masses press in around us, a sea of feathers and sequins as far as the eye can see.

Trent bends down and shouts into my ear, “What is your plan after this? Do you want to come to the after-party?”

Trent, I don’t even want to go to the before-party.

My turn to shove my face into his thick, sweaty hair and yell back: “I’m going to stay with Conor! We will carpool to work tomorrow!”

He pulls back, pretending to be scandalized.

I lightly slap him on his arm, already very sweaty. “It’s not like that!” I shout, but my voice is lost in the low bass filling the air.

I do my best to participate, but it’s hot, weird, and I’m quickly annoyed by everyone asking to pet my fur coat. Another twenty dollars is drunk, then another. I make my way back to Trent, who is taking another bump from his skinny gold pendant necklace. I decline—I just weaned myself off the Klonopin, I don’t need another vice to tempt me. We dance together, with people around us, by ourselves. Another twenty disappears.

Trent leads me to the bathrooms, arm in arm. In line, I skip all of my unread messages, except for Conor’s. What time will you get here? No rush, I’ll wait up.

My heart flutters gently, distracting me so the gold-bikini girl behind me has to nudge me into the bathroom. I sit down, replying, soon!

Trent rolls his eyes as soon as he sees me.

“Have fun!” he tells me in a singsong voice, giving me a hug before dancing off and joining a group of similarly dressed men nearby.

The Uber ride takes twenty minutes, the driver clearly unhappy with the level of glitter to which I am exposing his upholstery.

Conor is standing on the sidewalk when we arrive, his massive form hard to miss. He looks me up and down, grinning. “Nice outfit,” he says, smirking.

“Yeah, yeah,” I sigh.

Nervousness creeps into my spine, spreading into my fingers, inflating my belly. It’s not like I’m a stranger to going to guy’s houses or anything, so why am I freaking out? I’ve never slept with a coworker before - wait, that’s not true either. I shake my head, trying to loosen the nerves, and wave Conor up the stairs first. If he goes behind me, he will definitely see my ass hanging out of my shorts. I need to get rid of these.

Conor’s apartment—shared with three other hippies—smells like cigarettes and pot, but thankfully is clean enough. I decline his offers of tea, more booze, food. Honestly, I could use something to sop up the alcohol since it is a workday tomorrow, but I don’t like to be doted on like this.

“I’ll be right back, make yourself comfortable,” he tells me.

His voice is as big as he is, filling the room. He picks up the backpack I had sneakily left at his desk this afternoon, containing a change of clothes for tomorrow and a toothbrush.

I brush my teeth in the hallway bathroom and return to find a glass of water and some crackers. I eat a few, if only to make Conor happy.

Finally unbuttoning my shorts, I yawn, shimmying the denim down my legs. Conor coughs abruptly and turns to look out the window.

“I’m so tired,” I confess, “do you mind if I go to bed now?”

Conor steals a peek at me as I slide my bodysuit down, leaving the tacky outfit in a heap on the floor. He busies himself at his desk and clears his throat a few times. “Oh, yeah, of course!”

He is so eager to please me, such a departure from the norm that I feel uncomfortable, uneasy.

I watch him undress as I throw a sheet, a blanket, and another blanket on top of me. His bushy brown beard gives him the appearance of being fully dressed. He’s flat on his back, just the sheet covering him, and I can’t stop myself from slowly sliding toward him.

The light from the streetlamp isn’t bright enough to make out his face, but his breathing tells me he’s still awake. He is motionless, not even moving his hands. I wait for him to move, to reach over and touch my bare skin, to move his head closer to mine, to say anything, confess his undying love. Why, though? Am I just lonely? There hasn’t been any spark between us. At least not I’ve ever felt. But I think I like him. He’s clearly a very good dude, but even I know you can’t build anything on ‘well he’s real nice’. I’m torn.

Nothing happens. We lay next to each other, a sliver of space and an unspoken agreement between us.

I wish I had brought pajamas.

* * *

The whole sleep-together-naked-but-don’t-have-sex thing continues for months. Like, three solid months.

We talk about the most random things, often ending up debating some random point like whether Americans are capable of embracing roundabouts. Though we are on different teams at work, I know so much about what he’s working on that I could basically do his job for him. I show him how I use spreadsheets to track my budget and he teaches me how to make prettier presentation slides. We go out once a week or so, drinking heavily, sometimes consuming other enjoyable substances, always to end up lying next to each other in his cool, dark room.

And I don’t know why.

He’s fun to be around, definitely, but I feel so awkward to suddenly pull a one-eighty and be like “Actually no I’m going to sleep in a big t-shirt like a normal person.”

I finally tell Alexis during one of our game nights, emboldened by her drunk confession that she had lost her virginity on a four-wheeler back in high school.

“Oh. My. God!” she shouts before dissolving into a fit of laughter.

Seth’s mouth is wide open, his eyes smiling. “Three months! What are you doing.”

I throw my hands up, palms up, stumped. “If I knew what the fuck was going on, we’d have fucked the first time!”

Back in college, some classmate, ten years my senior, told me to make guys wait at least three days, no more than five, before sleeping with them. That advice wasn’t always followed, but never on this side of the spectrum.

Alexis stifles her laughter. “He’s not a virgin, is he?”

One hand comes to my mouth, the other pushing the hair off my forehead. “No!” I gasp.

Seth’s mouth still hasn’t closed. “I mean, what is taking so long?”

I really, truly, don’t know. I don’t consider myself conservative, don’t subscribe to gender roles, but waiting for the man to make the first move has worked for me this long, so why change it?

Well, except for Logan, who I had invited back to my place, tugging at the buttons on his shirt before we made it to the front door, or Adish, who had pretty much been guaranteed to get laid as soon as he picked me up for our date on his motorcycle.

All right, obviously Conor likes me way more than I like him, but even thinking that makes me feel gross and superficial. Not something I particularly want to admit to my friends, so instead, I return to my M.O. of turning my problems into a joke.

I take a drink of my vodka-sprite. “Maybe we’re both waiting for each other to make the first move—too scared to do it ourselves—and we’ll spend the rest of our lives quietly sleeping naked next to each other, never once touching!”

Turns out, I don’t have to wait that long. A few weeks later, Conor’s housemates throw a Christmas party, and the good holiday cheer must have spread all throughout the house.

All of that buildup, culminating in an awkward ten minutes.

His sweaty body presses against my face, nearly suffocating me. I have to keep changing the angle of my head to get fresh air. Hopefully he doesn’t take my gasping for air as moans of pleasure. Eventually, I take over, eager to make it end.

Conor lays on his side afterward, staring at me adoringly, unaware that I’ve already decided to break his heart.

I feel like shit.

Everyone at work just found out we’re a ‘thing’ and now they’re going to know I’m the one who ended things. Conor is just so nice, I don’t want anyone to feel bad for him or think he did anything wrong.

And this is the reason we stay together for another three months.

The guilt finally wears me down. I do not treat him well—always getting my way, why wouldn’t I, if someone is willing to always give it to me? I decide everything for us. Where we’ll go to eat, our weekend plans, when we have sex. I feel like I’m with a robot specially programmed to please me, never offering his own opinion or desires.

I stay at work late one day, ready to execute my plan after a lengthy rehearsal with Alexis the previous night. The air is already tense between us as I ask him to take a walk with me.

“Working late on a project?” he asks, fake cheer in his voice.

Or is it real? Am I about to blindside this poor man?

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah…” I hesitate, work out an imaginary kink in my jaw. “I think we should break up.”

Conor stops walking. “Is this open for discussion?”

“Sorry… I mean, I want to break up.”

The cool spring weather doesn’t protect me from the sudden perspiration under my arms. Conor stands a few feet behind me, taking deep breaths, like he’s trying not to cry.

This is so awkward for me.

“Why?”

“I, uh, just don’t feel the chemistry that I want to, you know?”

“Did I do something?”

He’s going to be nice to me now, even as I break up with him? Jesus.

“No, Conor. I just don’t want to waste your time, hoping I feel something one day. You’ve been great, really.”

It seems cruel to tell him this, like I’m saying, hey, you’re amazing, except, not to me.

Plus, I don’t want to have sex with you, either.

And Conor deserves someone who thinks he’s amazing and wants to have sex with him. For sure.

I feel ashamed for wanting more for myself. For wanting to be goo-goo-ga-ga over somebody. Like, how dare I dream of Mr. Right?

Yet, here I am. Ending things (almost) before they get too serious. Honestly, I’m proud of myself. This feels like my first grownup breakup. No huge blowup fights. No toxic “We’re back together!” yo-yoing. No infidelity, no addictions, just two people who just aren’t right for each other.

It surprises me to see strong, confident Conor with hands twitching, shoulders hunched. Even his exhales vibrate through the air. “Can I have one last hug?”

My tough-guy act finally breaks and a tear rolls down my cheek. I hug him, whispering “Sorry, sorry….”

Sorry.

* * *

“So, what happened?” Daniela leans forward, listening intently.

“I don’t know, I don’t even know how this all began. Like, here’s this perfectly nice guy who likes me, treats me well, but I just don’t feel the same? Maybe we should have just stayed friends. I don’t know.” I pick my words carefully, as I always do with Daniela, forever cognizant of coming off as yet another crazy person. We’re here about everyone else’s problems, not mine.

“Well, why’d you start seeing him then?”

Busy picking lint off my shirt, I give what I hope is a casual, normal answer. “I guess I didn’t really have a reason to say no.”

Daniela clicks her tongue, then flips back through her notes. “Do you think this is related to your parents?”

I look up, shocked, the tiny ball of fuzz still in my fingers. “What do you mean? Is Conor… my dad?” Even though I’m supposed to be here to get healthy or whatever, I definitely get a kick out of making my therapist laugh.

“No, I mean more about how your parents never remarried?”

“What do you mean? My dad never remarried because he was embarrassed to live with his parents. Mom will end up alone because she finds a flaw with every single person she meets.” I return to picking lint, afraid of what’s coming next.

Daniela dips her toe in the proverbial mommy issues. “Maybe you’re afraid to end up alone, like your mom?”

The audacity of this woman.

11

Dad finally visits me in my dreams.

I’d been waiting for this chance to see him, hear him, touch him again, after I dreamed of my childhood cat Boots for months after his death. But Dad didn’t cooperate like Boots did, always facing away from me, or just out of my line of sight. His posture and movement, still uniquely, painfully obvious it’s him. Did I forget what he looks like? Is he mad at me?

He dies in my dream, too. I wake up with my face pressed into my wet pillow, the ghost of a scream across my face.

I tilt my phone up from the nightstand. It’s 2:47 a.m. The icky feeling of bile creeps up the back of my throat, a burn I haven’t felt in years. The tiniest thought flickers through my brain: I wish something bad would happen to me.

It started with moments so fleeting, I didn’t think anything was wrong. Hoping for the plane to crash. Wishing that food poisoning was actually stomach cancer. Fingers crossed that my migraine would turn into an aneurysm. A silent prayer that something will go horribly wrong and excuse me from, well, all of this. Followed by the shake of my head, un-wishing it away.

Usually.

* * *

My work-friend-turned-real-friend Caitlyn finds me in the crowded bar just after the server places a fifteen-dollar drink in front of me, a mezcal cocktail that tastes like mezcal and not much else. I feel weirdly jealous of her as she squeezes in next to me with her skinny arms and shiny blonde hair. I wish I had taken advantage of my early-twenties cuteness as much as she is.

“I’m so glad we could do this!” she squawks.

I’m not sure if she mistook my general malaise for post-breakup blues, but I accepted her invitation happily. It’s not like I need a reason to go be social these days.

Caitlyn orders a pretty pink drink. She tosses her hair over her bony shoulder, and I brace myself for a barrage of questions.

“Ugh, Pav is driving me insane. I’m like, kind of thinking about a divorce.”

I put my drink back down on the bar without taking a sip. “Excuse me?” I accidentally lock eyes with a cute brown-haired dude squashed up against us and involuntarily grimace.

“We agreed to have a baby after getting married and now he’s trying to get out of it! Says he likes not having any responsibility and babies are expensive blah blah blah. But he agreed before!”

I mean, I agree with Pav, but I should focus on the task at hand. I shake my head, meeting the eyes of the brunette guy, now sitting a few seats away. I’m going to need more alcohol for this. “So is he saying he never wants a kid or he just wants to wait? You’re so young, you could wait a few years right?”

Caitlyn laughs sharply. “I don’t want to be an old mom, obviously! I’m already twenty-five, you know? But he’s acting like he is totally against kids now.”

Both of our drinks are already drained. I flag down the bartender for more drinks. “Okay. So what are you gonna do? Would you really divorce him over this?”

This is my biggest fear. Except in reverse.

Caitlyn’s mouth opens, a perfect ring of red lipstick, but closes when my phone lights up on the table. “Your mother is calling, do you want to answer? I can wait.”

“Oh no, definitely not. Keep talking!” I flip my phone over.

Over the next hour, neither my gentle probing nor three generously poured drinks have brought any clarity into what the hell Caitlyn is going to do. She doesn’t want to get divorced now because her husband might change his mind, but then if he doesn’t, she’ll be even older and have to start from scratch in finding a baby daddy.

My phone vibrates while she’s explaining how she can’t leave Pavel because she loves him. My concentration slips—now my grandma is calling me. My mom’s mom, Gigi, sweet as can be but always on-again, off-again with her daughter. I flip my phone back over. I’ll text her later. She can’t hear me on the phone in a quiet room, how is she going to hear me in this noisy bar?

“So, what are you going to do?” Let’s wrap this up. I don’t know how I became her go-to for relationship advice, seeing as I am the only single woman in our friend group.

She sighs, shrugs.

“Do you want my advice?” I hazard.

Caitlyn is amazing and deserves happiness. I don’t know if I can help her, but I want to try.

She nods.

“Sit down with Pavel and have a serious conversation. If he doesn’t commit to having babies within a time frame you want, get divorced and try again.”

I can see her biting the inside of her lip, willing me to change my answer and make it easier. “No,” she says. “I can’t. I love him!”

My head shakes. I consider softening the blow, but maybe I’m just putting myself in Pav’s shoes and wouldn’t want someone to stick around waiting on me to want kids. This whole ordeal is bringing up so much for me. The whole ‘I changed my mind and want kids’ thing is what made me wise up and finally leave Logan. Well, that plus him asking for an extra girlfriend to be the one to have the kids. Same difference.

“I’m gonna head out, but Caitlyn, you’re playing a dangerous game, girl.” I stand up too quickly, the tell-tale wobble of a Saturday night. Cute brunette guy from earlier suddenly appears beside me, his hand on my elbow. I’m not sure who is holding up who, but our respective sways have stopped. I jerk my chin toward the door.

I don’t bother to ask his name.

* * *

My mystery man rolls over to my side of the bed, pressing his erection into my hip. I carefully extract myself and shuffle into the bathroom to pee, keeping the lights off. I return to my conqueror (conquest?), who is either pretending to have fallen back asleep or is dead.

I stand next to my bed and shake his shoulder. “Hey, you gotta go,” I whisper.

This is always the worst part.

He bats his eyelashes open, his smile revealing teeth that are just a little too small for his mouth. He is utterly generic in every other way though, short hair the color of peanuts, average height, average build, a faded tattoo of an anchor on his shoulder. He doesn’t look so bad in the morning light, but I’d much prefer to nurse this hangover now. Alone.

He reaches his hand out for me, playfully trying to drag me back into our stinky nest of regret, but years of experience have taught me to stand back further than arm’s reach. Amateur.

“Yeah, it was fun,” I lie. “But I gotta get going.”

Groaning, he sits up, draws his shirt over his head. As he’s pulling his sock onto his right foot, a huge hole in the toe, he glances up at me. “When can we do this again?”

I lied. This is the worst part.

The trick is to be completely honest, something my younger self couldn’t fathom doing, signing myself up for second dates (well, sometimes technically first dates) with men I had no intention of ever thinking of again, texting back and forth for weeks, inventing excuses, waiting for him to lose interest.

“Oh, well, I’m not really interested in dating.”

The older I get, the more accepting they are. We all spent our early twenties looking for someone to tie our anchor to, someone to stick around. At some point along the way, we simultaneously learn that most people you meet an hour before the bar closes probably aren’t going to be keepers. But there’s nothing wrong with a nice fuck.

Well, at least that’s what I tell myself, lest the remorse overtake the pounding headache as my most severe ailment.

Thankfully, he just smiles, not showing teeth, his eyes betraying his feelings. He gives me a peck on the lips and disappears.

* * *

My hangover pins me to the bed, a heavy blanket of shame. My drinking career began the summer I turned sixteen at a family reunion on my dad’s side. My dad poured a dribble of his Crown Royal into my McDonald’s cup and shooed me and the rest of the kids away. I slurped greedily, sticking my tongue out after each swallow of burnt gasoline. The liquid burned my insides, melting away my shyness, leaving a brashness I was unfamiliar with. I ran around the hotel grounds with my cousins, hooting like wild animals. As our cups ran empty, we collapsed in a heap in someone’s room, giggling at our secrets, free of judgment.

When I awoke the next day, I was unbothered by the headache, the weariness.

That was the most fun I’d ever had at a family reunion.

I returned home from that trip to the apartment I lived in with my mom and found a huge ‘Welcome home!’ banner. The banner was a fun surprise, but it’s not like I’d never left her for a week before.

I stood in the foyer, really just a two by two square of linoleum in front of the door, waiting for her to jump out and surprise me. She never did. Instead, I left several messages on her phone over the next hour, increasingly scared. Finally, after hunting through the drawer stuffed with scraps of paper with numbers scrawled on them, I called her boyfriend, Chris.

“Hey, Sierra. Everything all right?”

Chris was nice to me in a clinical, appropriate way, knowing he will never be my father, knowing my mother would eviscerate him if he ever wronged me.

The sun had set long ago, the air in the house stiller than normal.

“Do you know where my mom is? She hasn’t come home today.”

A sports announcer’s voice filled the silence. I heard the faint thwunk of dip spit hitting the bottom of a bottle. “She didn’t tell you where she was going?”

“Uh, no? Where is she going?”

“Last week, she’s been in a, uh, treatment center. S’pose to come home today, guess we got the date wrong.”

“Oh.”

The welcome banner wasn’t even for me.

“Will you be okay by yourself for the night? Want me to drop off some dinner?”

“No, thanks, I’m all right.”

She came home the next morning with a thin paper bracelet buttoned around her wrist but didn’t acknowledge where she had been, or why, or that I had been left alone with no note, no warning.

Mom never knew I had touched a drop of alcohol, not even as I went from drinking once a year, to every month in college, to weekly, twice a week. Sometimes three. I hid the DUI from her successfully, even after my brother told my aunt out of so-called concern. I never order a drink when we dine out together.

Now it’s too late to come clean. I’m afraid that if I go from a fellow teetotaler to a party girl in denial, I will send her spinning off the rails, back into her own addiction.

Sometimes, tucking small parts of myself away and hiding my flaws, my choices, is safer than being truly seen, even by my own mother.

An hour later, I finally check my phone. I have missed seven calls, eighteen texts, one email, all from Mom, and two calls and three texts from Gigi. I roll my eyes and skip the voicemails, opting to hear it from the source instead.

My grandma answers after a million rings. Her hearing has been slowly declining for the better part of the last three decades.

“Sierra, where have you been?”

“Hey Grandma. I was out with a friend. What’s up?”

A huff.

“Your mother is in trouble.”

I adjust the pillows against the wall and lean back. Not very comfortable.

“Okay, what happened?”

“Well, you know her trip to Costa Rica? She was supposed to come home yesterday but they detained her at the airport.”

Ah, yes. This sounds about right. I make the ‘I’m listening’ noises and she continues.

“Apparently she got a face lift while she was there and the immigration officers couldn’t match her face to her passport, so they detained her.”

I laugh. “Sorry, what?”

How fucking good was this facelift that they can’t even tell it’s the same person anymore? I’m not even surprised about the secret facelift (she told me she was going for a Spanish class!). She did the same thing last year when her two-week trip to Turkey began with a round of liposuction. This is the kind of shit she goes into credit card debt for.

“Her face is bandaged and swollen, and they couldn’t confirm her identity. Can you call someone? I haven’t talked to her this morning yet.”

I wonder if Gigi can picture it as clearly as I can—an old, vain lady at the airport trying to pretend like she doesn’t look like she just lost a boxing match, yelling at immigration officers, providing quite an exciting show for the rest of the airport.

“Um, no Gigi, I don’t have anyone I can call. Let me know when you hear from her again.”

I don’t bother to say goodbye, too angry to even be included in this in the first place. What did she want me to do, call the president and ask for him to step in? Fly to Costa Rica and break her out of airport jail?

Pulling the blanket back over my chest, I tuck myself back in. I don’t want to deal with anyone else’s problems right now.

12

At least work is going swimmingly. I like working for Valerie, who says I am a rock star and a natural leader. I guess I kinda am. The team really listens to me, like when I ask them to change the experiment design due to prior analysis and they actually do it. I think MeTime even likes that I host unsanctioned happy hours – I personally work better with people who I’ve split a pitcher of margaritas with, so I can’t be the only one. I still like Nadine, too. But I’m definitely closest to Caitlyn. My work wife. My lunchtime walking partner. My friend.

I sit next to Caitlyn on a huge, plush bus taking the company to Santa Cruz for the annual Beach Party. A Beach Party, you ask? Every year, MeTime carts its entire employee base to, you guessed it, the beach, for a whole day of good, clean, wholesome fun. We all get wristbands for unlimited rides and carnival games on the boardwalk. We have lunch together on a private patio – burgers and fries and lots of beer.

An hour before the buses cart us back to the office, I somehow find myself with the cool kids at a rinky-dink bar just off the boardwalk. Our CEO is buying rounds of shots.

Slightly less wholesome, but I’ll take it.

Trent, my favorite software engineer, slides over to me and bends down to my ear. “Wanna join the real party tonight?” he whispers.

As if there’s any chance in the world I’d say no.

* * *

I jump up from the scratchy hotel carpet and check my reflection in the mirror to make sure I don’t look like the Hulk. I look at a blurry, wrong-looking version of me, the room too dim to see, red scarves draped over the two bedside lamps. My pupils are fucking huge.

A tall, willowy brunette with thick black glasses appears beside me with a stick of gum. “Here, this will help with the clenching.” She breathes the words out, the hum of her breath tickling my eardrums.

There’s cool, and there’s also bring-gum-for-the-side-effects-of-drugs cool. The brunette takes my hand in hers and everyone on the plush mattress scoots around to make room for me. Somehow the annual company Beach Party has ended in a Four Seasons with Eric and Trent from work, as well as the brunette I discover to be Nicole —Eric’s girlfriend—and Trent’s friend Carly.

Everyone is so much cooler than I am. Eric and his platinum hair. Trent, always a fun time, in glittery gold leggings. Nicole and Carly are gorgeous, looking like they came straight off Coachella’s Instagram. I dressed for a day at the beach in baggy gym shorts and a ratty t-shirt over my bikini. Oops.

I catch myself with my hand on Carly’s furry sweater.

Ok, now I get it. Have you ever held a sweet innocent baby kitten and wanted to cry from the softness and the sweetness and cuteness? Same thing, except now you’re holding some girl’s sweater while MDMA rips through all of the serotonin in your brain.

The door opens and a streak of light from the hallway stalks the pile of warm bodies. Trent slides off the thousand-thread count sheets and joins our newcomer by the door, producing a tiny baggie of diamond-shaped tablets from his front pocket.

Trent reappears with our coworker Jeremy, a cute Chinese guy, who, until I witness the pill passing his lips, I would have declared a goody-two-shoes. This cracks me up and my giggle spreads across the room, until we are a cacophony of belly-laughs over nothing.

Eric twists around to pull his phone from his bag on the floor and treats us to music so perfect for the mood I can’t stand it. My breaths deepen, inhaling the promise of happiness, exhaling all of my worries. It’s so freeing, this freedom, this knowledge that I will be okay. Fuck it, I am okay.

Jeremy squeezes onto the bed with us, his left arm ending up pressed against my arm. I run my fingernails down his arm, never knowing how sensitive my nails were. “Is this okay?” I whisper. He nods, no hint of the iris in his dark pupils. Every black hair on his head is completely straight, lifted away from his scalp in every direction.

He turns over to face me. “Let me do you.”

His nails are short and rough, but the lines they draw on my arm send electric currents between my legs. It’s not actually possible to come from an arm rub, is it?

My laughter rings out, loud. This is ridiculous, sitting here with almost strangers, high on molly, doing nothing but rubbing each other. The thought dissipates as quickly as it arrives.

Soon, we’re telling stories about work, other nights out, our families. I have no stories about any wild times in Amsterdam or Vegas, so I keep quiet and smile.

If this is what it’s like, I definitely want to be invited back. I can’t imagine never feeling this happy again.

Eric and Nicole retreat to their own room, leaving the four of us sprawled across the room. Trent and Carly are curled together on the bed, Trent’s fingers raking through Carly’s long black and red hair. Their energy has turned parental, needing sleep desperately but knowing they can’t kick us out of their room while we’re still tripping balls.

A blurry reflection of Jeremy appears in the window, where I stand with my face pressed against the cool, clean glass.

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

He is so nice. What a nice guy.

I nod and follow him out of the room, giving Trent and Carly each a squeeze on the calf as I go. Friendship is so beautiful.

Jeremy leads me down the hall, into the elevator, where the lights are too bright. I bow my forehead against his shoulder, only a few inches higher than mine. The gentle pat on my arm tells me when we’re at the bottom level.

The air is cool, yet I am still perfectly comfortable. Hot, even. He’s walking so close to me.

“How are you doing?”

Fuck, he must know it’s my first time.

I put on my best attempt at tranquility. “I’m really, really good.” It’s so nice of him to ask. “How are you?”

I’ve worked with Jeremy for almost a year, on at least two projects, and we’re walking outside of a ritzy hotel, exchanging pleasantries like we’re distant relatives. Life is funny.

“I’m good,” he says.

Everyone else was so chatty, am I annoying to him?

“It’s fun, huh?”

“Yeah. Does this happen after every company event?”

He pushes his hair away from his face, although it hasn’t moved and isn’t even close to his face.

“Yeah, but other nights too, maybe you will join us again sometime?”

Wow. Two days ago, the girls and I found the coolest dive-y bowling alley and I couldn’t imagine we could possibly have any more fun than we did. And now I’m doing drugs with cool people. Sometimes I feel like I’m dumb with how pleased I am by new experiences. Like, I can’t believe life can still be exciting and surprising. As if, even though I’m only just starting to put myself out there, I’ve already done it all. Huh.

I just nod. Our first real conversation outside of work and I’m already wondering if I could get him into bed. But in, like, a wholesome way. Like in the way where he wants to hang out with me and is super cute and he meets my family, and they don’t make a bunch of racist Chinese jokes and—

Fuck me. I did not expect this crush to come on so hard.

Jeremy hands me a pouch of powdered Gatorade. “This will help tomorrow. Should we call our Ubers?”

I let him direct me, my mind playing me a beautiful movie of him ditching his Uber at the last minute and running after mine, jumping into the car and planting one on me.

I keep my phone in my hands the whole ride home, waiting for something, even though I still can’t see the tiny text on the screen clearly. He’s probably conserving his battery until he gets home safely.

The sun rises as I finally yawn, my body depleted of all the important brain chemicals and energy. Maybe he’ll text me tomorrow.

* * *

Suicide Tuesday: a phenomenon I unfortunately did not learn about until after metabolizing a not-insignificant quantity of MDMA, turns out to be a fair name for it. I get through the day with a lineup of movies that make me cry and a gigantic bag of truffles. I’ve always believed that getting a good cry in via sad movies or scrolling up and down my dad’s ancient Facebook page is an excellent preemptive measure in keeping the darkness from creeping back in.

Tonight’s remedy of choice is a movie about a mother and daughter - I know, I know, real original.

Mom hasn’t spoken to me since getting her new face.

I wonder how she looks.

Her obsession with her looks disgusts me, her inability to neither accept that she is aging, a normal process in life, or that she doesn’t look any younger by dressing like a teenager. I had hoped that I’d be able to skate by with a healthier self-esteem, but my clothes are all one size too small, and I’ve already made my first appointment for Botox, scheduled for next month.

The one-year anniversary of my dad’s death is fast approaching. Is anniversary the correct word? Makes it seem more cheerful of an occasion. His birthday is – would be – next month. I’ve already booked a flight back home to see Grandma Judy, maybe even my mother if she behaves.

I’ll be alone here on the one-year mark, a day I imagine to be much more difficult to get through than this delayed drug-comedown, something I know will repair itself in just a few days after my brain re-ups on goodtime chemicals.

I doubt any of my friends will be able to help.

I can’t blame them, everyone’s parents are alive—most still married—so how are they supposed to relate? Almost all of my shiny, fun California friends met me after Dad died. They don’t know that I’m a recovering basket case, propped up by a newfound fear of solitude and an endless social calendar.

I wish my dad was here to see me now, no longer afraid to look stupid in public, no longer waiting for someone to come rescue me, no longer spending the weekends hiding from life. Alexis insists that I’m the same person, that I’ve always been outgoing, funny, but I have to give credit to my dad, forever gregarious.

Or maybe I just have to show that his death has left me with something.

* * *

Alexis convinces me to go out with her, sensing I could use it. She found this bar a few weeks ago, The Goose, a weird little karaoke spot with enormous lady-geese statues with eyeshadow and little feathered-boobs, strong cheap drinks, and a Karaoke Jockey no older than eighteen. The clientele segregates itself: old men sitting at the bar, the younger crowd awkwardly standing in close circles on the dance floor.

The dance floor also serves as storage. You really have to watch out for that stack of milk crates when you’re getting your party on.

Alexis brings me another vodka-Sprite, the sugar necessary to mask the bottom-shelf acetone they call liquor. “Are we finally going to sing this time?” She wags her fingers toward the binder of song titles.

I groan. “Okay, but I need another shot first!”

All that talk before, how outgoing and brave I am, may have been a bit of an exaggeration.

She puts her glass down on the table next to the jugs of bleach and hurries over to grab a slip of paper and a pen. “Okay,” she huffs breathlessly. “I’ve never done this before, what do we do?”

My eyes widen, hoping she was going to be our brave leader. I’ve sung in public before. Once. At a Halloween event put on by a bingo hall in a tiny town in south Georgia. Not exactly high stakes.

I pluck the pen from her hand. “I Believe in a Thing Called Love?” I ask, already starting to write. I’ve definitely heard her belt this out in the car. I hand the paper to the KJ before I have a chance to chicken out.

“Two ahead a’ya,” he tells us, swooping his brown surfer-boy hair out of his eyes. We obtain and consume two shots of tequila in record time.

Our song comes on, my heart leaping into my throat. Alexis looks equally petrified. The KJ doesn’t even blink as he motions for us to bring the microphones closer to our mouths.

Alexis’ eyes find mine, too afraid to look out into the crowd. I think back to riding in the car with Alexis, driving to the mall or the plant nursery, singing badly, and the rest of the bar patrons are gone. We circle each other on the floor, never breaking eye contact, missing every high note, lyrics tumbling over the fast parts, smiling the whole way through.

Reluctantly, I give my mic back as another set of mid-twenties white girls give us a thumbs up.

Exhilarating.

I follow Alexis into the bathroom for a play-by-play of our performance.

Our shrill laughter bounces off the tiled walls.

“That was so good!” we shriek at each other.

What I mean by this is: ‘Holy fucking shit we are terrible singers, but wow that was fun!’

We squish in front of the lone mirror, taking blurry selfies with our eyes half closed, mid-sentence. I’m so glad she got me out of the house tonight. Maybe I was wrong not to ask for help, I mean, she’s my best friend, right?

My stupid grin turns into a wobbly frown instantaneously. A waterfall of emotions barrels out of me, filling the bathroom with blubbery cries. “I just miss him so much,” I wail, Alexis’s sniffles joining mine.

Her long, spidery fingers come up to wipe the tears from her face, then mine. “I know, I’m sorry,” she croaks.

My pain is reflected in her eyes. I underestimated this.

It’s like, as soon as I feel a little better, the grief comes roaring back in. A woman enters the bathroom but I can’t stop myself.

“I just can’t do this anymore.”

We spend the rest of the night crying in the weird bathroom. I hope this is another preemptive measure.

13

On Grandma Judy’s birthday, I skip my usual walk-and-talk with the girls at lunch and post up on a bench outside instead. Today is her birthday, two weeks before Dad’s.

“Hello!”

Even though I call or visit on every birthday, every Mother’s Day, every major Christian holiday (can’t let granny know I’m a Hell-bound Atheist), she sounds surprised to hear my voice, like getting a call from her granddaughter is a rare occasion. I don’t know when she lowered her expectations, but I hope it’s not my fault.

“Happy birthday! What do you have planned for today?”

“Why, thank you! We’re so old we just don’t do too much these days. I’m playin’ bridge tomorrow though.”

I wait a beat. Either the flowers I sent haven’t arrived, or she’s forgotten about them. I don’t want to get old.

“Oh good, that sounds fun,” anything that gets her away from the house, a hoarder’s paradise, and her slightly senile husband sounds fun. “I can’t wait to come back home, maybe I can take you out for lunch?”

She hems and haws at me. I can count the number of times my family went out to eat at a restaurant during my childhood. My grandparents both grew up poor and never could stomach paying menu prices. They keep not one, but two additional freezers in their garage to store meat purchased on clearance from Kroger and cakes baked months in advance of birthday parties.

“We’ll see,” she chirps. “Maybe I’ll even take you out to lunch!”

“No, no, it’s your birthday! I can’t wait, only two more weeks until I get there.”

As if I’d ever let my darling grandmother do any more for me than she already does.

She lowers her voice. “Don’t tell anyone, but there’s finally some good news making our way.”

I pause, so curious, waiting for her to say more. Who does she think I am going to tell? Alexis? Strangers? Jesus?

I’m unsuccessful in getting any details from her. She’ll probably forget what she was talking about by the time my plane lands. I message my aunt Cindy to remind her I’ll be in Atlanta soon and would greatly appreciate not being left alone with my geriatric grandparents all week.

My finger hovers over Mom’s contact as I decide whether to tell her I’ll be home or not. I hate that I even have to think about this. Don’t most people just automatically assume that their visits back home will include their parents? I’m so tired of listening to the same depressing shit over and over. It’s so dramatic. But then again, how fucked up is it that I’m going all the way across the country to see family and not seeing my mom? I finally decide against messaging her as I’m about to get off this bench and get back inside.

“Hey.”

Behold! My newest obsession stands before me, although truthfully, I have already come to terms with the fact that just because Jeremy was nice to me once, it doesn’t mean he is also trying to get into my pants. It might even be better this way, having a nice friend in my life, pleasant to look at, without any concern of tanking our friendship or finding myself with another good-boy-goes-bad.

“Hey.”

See? I am so casual.

“Were you going to plan another Salty Bitches night soon?”

My packed schedule, the company party, and the whole death-versary thing have been keeping me busy. I look up at Jeremy, the sunlight behind his head like a halo, also blinding me. “I don’t have the next one planned, no. Why, you want to come?”

His laugh is higher pitched than I remember, more of a giggle than a chuckle.

“Yeah, I was just wondering if you knew, so I could make sure I could make it. Will you let me know?”

Of course, Jeremy, anything for you.

So casual.

* * *

I call it ‘Tequila, Lime, and Salty Bitches: The Saltiest’ and expand the invite list from ten to twenty. I wouldn’t normally go out drinking the night before a flight but, after extensive back-and-forth with Jeremy, this was the only night he’s free for a while.

I lied about not wanting our newfound friendship to turn into anything more. I am crushing hard.

Jeremy doesn’t sit next to me. My end of the table, specially set up for us outside on the patio, is completely separate from his, laughter erupting from pockets in the group like boiling water.

Not once do I catch him looking back at me when I look over at him. Nadine calls me out on being quieter than usual, but my deflection is successful—some excuse about not wanting to be hungover for tomorrow.

So I wait.

As people leave, they promise to pay me tomorrow once I calculate everyone’s portion of the bill. I try to be fair and charge people by the drink but, after so many pitchers of margaritas, I cannot be held responsible to keep an accurate count. I figure any extra I make, plus the credit card points, are a fair trade for organizing and paying.

The empty seats are filled by the other end of the table, gravity pulling them to me.

We’re down to six: me, Nadine, Valerie, Caitlyn, Trent, and Jeremy.

Our server swings by. “Two more pitchers?”

Everyone looks at me. Do I get more, risking the worst flight of my life? Or do I call it a night, losing precious time with Jeremy?

“We’ll take the check,” Jeremy says, his credit card already in the hands of the server.

I stumble. “Oh, you don’t have to do that, I’ll get it!”

But it’s too late. I have been unseated from my throne.

Trent claps his hands together, his eyes looking a bit red and glassy. “Let’s go next door to St. Andrew’s!”

Again, all eyes on me, the self-elected leader of a group of adults who have all proclaimed “I’m never drinking again!” and gone out drinking that same night, at least once in their lives.

I shrug and give a nod. Who am I to deny my people what they desire?

* * *

St. Andrew’s Bar is dark and cold. Such a dive. The ceiling is situated abnormally low over the room of hightops, but the back of the bar opens into a cavernous space with a pool table and a couple booths. Our bodies are warm from sitting outside for so long, but the sweaters and jackets appear after a few minutes. Trent buys the first round, white liquor for the girls; dark beer for the guys. Jeremy slides into the booth next to me and my heart skips several beats.

“How’s work going?”

I’m a pretty talkative drunk but I don’t want to overshare. “It’s pretty good, I guess! I really like Valerie as a manager and obviously I’m enjoying all the cool people I work with.”

Proud of myself for not mentioning how awkward it is to see Conor at work.

Jeremy keeps eye contact the whole time I talk, like this is the most important conversation of our lives. “Yeah, I feel the same way about the cool coworkers.”

Does he mean me? Does he mean… me??

I let the ice melt, extending the life of my drink, until Trent remembers to be a responsible adult and leaves to go eat dinner, Nadine following soon after so her own beau doesn’t feel left out.

Caitlyn is in the middle of a story about her polyamorous sister-in-law and her extremely Catholic family when Valerie gets a work email and leaves the three of us.

“So, what’s the deal?” Caitlyn quizzes Jeremy and me, looking between us.

I fucking knew it. There is something going on between us! Even Caitlyn can tell!

“What do you mean?” he asks, smiling. Is that a twinkle in his eye?

But Caitlyn only smiles at me, her eyes closed for so long I’m afraid she’s fallen asleep.

I gingerly pull the half-full drink from her clutch. “Well, we should get you home soon, Cait.” I can’t believe luck is finally going my way. “Let’s just go pee real fast and then we can get you a ride.”

I grin at Jeremy as I drag Caitlyn to the bathroom, the blind leading the blind. I pee in record time, then knock on the other stall to move her along.

We exit the bathroom together, Caitlyn somehow miraculously supporting herself.

Our table has been bussed. No sign of Jeremy. I call Caitlyn an Uber, then one for myself. I’m crushed.

* * *

The humidity presses against my chest the moment I step outside of the plane like it’s mad at me for leaving. The air is foreign, a warning to go back where I came from.

It’s easy to forget I came from here.

I move through the airport like a ghost, riding the train to the rental cars, watching families get off at every stop before mine. The drive from the airport to my dad’s —my grandparents’—is the only drive I know by heart, no GPS required.

Grandma Judy and Grandpa Wally meet me at the top of their driveway and begin fussing over me immediately. Do I want a nap? Am I hungry? Would I like some apple juice, we just picked up a case from Costco and there’s a cold one in the fridge now, maybe I can make you a sandwich to go with it?

“Happy belated birthday,” I say as I produce a small box from a pocket in my bag.

She loves any kind of jewelry.

“Sierra.”

She doesn’t say anything else, but I know what she means. She means ‘thank you’ and ‘I miss you but I don’t want to make you feel bad for going off to live your life’. At least that’s what I want to believe she means.

I say nothing, hugging her again, her back slowly curving into a question mark. It’s easier to notice the differences when you only see someone twice a year, the blonde hairs turning gray, the bruises popping up, the clutter on the table doubling in size.

“Cindy is coming by later for dinner, I made fried chicken and potatoes.”

Grandpa Wally appears beside us, a bottle of apple juice in his hand. Their love is suffocating.

I drink up every drop, commit each kindness to memory—a life raft I’ll call upon one day. I hope it works better next time.

* * *

Grandma Judy opens a bottle of red wine before dinner. Her bony fingers drop one ice cube into either of our glasses, something I believe is illegal back in California. She wipes the dust off a plastic chair in the garage for me, the shade providing no relief from the oppressive heat. I forgot what it was like to be sticky for four straight months.

“I have some news to share before Cindy gets here. Can you keep a secret?”

“I can,” I tell her.

Is she leaving her husband of fifty-five years? Coming out as a lesbian? Moving to California?

“Your grandfather and I are about to come into some money.” Her voice is conspiratorial, but her body is focused on getting her wine glass to her mouth.

“Oh yeah?”

The ice in my wine waters it down too much, turning the cheap red wine into a tasteless, dull liquid. I will have to buy her some better wine.

“We’ve won the lottery!” she shouts, her secret finally free.

Fear crawls down my spine, leaving shivers as it goes.

“Oh, wow,” I hear myself say in a long, monotonous drawl. Fuck. What do I do? I’ve never really questioned a family member before – Mom did not respond well to that. I clear my throat. “I didn’t know you were playing the lottery!”

She’s still focused on drinking her wine. Her hands twitch suddenly, a burgundy bloom spreading on her white top.

“Oh, shoot.” She dabs at the spot with a napkin, but the damage has been done. This happens on a daily basis. Abandoning her efforts, she turns to me with a devilish grin. “We weren’t. We got a letter in the mail. We’ve won five million dollars. It will be delivered by a courier as soon as we pay the taxes on it! The agency calls me every day, Mr. Miller, to check on me and help with the process.”

This information sinks down over me, tugging my forced smile down into a frown, dropping my heart into my stomach. It is immediately clear to me that this is far worse than I can even imagine. And there will be nothing I can do about it.

I will remember this day for the rest of my life, another division of time. Before Dad died, after Dad died.

Before the scam, after the scam.

My efforts to probe are met with hostility.

“You know, Cindy doesn’t believe me. She says it’s a scam,” the last word pronounced with such disgust that it stops me from agreeing.

“Well, we’ll just have to see.” I’m lying to the person I least want to lie to. The only person I could commiserate with. The last sane person I had.

I excuse myself and retreat back to my father’s room, turning on the lamps so the glow-in-the-dark ceiling will be bright tonight. Boxes are tucked into corners, his belongings separated into donate or trash piles. His books are gone, dusty skylines left behind on the shelves.

The bedspread’s scent now reminds me of this house, not him. I wrap myself in it and sit on the bed. A phone rings somewhere else in the house, but the tiny rectangular caller ID next to his bed shows Miller, A.

We would lay on this bed, Dad, me, Brian, and watch the tiny TV on top of his dresser. Sometimes we’d play PlayStation. I was never very good.

Anytime the phone would ring, Dad would jump up from the bed, checking the caller ID. If it was a name he didn’t recognize, he’d answer, playing along with the telemarketer for as long as possible, ending the calls with a “Don’t call here again!” every time.

It drove me crazy, these long conversations during our TV show. It didn’t even stop the calls from coming —at least one a day, often more. It was embarrassing to watch this man waste his time, time he could spend with his children instead, talking to strangers on the phone.

But now, it’s too late. There’s no one left here to save Grandpa and Grandma Judy. Dad died and the vultures swooped in.

The voices of Cindy and her family bring me back to reality. I wipe my face and go say hello.

14

I help my grandma set the table, doling out nine plates, nine sets of silverware, nine carefully folded paper napkins. Grandma and Grandpa sit at opposite ends of the table. Cindy, her husband Randy, and their fourteen-year old daughter Lucy fill the seats on Grandma’s left. Then we have Grandpa Wally. An unspoken decision places me in my dad’s spot next to my grandpa. Brian and his girlfriend Ana are next.

Grandpa Wally gives the blessing. Brian revives our childhood tradition of squeezing the other’s hand as tightly as possible. You can’t say anything, because then the adults will know you were goofing off instead of thanking Jesus for this meal, even though it was your grandmother who spent hours slaving over a stove.

I feel like a celebrity when I’m back in Georgia, my life suddenly interesting. The upgrade from background character to star of the show is an ego boost and uncomfortable. I wish Dad could be hearing this.

“How much is a gallon of gas out there, ten dollars?”

“Do you bring your lunch to work? What do you mean, they give you food?”

“I bet the ganja out there sure beats the stuff out here, huh?”

After I was expelled from the tenth grade for pot, I was sent to an alternative school for a semester, a county-wide collection of miscreants and education standards even lower than those of the Georgia public school system. This was not received well by my family.

I could feel the shift in how Grandma Judy saw me.

“You’ll be ok, Sierra, just keep your chin up and the Lord will carry you through this.”

Every family dinner, every holiday, every half-impressive achievement was met with jokes: Was I eating so much because I’m stoned? Do I make more money at my fancy corporate job or slinging pot?

My protests that no, I’m actually not a pothead, I didn’t even smoke weed for ten years after getting expelled (California changed that though), fell on deaf ears. Truth couldn’t get in the way of some harmless joking. The ‘harmless jokes’ built a wall between me and my family, made me an outcast. The ‘harmless joking’ calcified my doubt and I tried to accept that I would never amount to anything.

Throughout the years, when Randy told a story one Christmas about finding some old weed in Cindy’s underwear drawer, or when Brian hinted that he sure would be interested in seeing what medicinal marijuana gummies were like, I was pissed. The teasing had been too much; the only person on the other side to tell me they’re proud of me, I’m doing great, was Dad. The other outcast in the family.

Eventually I realized that maybe they were just jealous of a different life, no apparent family obligations, a “fun” job, legal weed. They didn’t know that life in California was the same as life in Georgia. You wake up, you go to work, you go home, you pass the days with friends and travel and crying in bed, you go to sleep.

But I don’t need to let them know that.

“Oh yes,” I say, turning to Randy. “The weed is excellent. You just go into a store, pick out what you want, boom. We got gummies, cookies, brownies, vapes, you name it. They even have THC drinks!”

The adults chuckle. Lucy looks at me like I’m an alien.

My newfound fame carries me through dinner, much to the chagrin of former golden-child Brian. He and Ana leave to go feed their dogs as soon as the dishes are cleared from the table.

My cousin disappears and a bottle of wine is opened in the living room.

Cindy stands up from her seat on the floor. “Sierra, will you help me serve dessert?”

I follow her back into the kitchen with my wine glass. She pulls a cake from the fridge, chocolate icing on butter cake, my favorite. The tip of the knife hovers over the center of the cake, a threat.

“Has she said anything to you about a lottery?”

“Actually, yeah, she told me yesterday.”

Cindy’s lips form a thin, flat line. The knife plunges into the cake. “What has she told you?”

I scoop the first piece onto a small plate, the Franciscan Apple set they use for every celebration. “Not much, only that she’s getting like, five million but has to pay taxes?”

The second piece is ready.

“Well, you know it’s a scam. I don’t know how much of this to tell you, but you’re an adult now so I guess it’s fine… They’ve already paid these Jamaican guys a hundred thousand dollars.”

Jesus.

Cindy flares her elbow from her body and nudges me to get a plate for the third slice of cake. I am impressed she can cut a cake so cleanly whilst her mother is hemorrhaging money.

“We’ve already blocked their phone numbers but they just call back on new ones. Now Mom won’t tell us anything or check her phone.”

This explains the conversation the other day in the garage. Cindy doesn’t just not believe her, she is trying to stop the whole thing.

“Can you be on the lookout for anything like documents or receipts? We don’t know how much more she’s going to give them.”

I nod, wondering if it’s too late to go back to being treated like a kid. “That’s it? Can’t we take control of their bank account or something?”

Cindy turns to me with a look. “We’re doing what we can for now.”

I pick up two plates of cake to bring to my grandparents. I feel simultaneously angry that Cindy isn’t raising Cain to stop the scam and hollow inside. Like, what am I supposed to do here? I’m not a kid anymore, but I sure feel like one – helpless, powerless.

The worst part is that I don’t feel responsible. I’ll admit it. I’m probably not going to do anything about this scam.

And I feel fucking terrible about that.

* * *

Furtive whispering in the kitchen wakes me up. It stops as soon as I turn the bedside lamp on.

I join my grandparents at the table, the extra chair put away in the garage, back to one chair per side.

We run through the standard morning chatter. Yes I slept well, yes the temperature was fine, yes I know where the extra blankets are, yes I know I can use a night light if I need to find the bathroom even though it is mere feet away from my bed and I have been sleeping in this house for literally my entire life.

“When are you planning to visit your mom?” Grandma Judy asks, gently. She’s dealt with Mom longer than I have.

“I haven’t told her that I’m here,” I admit quietly, steeling myself for the scolding to follow.

She purses her lips. “Well, it might be nice if you gave her a call. Maybe she will want to see you.”

Her soothing, southern drawl takes all of the bite out of the idea. Nothing sounds that bad when it’s delivered in a sugar sweet coating.

I send Mom a text: Hello! I’m in Atlanta, last minute trip. Are you free for dinner tonight? Or lunch? What about tomorrow?

I’m not sure if I want her answer to be yes or no.

Mom replies while I’m halfway through the grilled cheese Grandma Judy made for me. I typically try to avoid breakfasts that consist solely of bread, cheese, and butter, but I can’t bring myself to reject anything Grandma offers.

Mom says, sure i can do dinner. Will u pick me up at 6?

I wipe a glob of delicious, plastic-y Velveeta cheese off my plate with my finger and pop it into my mouth. “Looks like I’m having dinner with my mom tonight, is that ok? I won’t be gone too long.”

My grandparents smile at me.

“Oh, that’s wonderful Sierra.” Grandma presses her hand to her heart, so touched that a mother is willing to eat one meal with her daughter.

Grandpa Wally nods his head.

* * *

Grandma Judy asks me to drive her around to run some errands, which I agree to immediately. My friends are all at work and I can’t take another day of watching the news with the volume all the way up.

Our first stop is Total Wine, where Grandma Judy selects six bottles of her cheap red wine. I manage to pay with my credit card before she realizes what is happening. I wave off her appreciation and awe, a little sad that a relatively small gesture is having such a large impact on her.

She wises up, though, and successfully prevents me from buying her groceries.

By the time we’re through with her errands, I’ve had all of the snail’s-pace browsing of stores I can take. Grandpa Wally helps me unload the trunk, both of us nervous the other is going to drop something. I then retreat to my room under the guise of a nap.

I emerge from the room at four o’clock after watching a few episodes of House on my phone. I bring a glass of water out to the garage, where I find my grandma and her mug of wine.

She starts talking about Grandpa Wally, how old he’s getting. “His mind is going fast, I can tell. He tells me the same thing over and over again.”

(He’s been telling me the same story for years. It must be real bad if even she is noticing.)

“Where are you going to dinner tonight with your mom?”

“I hadn’t planned that far yet. Maybe the Italian place we went last time.”

I tried planning in advance for Christmas last year, but Mom is always on some fad diet or just really wants one thing, so I don’t bother anymore.

My phone buzzes on the plastic chair between us being used as a table. “This is her now,” I say, as if I need to warn my grandma.

Sorry but i can’t meet tonight. Too sad. Hope u will understand.

I give a dry laugh. “Well, guess we aren’t going anywhere. She canceled.”

Grandma frowns. Her lipstick is smeared on her chin, crimson half-moons decorating the rim of her mug.

“Does that mean you’d like a glass of wine?”

My chin wobbles. “Yeah,” is all I can get out before the muscles of my face drop and I collapse in on myself.

* * *

The glow of the stars on the ceiling isn’t bright enough to light the room. I lay in the dark on top of the sheets, letting the green shapes in and out of focus. I hear a whoosh from my phone, and I read the email immediately, like I was subconsciously waiting for this all along.

Dear Sierra, she begins. The white glow of the screen is bright and I have to squint. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong in my life. I have been trying to think all day about what I’ve done to you that made you hide your trip to Atlanta from me. Did you think about how that would make me feel? You don’t care about me, or you would have told me you were coming. I am just an afterthought to you. I have let others treat me poorly my whole life and I’m not going to allow you to do so either.

I feel… bad. No, I didn’t think about how that would feel for Mom, to find out your daughter is actually in the same city as you, a rare occurrence, and not be aware of it. Should I have not told her at all, hoped she never found out that once I came home and she never even knew? Short of going back in time to tell her in advance, I don’t know what’s right.

It’s like playing a game to which you don’t know the rules… and the rules keep changing.

One night, I came home from work with my high school boyfriend Kurt. He had just bought a motorcycle and offered to buy me a helmet if I went to driving lessons so I could drive his bike too. I had been riding on my dad’s bike since I was little, so I was extra excited that now I could ride by myself, too. We told my mom the exciting news, a big deal for a couple of nineteen-year-olds.

Mom peeked out the window at his bike in the driveway but didn’t say a word. She didn’t say anything the next day either, as I called her maybe ten times from the motorcycle driving class, nauseated with fear and anxiety. I couldn’t get the damn motorcycle to do what I wanted it to do. Her disregard for my panicked messages and voicemails piled on top of my nerves until I left class early, too sick to continue. My dreams were crushed. I was not going to be a motorcycle girl after all.

She watched me bring a pink motorcycle jacket, gloves, and a helmet out of my room so Kurt could try to return them and recoup some of the cost.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” I plead, my eyes pink and swollen, my skin sallow from lack of sleep.

She considered me then, distraught and defeated. Low enough to get back into her good graces.

“How am I supposed to feel when you come barging into my house with all of this money and, look at me, I’m buying a motorcycle and I get to do whatever I want! When I never got to do anything for myself in my WHOLE LIFE!”

As she shouted at me, her words landed on me like lit cigarettes, a thousand tiny burns searing my flesh. I didn’t mean to rub it in her face. I didn’t know she had never been able to do anything fun.

But I knew there was no use in arguing with her. By now, I was already starting to build my defense. Each burn on my skin, protection against next time. The thing about scar tissue though, is you can still feel the pain. I would be careful, from now on, not to share too much, not to make myself sound too happy.

If she’s sad, I’m sad.

She will never understand why I’d be hesitant to tell her that I’m coming home. She will never understand why I don’t want to stay with her when I’m here, why it’s so exhausting to be around her and only get attention if I talk about sad things. My new friendships or my busy social life or the weekend trips I can now afford to take will never be applauded by my mother.

They will only be a reflection of what she doesn’t have.

I put my phone on silent and place it back on the side table. The glowing stars still burn overhead.

I want to go home, I think, and I realize it’s not here anymore. I stand up on my dad’s bed to peel a star from the ceiling and slip it in my suitcase. He’ll have to come home with me.

15

Grandma Judy sends me home with an envelope of pictures of my dad as a teenager, a glass vase he found at a garage sale one year, and a plastic bag with ice packs and Tupperware crammed full of mashed potatoes and a pork chop. The TSA agent makes me unpack the plastic bag and show her the food. I embarrassingly admit that my grandma would not let me leave her house without it.

The agent smiles. “I know how that goes - grandmas!” and sends me on my way.

Nausea roils around my gut as I put three thousand miles between us again. Too far for the cries for help to reach my ears, close enough to swoop in occasionally to keep myself in high regard. The flight attendant tells us to put our own masks on before we help others around us.

The plane deposits me back in California, where I’m still not acclimated to the cool summer nights, where my problems exist solely in my head.

I wait for Alexis’s dark blue SUV to roll up to the curb and put my luggage in the back seat. She easily pulls away from the curb and enters the highway, something that would take patience and a healthy amount of defensive driving to do in Atlanta.

“Well, how was it?” she asks.

“Let me tell you!”

I am jovial, upbeat. My mother’s last-minute cancellation turns into another chronicle in The Mom Files. Exhibit 2A: The Email. Alexis laughs along, never indicating that I might be at fault too, that it’s weird to even consider whether you should tell your mother when you’re visiting.

“Yeah, that sounds like your mother all right,” Alexis says.

I don’t tell her about Grandma Judy and the lottery. That bit’s not funny.

* * *

“So, Sierra, tell me what’s been going on with you,” Daniela purrs at me.

Yes, obviously I scheduled a therapy appointment after that email from Mom.

I give Daniela the play-by-play, as factually as possible. “Yes, I know it was wrong to not tell her ahead of time that I’d be in Georgia and no I didn’t really think how that would make her feel. So now I feel bad, but I also feel like I shouldn’t feel that bad because Mom’s a huge jerk to me anyways! It’s not like she considers my feelings before saying and doing things!”

My face feels flush. I feel like I’m in trouble. Again.

Daniela finishes jotting down her note and smiles at me. “What’s the worst part about this situation, to you, right now?”

I pause.

For a long time. Come on Sierra, you only get fifty minutes a session.

“I feel like I’m doing the best I can and it will never be enough and I will never get that maternal love that I crave so desperately and I don’t even know why I want it because Mom isn’t even that nice to me. So, yeah. The worst part is that no matter what I do, I’ll never really have a mom.” I feel that in my chest. Still, it feels good to finally acknowledge that I don’t have the mother I want. Or need.

Daniela nods along. “It can be disappointing, but also a relief to make that realization. Now we can work on giving that maternal love to ourselves.”

Uh, ok.

Daniela continues, “Let’s step back into your visit to Georgia and pretend it was your grandparents who you didn’t give notice of your trip. Pretend you hurt their feelings in a similar way. What would your perfect, ideal mom say to you to help you?”

“Hm. I would want her to say, ‘Sierra, you hurt their feelings. We are all human and make mistakes. It might be nice of you to do something special to make it up to them.’”

“Great! So your ideal mother is telling you that we all make mistakes and that it’s okay. Your real mom isn’t going to tell you this, is she?”

“Never.”

“Then it’s our job to tell it to ourselves. You can comfort yourself like this. It’s called ‘re-parenting’ and it can be a way for you to feel that parental love from yourself.”

“So instead of beating myself up for days, I can just say nice things to myself and move on? Really. We all make mistakes. My relationship with my mom is uh, complicated, so it’s not exactly easy to navigate. I really am doing my best, I think.”

“Exactly.”

How novel. I like this ‘re-parenting’ idea. I’ll do anything to get Mom’s voice out of my head.

* * *

Valerie intercepts me as soon as I step into the office. The teams were updated while I was out and Eric is my new manager. Someone already moved my computer for me.

“I tried to keep you, I really did,” she tells me, chewing the inside of her lip. “Eric has a good team, you’ll enjoy it.”

I give her a tight-lipped smile, looking between my old, chatty team and Eric’s quad of silent software engineers and exactly zero women.

“Yeah, of course,” I say.

My goodbye to the team is dramatic, waving frantically as I make the twenty-foot commute to my new location. I pretend I can’t see Conor, his desk now in my line of sight.

No one else from my team is in the office yet. While I’m reorganizing all of the junk I’ve accumulated over the last year, someone finally approaches our section and drops a bag next to their desk. “Hey! You’re on my team now!” Jeremy says.

I slowly move my hand, holding a plastic triceratops, behind my back. “Uh, yep!” Great response, Sierra, well done.

Jeremy sits down and opens a drawer, rooting around the bottom of a thick layer of clutter. He produces a tiny T-Rex wearing a tutu. “I’m glad to have you here,” he says, handing me the T-Rex.

I can feel myself blush all the way down to my toes.

* * *

I soon discover that Eric—while a fun guy to party with—is kinda difficult to work with. Team meetings are tense; now that I’ve gained some confidence at work, I stand up for myself (and the team) way more than I ever have.

Eric is projecting some graphs to the team, the end of the year rapidly approaching. “We should set our goal to be three times our revenue from this year, and then figure out how to make that happen.”

The rest of the room remains silent, the software engineers scrolling through their laptops, Jeremy scribbling down notes. I didn’t know he was a lefty.

I clear my throat. “Increasing revenue by three times is going to be too hard if we don’t even have an idea of our budget for next year. Can we try estimating our projects for next year and their impact and go from there?”

“No, we should set high goals to motivate ourselves to meet them.” Eric clicks the mouse, the screen flashing to show some other big numbers.

“Not if we’re just going to set ourselves up for failure!” I protest.

Jonathan, a salt-and-pepper programmer who’s been on this team for three years, closes his laptop and looks between me and Eric, me and Eric.

“We can estimate what our projects will do and then add some percentage increase as a stretch target,” I continue.

Eric clicks forward in his presentation. “Can you just shut up?”

I’m out of the conference room in less than a second. As soon as I burst through the front door, Jeremy is right there behind me, shuffling to catch up to me.

He calls after me, “Sierra, wait!”

But I am a slow, huffy tornado, unable to be stopped by even my schoolgirl crush.

I reach my destination and begin pacing on the sidewalk. Jeremy falls in step beside me, silently.

“Who does he think he is?” I ask, throwing my hands up.

“He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Jeremy offers gently.

My eyes narrow, taking in the imposter next to me. Did I get it wrong? Is he actually not all that nice?

“How does it look when the boss, Eric, tells the only female on the team, me, to shut up? You don’t even tell your friends to shut up. Why is it okay to say it to me?” I stubbornly hold back the angry tears burning in my eyes.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s super shitty to say that. It’s hard to work with friends.”

He sits down on the curb, sighing. “Actually, not many people know this, but I’m changing teams because of that.”

“Because you are friends with Eric?”

“Actually, I live with him.”

I join him on the curb. “Oh?”

“Yeah. And like, we’re on the same team so we just talk about work literally nonstop, even at home, and it just really gets to me, you know? So I asked to switch teams so we can just go back to being friends.”

It’s difficult to resist the urge to embrace him. “I didn’t know that, I’m sorry.”

Somehow it’s always worse when happy people are sad, unleashing the secret that there’s no hope for any of us.

But also, how did we go from me being pissed to Jeremy talking about his feelings?

I stand up and extend a hand to him. Eric opens the door just as Jeremy extends his hand, static electricity leaping from his fingers to mine, jump-starting the fluttering in my heart again.

I yank my hand away.

“I wanted to apologize, Sierra. That was super unprofessional of me. I really do value your input. Will you please join us again?”

I stare at Eric, appraising whether or not he actually feels bad. He maintains eye contact the whole time. He’s deadass serious.

I arch an eyebrow. “I assume you don’t need me to tell you how bad it is to undermine the only woman on your team. Let alone anyone on the team. Right?”

Eric nods. He hasn’t broken eye contact yet.

“Cool. In the future, I’m happy to discuss any disagreements we have at work in a respectful manner. I know you probably have more context than I do, so maybe you’re totally right in setting the goals so high, but you still gotta be nice to us. Sound good?”

“You got it. I’m sorry again - will you accept my apology?”

I nod, my blood pressure back to normal levels. Jeremy gives me the smallest smile and follows us back inside.

* * *

Friday finds me and Alexis in the bathroom of The Goose, touching up our lipstick before our names are called to sing, once again, I Believe in a Thing Called Love. I’ve convinced the stragglers from happy hour to join us—the usuals: Nadine, Valerie, Caitlyn; Eric (perhaps making amends), and some girls from HR I barely know (looking uncomfortable). I expect they’ll be gone by the time my song comes on.

And of course, Jeremy.

Getting moved to Eric’s team might have been the best thing that ever happened to me. Every Friday, Jeremy brings me a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. (He brings the other early bird on the team one too, but I know it’s so it doesn’t look too suspicious). He asks me for my opinion on his projects. My flirting is well-received, I think, even though Jeremy sure is a lot shyer in the office compared to non-work-sanctioned events.

I blot my lips with a square of toilet paper, leaving behind a tiny red O. I turn around in front of the mirror, yanking my jeans up, hoping to transfer the attention from my sweaty face to my ass.

Alexis carefully sucks on the straw of her drink and bats her eyelashes at me preening in the mirror. “He liiiikes you!” she sings, then dissolves into kissy faces.

My mouth shifts around, two red worms wiggling around, as I fail to stifle a grin. “No he doesn’t.”

But I see it too. His attentiveness to both me and my friends, the way he squeezes between large men at the bar to order drinks for us, his willingness to endure drunk white girls screeching nineties pop songs.

“Ask him out,” she says, her eyes, partially obscured by her overgrown bangs, wide with excitement.

“I can’t,” I pout, followed by a theatrical sigh. “You saw what happened last time I dated a coworker!”

(Nothing really happened. I just feel so awkward around Conor. Still.)

Alexis shrugs at me. “So quit.”

There’s no time to argue with her—the KJ calls our names.

* * *

After our performance—maybe our best yet—two bachelorette parties come in and the energy turns chaotic. I drag Alexis to the dancefloor to dance, the crowd boosting our confidence. Only Eric and Jeremy remain, talking to each other at the edge of the dance area, near the hamper.

Alexis spins over to them, beckoning them to join us, casting an invisible fishing line to reel them in. Eric, needing no further persuading, begins his half-jump, half-flail dance immediately. Jeremy looks at me, his expression too somber for the occasion.

“Come on!” I mouth, waving him toward us.

Without so much as a smile, he breaks into dance, feet kicking in every direction, far more gracefully than I expected. The small crowd of women send up a “Woo!” and I have to join him.

Jeremy’s hands are on my hips—my hips!—but they’re not pulling me closer, just holding me within his orbit while he bops along to the beat. Suddenly I’m too close to him, close enough to see the tiniest bit of sweat beginning to bead up on his forehead. My heart is pounding. He turns his head as if to see who is watching and his hands fall away from my body. He finds his way back to the edge of the dancefloor to tip back the last of his whiskey ginger.

I can still feel the warmth from his hands on me as I watch him gesture to Eric, his thumb jutting to the door. Eric looks confused, but waves goodbye and follows Jeremy outside.

I turn back to Alexis finishing her drink.

“Okay,” she breathes, “let’s go home. I am so drunk.”

I tuck my tail between my legs and follow her outside to call Seth to pick us up.

* * *

Drama at work. Crushes on coworkers. Nearly all of my friends are from MeTime. My raise this year is mediocre. Am I too comfortable at work? I know I jokingly called it a cult when I first joined MeTime, but it really is starting to feel a bit incestuous.

I’m not mad about the Eric-telling-me-to-shut-up thing. I can see that he really does like having me on the team – he even changed our team’s goals to be less aggressive after we continued our discussion. But it did kick out some thoughts that maybe I’m a big fish in a small pond. Yes, it’s nice to feel really powerful and smart and capable at work, but MeTime is small. There’s no way for me to get promoted into any higher roles. We have less than 30,000 subscribers. I’m not exactly solving the most difficult problems here.

So my job search begins.

I scour job postings for senior data analyst roles in the Bay Area. Preferably at a tech company so there’s some structure and the latest analysis tools available. I’d also like a nice raise, thanks.

Eric doesn’t notice my frequent disappearances to take phone calls or the influx of sick days I take, but Jeremy does. He whispers, “Be careful,” as he passes by my desk, and the attention only motivates me further.

The interviews are grueling. I spend weeks talking about myself and my many talents, only to be turned out time and time again, or worse, offered a salary 30% lower than what I make now.

By the time the tech giant Omega emails me for a phone screen, I’ve taken thirty-four calls, eight technical phone screens, and used four sick days for on-site interviews—including two in the same day, once. The posting is for a senior data analyst position on the subscriptions team. It sounds perfect for me.

I tell myself that if this doesn’t pan out, I’ll just take a break. What’s another three months?

The interview is on-site at the ridiculous Omega campus. Omega seems more cult-y than MeTime, with the amenities designed to literally keep you at work all day – breakfast, lunch, and dinner in free cafeterias; laundry rooms; enormous gyms with super fancy equipment. But the interviewers seem totally normal. And smart. I breeze through the sections on programming and experiment design, but trip up for a moment on some business-y type questions. I give myself a B+ for my performance.

The recruiter sets up a call with me for the following Monday. I send out a message to Caitlyn: call at 2pm. Meet me outside at 2:30 to comfort me! Then slip out of a meeting early to pace the sidewalk yet again.

I end the call just as Caitlyn opens the door. A single, resounding “Yes!” reverberates off the office building and we spin around together, bouncing in excitement. I can’t wait to tell Grandma Judy.

After I shoo Caitlyn back inside so she’s not missed, I leave a voicemail, my heart still pounding against my chest.

On my way back to my desk, where I’ll have to carefully pretend that nothing is wrong and that I am very normal, I run into Jeremy on the stairs. My heart constricts, but I stop. “I’m leaving,” I say.

He stops on the step below me, turning to face me. “Oh, dope! Congrats!”

The staircase gives a slight shake as he takes another step.

I gather every ounce of courage in my body and ask, “Do you want to have dinner with me?” The blood is rushing so quickly through my ears that I’m afraid I won’t be able to hear his answer. I take the deepest breath I’ve taken all year, the seconds filling between us.

“What time?” he asks.

16

Alexis approves every outfit I try on, but half of my wardrobe still manages to end up in a crumpled heap on my bed. Everything is too tight on the extra ten pounds I’m lugging around, a fair price in exchange for free food at work, but now just an obstacle when trying to find an outfit that says cute, but sexy, and also smart, and quite funny.

I pull a white t-shirt off, inside out, and toss it to Alexis, who catches it mid-flight and adds it to the pile.

“What was wrong with this one?” she asks.

Her unwavering support and commitment to watch this sad fashion show is lifesaving.

“I can’t wear white, I’ll one hundred percent spill something on myself.” I tuck my hair behind my ears, the wavy brown shag down to my shoulders and in desperate need of a cut.

“Try the striped shirt,” Alexis suggests, my options dwindling.

I tug on the hem of the black, red, and orange striped tee, barely reaching the waistband of my black skinny jeans. “Ok, I quit, this will have to do.”

My lavender nail polish is chipped and my pants have a fine layer of Biscuit’s fur on them. “If he can’t accept me like this, we wouldn’t work out anyways!” I joke.

I swallow back the very real fear of not being accepted, shrug a faux leather jacket on, and promise to text Alexis about how it’s going from the bathroom at regular intervals.

“Good luck! Hope he doesn’t think you have a coke problem!”

I check my phone as my Uber driver drops me off in front of the restaurant, a swath of people crowding the entrance. Jeremy hasn’t canceled on me, yet, but I’m thirty minutes early and hey, there’s always the option of getting stood up entirely.

I press my way through the crowd to check how long the wait will be so I can time our table perfectly and prove how responsible and thoughtful I am.

Except, there’s Jeremy, standing in line at the hostess’s stand, to check how long the wait will be so he can perfectly time the table, proving how responsible and thoughtful he is. His eyes widen in shock—busted. He says something I can’t hear, then pulls the earbuds out of his ears. “You’re early!” he says, absentmindedly straightening his shirt, a white button down dotted with tiny blue flowers. His skin glows golden in contrast to the bright white and wow, I really need to keep it in my pants.

I smile back. “No, you’re early!”

Both of us being early means I don’t have time to go panic in the bathroom beforehand, but it turns out I have no trouble talking to him. We cover the basics. His parents and brother are still in North Carolina—he actually got here early so he could do his weekly call while he waited, he studied finance in college, he moved to California for this job, no food allergies, but he is allergic to Tylenol.

“And your parents?” he asks.

He’s already demolished his burger, so I offer him some of my fries. He doesn’t hesitate, grabbing a fistful from my plate so naturally I wonder if he was waiting for me to offer them up.

I swirl the remnants of my watered-down margarita around the glass. “My mom is in Georgia, she’s a math teacher.”

I don’t know how normal people are supposed to talk about their dead fathers, especially while on a date with a guy I really, really like. I wait for Jeremy to ask about him, but he’s too kind, or perhaps oblivious, to press the issue.

“Explains why you’re so good at math then, huh? How often do you go back?”

“Maybe like, twice a year? I try to go every six months, make sure everyone remembers me, you know?”

“Yeah, same here,” he says, “but my mom is always begging me to come for every holiday, every event, and I’m like, Mom, I don’t care about your bible study friend’s wedding.”

I laugh along with him, thrilled to learn he has parent drama too.

I let the smiles slide off our faces then lean in, nervous for the next question to exit my mouth. “So, how come I couldn’t tell that you like me?”

He looks scared.

“Wait, shit. I’m still not even that sure—do you like me?” I take a breath. Honestly, pretty impressed with myself for even asking.

“Well,” he begins, before he gives me a very fake laugh—fuck. “I’m a pretty private person at work, you know.”

Sure, sure, he doesn’t exactly advertise that he lives with Eric.

“I just didn’t want to be the source of any workplace drama, so I was very hesitant about you.”

“So what changed?”

He smiles and laughs, for real this time. “I like you, seriously. Like this is serious to me. So if it isn’t for you, just let me know.”

Well damn, Jeremy. Pretty bold for our first official date.

I clear my throat and look at him with mock seriousness. “Well, okay, if this is so serious, then I better get all of the dealbreakers out of the way, right?”

He gives no indication that he’s concerned about the direction of this conversation as he continues to pick french fries off my plate. “Let’s do it. What you got?

“Got any credit card debt?”

“Nope.”

“How’d you vote in the last election?”

Jeremy laughs. “Democrat, but I will say that I had a little phase in high school where I thought I was a Republican.”

Now I’m laughing. “Dude, same. Guess growing up in the south did influence me a little bit. Okay - final question. Do you want to have children? I don’t. And I don’t want to waste anyone’s time if we’re not on the same page.” I must really like this guy because holy shit am I nervous about what he’s about to say.

He wipes his mouth with his napkin and takes a sip of his drink. “You know,” he begins, as my stomach drops into my butt, “I always assumed I would have kids one day. But I’m not really sure if that’s what I actually want, you know? I was following the ‘go to college, get a job, get married, buy a house, have a baby’ path because I didn’t know what else to do. I’ll have to think about this before I give you a definitive answer.”

“Sure, yeah. Big decision, so I’m not trying to rush you or anything.” Of course my little pessimistic heart is already broken. Who am I to think I could find someone who checks literally every box?

Jeremy polishes off the rest of my food and finishes his drink, placing the short, heavy glass on the table with such finality that I start mentally preparing myself for the good ole ending-a-first-date hug/kiss/wave.

“Should we go next door and get a glass of wine?”

Well, I was not expecting that.

We push our chairs out from the table after Jeremy pays (just as I expected, even though technically I was the one who asked him out) and I want to grab his hand so badly, but I am afraid of scaring him off, afraid he will change his mind about that glass of wine. No one has ever held my hand on a first date, an act somehow more intimate and sacred than sex, so instead I walk as closely to him as I can.

We sit at the bar in this tiny wine bar with a Merlot for me, Cab for him. When he hands me his glass to try his, my left hand shakes so hard with the effort of not touching his hand that I almost drop the glass.

“Are you still nervous?” he asks, letting me know that not only can he tell I’m nervous, but he’s known this whole time.

I’ve never been the girl to get the boy or been a recipient of crushes. Kurt asked me out the first time he met me, after I told him I had just left the alternative school to which he was on his way. My grad school boyfriend Kevin, nine years my senior, treated me like a bro until he confessed feelings for me unexpectedly, breaking up with his girlfriend the next day. I was surprised Logan was even single, but now I know better.

And then, poor Conor.

The wine is flowing through my veins, and I know this is might be too good to be true anyway, so I take the tiniest sip of his wine and hand it back and I say, “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

We finish our drinks quickly despite the nonstop conversation. Jeremy orders another glass to share and maybe I’m getting the feeling that he doesn’t want this night to end, either.

We can only drag out a few ounces of wine for so long, though.

He pays again, which doesn’t surprise me, but does make me wonder if he’s just bad with money or thinks I can’t afford a night out. I offered to split it, I swear!

The smile on his face fades, a serious look in his eyes waiting for me to stop laughing. “Can I… drive you home?”

* * *

His car is a mess just like mine—empty water bottles filling the passenger floorboard, the cupholders full of coins and straw wrappers. I don’t say anything, glad to see evidence of another flaw; proof that Jeremy is normal.

But then he’s driving and I’m trying to count how many drinks we’ve had. I mean, I am definitely tipsy, but how much of a turnoff would it be to question him right now? We had a drink at dinner,a glass of wine—no, a glass and a half—and he’s a few inches taller than I am, so it’s probably fine.

Plus, he was slamming water all night, he must have gone to the bathroom at least—

“I forgot to message Alexis!” I cry out, hastily scrolling through her five unread messages and replying: on the way home now.

Jeremy ignores me, thankfully.

“We should be there in less than five,” he says, and the anticipation is so tingly I can feel it.

I’m always nervous the first time with someone new, ultra-cognizant of the lighting casting unfavorable shadows on my face, being too quiet, being too loud, the pressure to come and prove my womanhood. Do men feel this too?

Probably not. Even this sweet angel Jeremy probably is just excited to get laid.

Jeremy pulls up behind my car on the curb and turns off the ignition, the cloud of heat hovering between us. The curtain in Alexis’s studio is twitching from where she not-so-subtly watched us arrive.

“I had a really good time,” I say, my hand resting on the seat belt buckle, poised to release myself.

“Yeah, me too.”

Just as I pop the buckle out, Jeremy half-crawls over the center console and he’s touching my neck and his face is so close to mine and we’re kissing.

And we’re kissing!

“Can I come in?” he asks, breathlessly.

I grin. “Please.”

Obviously, he stays the night.

* * *

Eric beats me into work on Monday, a first. Only a few other early risers are in the office. “Got a few minutes?” I ask Eric.

“Sure, what’s up?” He follows me into an empty conference room.

I miss the privacy of cubicles. I think. Maybe my new extroversion would hate them.

I am not prepared for this. I thought he wouldn’t be here for another hour. A deep breath in, a deep breath out. “I’m quitting.”

Eric squints. “Because of me? Aw, shit.” He rakes his hand through his hair

I tell friend-Eric, “No! Not at all!”

(Well, maybe a little.)

“I got a job at a big company, so…” I unclench my stomach, relieved to get it out.

He nods, big, exaggerated swings of his head. “I see. Well, congratulations! They are really lucky to have you”

We shake hands, a formal move that feels out of place in this all-glass conference room surrounded by snack tables and a pool table.

On my way back to my desk, Conor’s empty desk draws my attention, another casualty of my destructive love life. Eric catches me looking at it, so I log into my computer and search How to draft a resignation letter.

It’s official within the hour.

I ignore Jeremy when he gets in to the office; my face muscles already highly trained in the art of pretending he isn’t driving me wild every second of the day. I don’t crack—not even when he sends me a good morning! text complete with heart emojis from directly next to me.

The second date is four days later, a secret lunchtime rendezvous. We both tell our respective friends we have doctor’s appointments, him leaving five minutes after me, hoping no one we know will show up to this sushi place, just off the main street. Jeremy immediately tells me that he thought it over, and for the right person, he would be totally happy not having children, heavily implying that I’m the right person. I believe him. (Well, mostly.)

Our third and fourth dates take place before the week is over, and by the time Saturday rolls around, I’m completely lovesick. I feel like a teenager again, completely obsessed with this person.

But instead of the unrequited agony of a teenage love, Jeremy likes me back. He likes me back!

I’m dying to tell the world: I’m happy! I’m in love! I’m completely crazy!

Daniela says my desire to share good news with my mother is completely understandable, because the kid inside me still yearns for the maternal approval I never got as a child. But I could craft the world’s most perfect message and still be unable to predict how she will respond. The dichotomy of things finally going well for me again and having no one to tell feels tumultuous..

I miss my dad.

17

My infatuation doesn’t fade over the weeks. Jeremy reciprocates my intense energy, our relationship sometimes boiling down to an investigation of each other’s minds. What are you most afraid of? Where would you live if you could move anywhere? How do you feel about pickles? How have you most changed in the last year?

The more I learn about him, the deeper I fall. I sometimes feel like I discovered a new feeling, a ‘super grief’ after Dad died– like surely no one has ever felt that awful before. But now, I suspect that a couple this well-suited has never existed before and together we’ve redefined what true love is.

Gross. I know.

Seth holds the lighter to the tip of the joint hanging from Alexis’s mouth. “So, how long have y’all been dating again?”

Jeremy glances at me quickly, then goes back to studying the Space Invaders board game on the table in front of us. “Uh, three weeks I guess?”

I shrug and draw a card. Time to attack. I pull three yellow pieces off the board. “Anyone else need a refill?”

Jeremy joins me in the kitchen, pouring himself a whiskey ginger. His hand travels down my back to give my butt a quick squeeze. “It feels like longer than a few weeks to me,” he murmurs.

The whiskey on his wet lips makes me crinkle my nose. I cover up the taste with my own vodka.

Jeremy continues his winning streak —so far: mini golf, Mario Kart, rock paper scissors—and wins the space game.

“It’s beginner’s luck,” he says, as humbly as someone who wins at everything can.

The rest of us roll our eyes in unison.

His phone rings and I take the chance for another refill, Alexis handing me her cup on my way out. My pours are sloppy, vodka splashing onto the countertop, an ice cube falling to the floor. Jeremy walks into the kitchen with his glass in an outstretched hand, the other holding the phone to his ear. I’m a little more careful pouring the whiskey, lest we encounter any performance issues later tonight.

“Ah, I can’t tonight man. I’m playing games with some friends,” Jeremy says as he accepts the drink from me and takes a sip, ignoring the withering look I hope I’m giving him. He saunters off into my room to finish his call.

I bring Alexis her drink and she shuffles the deck of Uno, dealing cards to the three of us while we wait for Jeremy. “I’m so glad you have a good boyfriend now who will play games with us. Logan was so awful.”

Seth plays the first card. “There was something seriously wrong with him,” he agrees.

I play next, wondering what Alexis has told him. Probably everything.

Alexis wins this round. She and Seth go outside for a cigarette. Alexis is trying to quit, but she can’t resist one after a few drinks. Jeremy’s call ends just as I close the bedroom door behind me. Biscuit is curled up against him on the bed, already the little traitor.

“Hi,” he whispers, sitting up on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t want to be your friend,” I hear myself saying.

Oh, fuck. Jeremy’s eyes widen, his eyebrows lifting up in the middle and he’s so cute when he’s worried.

“I mean, I want to be your girlfriend!” I stammer, the confidence leaking from my pores and evaporating into thin air.

His arms open and I instinctively move into them, his face level with my chest, my arms encircling his warm skull. I’m always shocked at how warm his body is.

“I thought you were my girlfriend!” he says, and I know what he means, we’re obviously dating and it’s not his fault that I never got asked out by a fairy tale prince, but can’t he just humor me?

I say nothing and take a step backwards.

His hands run down my arms until he grasps my fingers and gives them a tiny squeeze. “Will you be my girlfriend?”

I think we know who the real winner is tonight.

* * *

My last day at MeTime comes and goes. Nadine sends a card around the office for people to sign, filling up so quickly people have to start signing the back and then the front. I bask in my popularity, happy to have been a big fish. I’ll miss this little cult.

I skip the last happy hour, tired from last night’s goodbye party hosted by yours truly. It’s not like there won’t be any more in my future. I can’t wait until I show up to the next event on Jeremy’s arm.

The house is dark and quiet when I get home. Alexis and Seth left for Joshua Tree this morning, a week long trip Seth surprised Alexis with. The cats watch me amble around the house, their eyes blinking slowly. I haven’t spent a Friday alone in so long, I realize, that I don’t know exactly what to do with myself. Alexis messages that they’ve arrived safely, photos of a very cool AirBnB attached. Jeremy is at dinner with his friends.

Nothing on Netflix holds my attention, so I double-screen it and see if the internet has anything better. Midnight curls against my thigh, making me feel even more like I’m one with the sofa.

Jeremy hasn’t replied to my last message about when he’s going to tell Eric that we’re together. I can picture it now, the shock on his face, the clap on the shoulder he gives to Jeremy, a rebirth of our friendship sans workplace drama. Finding a new job might be the second-best decision I’ve made all year.

Everything’s just falling into place perfectly. Except for this boring-ass night.

Facebook lets me down, too.

I’m desperate.

Desperation is usually the feeling that preempts any attempts to communicate with Mom. Tonight is no different. We haven’t talked much since I fucked up in Atlanta and didn’t tell her I was coming. The email she sent me was harsh, but based on previous scathing emails she’s sent me, I’m willing to bet she’s forgotten all about that.

How’s it going?! I quit my job! I got a new one because I started dating my coworker LOL. His name is Jeremy.

The weed gummy hits me the moment I press send. I unpause the TV and it’s suddenly funny again. I glance down at the phone every few minutes, lying on its own sofa cushion like a spider waiting to jump on me. It’s a pretty innocuous message, right?

Maybe she’ll skip right over the job part and focus on the boyfriend part. She’s always preferred people.

As long as they can do something for her.

Half of the times she broke up with the perennially on-again, off-again Chris, was because he would prioritize his son, on occasion, and do things for him, instead of her. Things Mom couldn’t wrap her mind around, like paying for his son to go back to rehab, instead of taking her on vacation like he’d been promising. So she would leave.

She’d be back the second she was lonely again. Her complaints to me would stop immediately and all was well in the world.

I sure did not pick up any good relationship habits from her.

I shake the past out of my eyes, telling myself that for someone who was never taught how to be normal, I’m doing pretty well.

I hope Jeremy agrees.

The vibration sends Midnight across the room, her paws digging into my stomach as she leaps across me.

That’s awesome! Send pictures! I scroll up and read the last message she sent me—a picture of her two chihuahuas. Before that, our conversation about when to meet in Atlanta.

I choose a photo of us, my hair perfectly choppy, lips bright red, standing close to Jeremy with his face clean-shaven, t-shirt fitted. Here we are at a friend’s house, I reply.

Her response appears seconds later: Cute!

Adrenaline pumps through my veins with nowhere to go. No fight, no flight.

Only a disquieting feeling that perhaps I’ve been a little dramatic.

* * *

Jeremy occupies the rest of my weekend, playing house together while Alexis and Seth are away. He cooks the best steak I’ve had in my life while I scrub down my bathroom. I can already see us living together. He does the cooking, I do the cleaning, he opens jars for me, I build all the furniture. I get nostalgic thinking about having my own space away from roommates, something I completely took for granted in Atlanta.

He stays the night and through the morning, leaving only when Alexis lets me know they’re an hour away, and could I please be done with the washing machine soon?

As I’m transferring my dry clothes to my hamper, Alexis bursts through the garage door, an hour early. I jump, hands flying up in fright. “Surprise!” she laughs, wiggling her hands at me.

I press my hand against my heart and take a deep breath. “Jesus, you scared the shit outta me.”

She doesn’t say anything, her hand continuing to waggle. The overhead light hits her hand and shines back at me, a tiny explosion of sparkles.

My attention snaps back to her face and she’s grinning and a huge smile stretches my cheeks and suddenly we’re both yelling and hopping up and down.

“You’re engaged!”

“I’m engaged!”

We repeat our chant until Seth skips in with their suitcases, pretending to join our girlish cheer for a second before continuing over to the washing machine.

Alexis shows me every photo she took in Joshua Tree, providing exact details on exactly how Seth asked her. Her words melt through me, exciting me as if I was the one he professed unyielding commitment and undying love to.

“Seth did such a good job on the ring,” I say, examining her hand, turning it just so to catch the light. The oval diamond is the perfect size, the gold band glowing, making me question my exclusive commitment to silver.

I finally release her hand and tote my laundry back to my room. The repetitive motions, folding the jeans, turning the shirts back right-side out and onto a hanger, calm me down enough for my mind to start wandering. I almost forgot I start a new job tomorrow.

I’m calm, I’m calm. I did a test run of the route yesterday with Jeremy. I know exactly where I will park and what building to go to. My outfit is chosen, my hair is washed. The agenda HR sent me has me in orientation literally all day. How bad could it be? I should save these nerves for when the actual work begins.

Jeremy calls right before I get into bed to wish me good luck, which is super cute, although I will definitely be texting him like mad all day tomorrow.

“How was Alexis and Seth’s trip?”

“Sounds like it was pretty good – Seth proposed!”

“Aw, congrats to them. Tell them I’m very happy for them.”

His excitement does not match mine. Boys never care about this stuff: engagements, wedding planning, hell, even finding a cute dress with pockets.

“Do you think you’ll move out when they get married?”

The question slaps me across the face. Any sleepiness I felt is gone, replaced with sadness.

“I, uh, hadn’t thought that far.”

He chuckles. “I’m sure you have plenty of time to decide. Anyways, good luck tomorrow babe.”

I can hear the unspoken “I love you” in his voice. We haven’t dropped the ‘L’ word, but I think I’m ready.

I snuggle up to Biscuit, staring into the darkness. Everyone in California has roommates, would they really kick me out just because they’re married? It’s too expensive! They’ll grow to love me being here, I’m sure they won’t get married for at least a year. Plenty of time.

I toss and turn for what feels like an hour. Biscuit eventually leaves me, the spot on the edge of the mattress warm where she slept. The unsubstantiated idea of having to leave Alexis hammers away at my brain, robbing me of the precious sleep I need for tomorrow’s exciting events.

My eyelids are heavy but I can’t stand to lie here in the dark, alone with my thoughts. I sit up and drink from the water bottle on the nightstand. I know I shouldn’t, but I check the time on my phone and there’s a message from Jeremy, probably meant for a pep talk tomorrow but I open it anyways. I’m so crazy about you. Good luck today.

I smile and lie back down and finally fall asleep.

18

Mom’s normalcy lasts a few weeks. I knew it would end, but I still find myself seething at her latest message in which she informs me that she has been officially diagnosed with a “mental health issue” by her doctor and is beginning a thirty-day treatment program and she could really use my support.

I glance up at my calendar. I don’t have any meetings for another hour, so I covertly slip my phone into my jacket pocket and grab an apple on my way out of the building. The chairs in the sun are too visible, so I pick one under a tree, further from any onlookers. I’m not trying to get caught lounging around at my fancy new job.

Her message, though quite long, fails to mention her actual diagnosis. I already know what it is, though. My therapist, Daniela, knows. Dad knew. Maybe it is cruel of me to make her say it, make her admit that she is sick. Maybe I can be the bigger person and just support her right now.

Or maybe I can get my mom to acknowledge her issues for the first time in my life. Not once have I ever heard her admit fault. Or issue an apology.

This (obviously unhealthy) pseudo-revenge fantasy wins in my brain.

I bite into the apple, wiping the juices off my lips with my sleeve. I type out my reply: What’s the diagnosis? Anything I should watch out for?

She doesn’t reply by the time I finish my apple. I shove my phone into my backpack and pretend to work the rest of the day.

* * *

The email comes later. My feet rest in Jeremy’s lap, the two of us scrolling through our phones with some nature documentary on in the background.

Hey Sierra,

Even though you show no concern for my well-being (gosh mom you ok?) and only your own (I’m curious - did you hurt Judy as much as you did me by letting her know of your concern for being screened for something based upon your dad’s death?…do you even get the connection here?), you can do your own research on Borderline Personality Disorder.

I cannot help talking about the sad things in my life and my depression. I do understand that you can’t and don’t want to listen to it, for you don’t know how and you don’t want to deal with it. This makes me feel like such a bother to you. All I can say is that if you take the love you have for your cats and multiply it by 1,000, you will have the love in my heart for you.

I have come to a point where I can’t be strong anymore. I know you don’t want to hear this, so I feel I must stop communicating with you until maybe I can make the hurt go away. I am going to try to find some help, but until I can actually wake up one day and want to live, I will have to stay out of your life.

I am glad that you have done all the things you have chosen to. You have a whole life ahead of you and so many more things to do and decisions to make. All I ever wanted my entire life was for my kids to be happy. You are there. I got what I wanted. And I’m surely not going to take that away from you by bothering you.

I love you very much Sierra. I was a good mom to you for a long time, but I can’t be right now. So live your life. Hopefully someday I can be a part of it again.

Lots of love

I can hear the psh, psh of my pulse beating against my eardrums. I wordlessly hand my phone to Jeremy.

He reads the email and looks at me looking at him and he looks back at the phone and I know this is a lot to spring on someone you’ve only been dating for a few months and whatever he says will be the wrong thing, but I really need him to say the right thing right now. He opens his mouth and—

“What the fuck?”

I shake my head and unpause the show, lions running across the plains to bring dinner home to their young, but yeah, really, what the fuck?

This somehow feels both anticlimactic and incredibly surprising. Anticlimactic because I already knew about the borderline personality disorder, even if she didn’t. Anticlimactic because of course there’s a long, dramatic email from her. (She’s always loved these scathing notes—my first was a handwritten note about how big of a slut I was for wearing a thong in eighth grade.)

But the surprise? She took the time and effort to get herself diagnosed and is even accepting the results. Maybe.

Not gonna lie, I’m even surprised at myself. Once again, I didn’t handle a Mom situation well. She’s right – I didn’t ask how she was doing after her diagnosis. I haven’t said anything supportive.

I don’t know how to feel right now. This feels like just another day where I get to be the adult and Mom gets to be the child. The standards I hold myself to are miles above hers.

But still, somehow, I’m the bad guy.

* * *

Jeremy is waiting for me outside of my office the next day with a Red Bull and a greasy bag with a burger and fries inside. “Let’s go, you can eat in the car,” he says, handing me the bag.

I let myself into the passenger side, cramming fries into my mouth. “What doing?” I ask in between bites.

Very classy.

“First, we are going to go to your house and pack a bag.” He stops talking while he reverses out of the parking spot, reaching his arm across the car to put his hand on the back of my seat, a move that apparently gives men the ability to make driving a car look sexy.

“Then we are going to Carmel for the weekend.” He glances over at me but must not see the huge grin on my face. “How does that sound?” he asks, a little self-consciousness coating the question.

“Amazing!” I screech, too loud for being inside a car, and rest my hand on his thigh.

“You sure?”

“Yes!” I nearly shout again.

“Cool.” He glances back at me again for a split second and smiles when he finds me looking back at him.

I can’t tell which one of us is happier.

* * *

Twenty minutes after we pull into my driveway, I let climb back into Jeremy’s car, my hastily packed backpack joining his in the trunk.

We hit traffic almost immediately. The problem with being so close to so many beautiful places is that everyone is also always going to that same beautiful place.

Jeremy fiddles with the radio buttons on his steering wheel and gives up after finding six commercials in a row. “Have you talked to your mom?”

Bold question from my unflappable boyfriend. Is my contempt so obvious?

“No, she cut me off, remember?”

We both know she didn’t mean it; that I didn’t mean it. My tumultuous relationship with my only living parent is embarrassing. Jeremy kindly leaves my question rhetorical.

I pop the top of the Red Bull and pass it over after taking a sip. “Have you been to Carmel before?” I wait with my hand outstretched for the can and his answer.

“Yeah, a few years ago.” He tries to hand me the drink without looking.

I take it from him. His attention to the road makes me feel safe.

Mom used to load me and Brian up in the car at random times during the night to go to McDonald’s for an ice cream cone or to WalMart for random shopping excursions. She’d stalk around the house until she found us, excited about our adventure. It didn’t matter if we were in pajamas or doing homework, isn’t this fun?

“Who’d you go with?” I ask, the answer materializing in my brain the moment I stop talking. Alexis has already grilled me about his previous girlfriends and I have no answers to give. I turn the volume up on the radio, hoping to give him an easy out of answering my dumb question.

We listen to a static-y car dealership commercial, then Jeremy turns the volume back down. “I went with my girlfriend at the time.”

He’s opening up to me! I have to play this cool, can’t scare him off. I check out the cars we pass as I ask “Oh yeah? Did you like it?” in a cool girl voice, super nonchalant.

There’s something to be said about knowing nothing about the ex. Was she terrible? Was she amazing? Was she a mistake, a stepping stone leading Jeremy into my life? Knowing nothing about her lets me assume the worst, allowing me to believe that this could be the best relationship ever for both of us. Turns out that without the shadow of depression looming over me, I’m quite the optimist.

“Actually, no. We broke up right after that weekend.”

My cool is gone, escaping out of the windows like smoke. “What? Why?!”

“Yeah, she was visiting me, and her friends out here invited us to tag along, but once we were almost there, the dude—Jason or something—he was driving, he said something about his girlfriend and then my girlfriend, in the front seat, leaned over and kissed him! Right in front of me!”

“She revealed she was cheating on you right in front of you while on vacation with you?” I ask, incredulous.

“Isn’t that fucked up? She thought she’d get away with having two boyfriends if she tricked me into this vacation with them both.”

“What the fuck!”

“I stayed the weekend with them, me in one bed and them in the other, and broke up with her as soon as we got back to my place.”

The residual anger in his voice is apparent.

“I had no idea! Sorry for bringing it up.” I want to lean over and hug him but we’re halfway there and I don’t want to ruin another Carmel trip for him by crashing his car. “I’m pretty surprised you chose Carmel this weekend, then.”

Another quick side-eye from my handsome driver. “You’re not secretly harboring another boyfriend in the backseat, are you?”

I flick my hand out to playfully slap his arm, stopping before I make contact. I rub his shoulder instead. “Nope. You’re the only one.”

“Then how about we replace my bad memories with some good ones this weekend?”

His smile is small, but I’ll take it.

19

Our hotel room is small and dated, with decor fitting a beach resort in the nineties and worn, thin sheets that might be from the same decade. I hang up my dress for tomorrow’s festivities, wine tasting with Jeremy’s friends, and attempt to find room in the tiny bathroom for my toiletries.

“How much was this room, again?” I ask Jeremy, resigning to keep my makeup bag on my bedside table.

He won’t even tell me. Yikes.

I touch up my hair with the flat iron and run a swipe of pink lip stain over my lips, starting my internal countdown for the rest of the night—We’ll get something quick for dinner with a bottle of wine, maybe walk around town for a bit, then come back to our room where we’ll obviously take advantage of the King bed before chugging not enough water so we’re ready to start day drinking as soon as the wineries open tomorrow.

I lean out of the bathroom to investigate the room again, crinkling my nose when I realize it’s just a full size.

“What’s wrong, babe?” He rises from the bed, coming in for a kiss. He jerks away at the sight of the color on my lips. “Sorry, I don’t want to mess up your lipstick.”

“It’s a stain,” I giggle. I kiss his cheek instead.

Dinner is surprisingly good, a quaint little place tucked in the middle of a block pretending to be Italian but outed by its hodge-podge menu. Jeremy finishes his curry and is telling me how he met the people we’re going to hang out with tomorrow, but his eyes remain glued to my leftover pasta the whole time.

“Do you want any of this?” I ask, gesturing at my plate.

I wonder how long into our relationship we’ll get before he starts helping himself.

When he’s done with my plate, he pays for dinner. I’m used to him paying for everything by now, but I still don’t like it. What kind of feminist am I?

Our scenic walk through town consists of strolling one block further from the restaurant for just one more glass of wine, babe! before returning to our room, shushing each other in the hallway in between giggles, the concrete flooring amplifying our voices.

Back inside, it’s hard to ignore the scratchy sheets and the relentlessly squeaky bed frame.

But we manage.

* * *

Jeremy gently shakes me by the shoulder to wake me up. I sit up in bed to drink from the water bottle I thoughtfully left for myself last night on the side table.

“Henry and Jimmy should be here in an hour. Should we get some breakfast before?”

Somehow, he is showered and dressed.

I grumble, but I’m in the shower within minutes. I decide against the dress, figuring the all-day walking will not fare well for my thighs. My floral pants are a size, maybe two, too small, squeezing my waist into rolls that don’t normally exist, but the high slits in the legs are very forgiving. Jeremy eyeballs my bare thigh as I rub lotion into my skin and I can sense he doesn’t necessarily approve of my outfit but he also kind of likes it.

Tucking the red lipstick into my purse for after breakfast, I turn to Jeremy and throw my hands up. “Tadaaaa!”

My hair is straight and shiny, my black shirt tight across my chest. I don’t know if there’s anything that could make a California girl happier than being photographed in a cute outfit at a winery.

He gives me a peck on the lips and herds me out of the room, slipping the hotel key into his pocket.

A huge SUV is waiting for us in front of the hotel lobby, hazard lights apologizing for taking up most of the road. A blonde woman with a pinched face hops out of the middle row to let us into the back. My “Hello!” is lost in the symphony of greetings from the other five, but I still feel like the sixth wheel.

The blonde turns around in her seat to face me, her blue eyes wide and shiny. She’s not wearing her seat belt. “Hi. I’m Chelsea, this is my husband Henry.”

The man next to her turns back to nod at me. They both look like Abercrombie & Fitch models. Definitely not like people who are going wine tasting for the first time today.

I self-consciously pull my denim jacket closed. “I’m Sierra.”

Chelsea finally breaks eye contact, taking in Jeremy like she’s evaluating him. “About time he brought a girl around!”

The man driving, Jimmy, turns his head so everyone can hear him, even though he shouts. “Yeah buddy, for a while we weren’t sure which way you were going to swing!”

Jimmy’s wife, Michelle, swats him from the passenger seat. Jeremy knows them from his old neighborhood. Both she and her husband, Jimmy, have serious Resting Bitch Face.

Jeremy chuckles, but it’s the fake laugh he uses when he’s uncomfortable or trying to be diplomatic. I hope that is the only gay joke I have to hear today. Or this year. Or the rest of my life.

I watch the hilly landscape outside the window, occasionally dotted with tiny houses or farming equipment. Everyone else is talking about wine, which wineries they’re members of, which has the most generous pours. Eventually the empty land turns into vineyards divided by gravel parking lots and rustic barn-chic tasting rooms.

Jimmy pulls into a parking spot in front of a huge white manor. We spill out of the car, following him obediently to the patio area where he rearranges the seating to make enough space for all six of us. He reminds me of someone with his confidence—the way he assumes permission—but I can’t think who.

My head swivels between Jimmy and the freakishly handsome sommelier as Jimmy begins to order several flights of wines I’ve never heard of while simultaneously telling an extremely charming anecdote. I just can’t put my finger on it.

It isn’t until after the first tasting, which consists of drinking four nearly identical white wines so quickly that I can’t even pretend to notice the hints of pepper or the highly-emphasized clean mouthfeel, that I realize who he reminds me of.

My dad.

Still, I can’t bring myself to like him.

Jimmy carts us to another winery. And another. He and Michelle bid us farewell after the third so Michelle has time to get ready before the wedding they’re attending later today. Our adventure continues on foot with Henry and Chelsea, who I decide is a very sweet girl and quite worthy of my friendship. Various charcuterie plates suffice as our lunch, leaving basically nothing in our stomachs to absorb the copious amounts of alcohol we’re consuming.

Dinner is a disaster, the four of us showing up absolutely shitfaced to yet another quaint restaurant tucked in an alley. Jeremy orders way too much sushi but now we’re back in our room and his mouth tastes like beer (did we order more drinks at dinner?) and the vigorous motion is making me nauseous. But he whispers “I love you” into my ear and I’m fine again.

The sunlight sears my eyelids. Jeremy is stomping around the room, hastily shoving his belongings into his bag. “Good morning, beautiful, we overslept and check out is in ten minutes.” His warpath makes its way to my shriveled-up body and he leans down for a kiss.

Equally embarrassed by my morning breath and our premature oozing of endearments last night, I pull the blanket over my face. “I need to brush my teeth!” I protest, but Jeremy’s face appears in front of mine anyway, the blanket slipping through my loose grasp.

“I meant what I said last night.”

His breath is minty. Cheater.

He’s giving me such sad puppy dog eyes that I want to laugh, but I know this will be one of those moments I’m supposed to remember forever.

“I love you, I mean it.”

I can hear the story now: an abbreviated version told to our families, the real story getting a few chuckles at our wedding.

How we first said “I love you” while blackout drunk on vacation and had to re-do it the next day.

Jeremy is looking at me, waiting. I’m so wrapped up in this moment that I forget to be scared, forget to say it back. I reach my hand up to cover my mouth but stop, reaching up to touch his face instead. “I love you, too.”

My friendship with Chelsea and Michelle lasts as long as our weekend in Carmel, failing to ever move past the “girlfriends of the boys” stage. I don’t give it any more thought, simply happy to have someone to talk to when the guys meet up for beer pong. I came out of the weekend with something much better than a new friend.

My escapades with Jeremy continue, although we quickly reach the point where we can spend a Friday night together without downing shots. It’s easy to get along when everyone’s having fun. It’s scary to face someone without any substances to enhance your personality, wondering if the other person will still like you when you’re sad or stressed or too lazy to shave your legs.

I still absolutely adore Jeremy, although the I’m so fucking obsessed with him I could die feeling has subsided and I begin to notice that he actually does have flaws. I can never tell if he’s mad at me. I have to ask him at least five times, reassuring him that I won’t be mad if he’s mad, before he’ll express any frustration. Sometimes he forgets what an inside-voice is and half-shouts at me when it’s just the two of us at home. He works much longer hours than I do, motivated to maintain his Employee of the Month status with the big bosses.

But the best part is, he doesn’t want to fuck my mom.

At least as far as I know.

Our relationship is so cloudless, so healthy. Alexis laughs whenever I ask, “Is this normal?”

But how would I know? I haven’t heard from my mother in months, so any sort of parental wisdom is currently unavailable—not that she’d be very helpful, anyway. Grandma Judy is just happy that I’m happy and offers nothing of substance.

Maybe I can finally admit to myself that I’m capable enough in my own life. That I’ve somehow managed to make a couple good decisions, surpassing my own expectations of working paycheck-to-paycheck and marrying into more alcoholism. I have a good job at Omega (and my boss says I’m doing great, to boot). I have friends. I have a really lovely boyfriend. I’ve been reading tons of books and doing yoga here and there. I get to take weekend trips to new places and be adventurous.

It just feels so wrong, so indulgent, to look around at my life and think, yes, this is it. I mean, my relationship with my mom is trash, my grandparents are being financially abused, and I’m not exactly sure where I’ll be living once Alexis and Seth tie the knot.

But I think I’m finally happy.

20

I drop Alexis and Seth off at the airport the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Jeremy the next day, blowing off everyone’s concerns that I’ll be lonely or sad.

Jeremy calls me every night, although I suspect he does so just to escape his family for a few minutes. I buy and subsequently eat an entire pecan pie, burying the empty tin in the garbage can. In the time I went from everyone’s fun, single friend to one half of Jeremy-and-Sierra, it seems I have forgotten how to be truly alone.

Alexis and Seth fly back the next Saturday, rescuing me from my binge of both food and crappy TV. She calls me to tell me they’ve landed, but I already know, having been tracking their flight from the cell waiting lot, anxiously awaiting the company of other humans.

“How was y’all’s week?” I ask.

Neither of them answer me, struggling to fit their suitcases in my cluttered trunk. Trips back home always seem to put everyone in a sour mood, each trip somehow always two days too long.

Alexis comes around to the front seat, Seth behind her. “It was okay,” she huffs, turning back to look at Seth.

He shrugs.

“My mom drives me crazy. She talks about all of her friends’ children like I’m supposed to know them, but it’s like she’s just trying to tell me how disappointed she is that I became an artist. ‘Oh, Jeff and Susan’s son is in medical school. And ‘Did I tell you Helen’s daughter is engaged to a NFL player?’”

Seth leans forward and rubs Alexis’ shoulder. “Yeah, it was kind of a lot.”

I know it’s messed up, but I can’t help but feel a little glad that my best friend has to deal with weird family situations, too.

Jeremy won’t be back for another three days. He must really like his family. I try to picture our families meeting, how Mom would behave, how racist my grandparents would be. He hasn’t talked about his parents much, so it’s hard to imagine them. I imagine them as more formal than my family, but very friendly.

I offer to pick Jeremy up from the airport too but his flight lands in San Francisco at midnight, so he graciously releases me from duty. His late night doesn’t stop him from picking me up for an early breakfast, although free breakfast at your girlfriend’s office is not a bad way to start your day.

I pace around inside the garage until I see his car pull up in the early morning light, his headlights preventing me from seeing his face. I hope he’s in a good mood.

He kills the ignition as I pull on the door handle, but it’s locked. Before I can knock on the window for assistance, he’s out of his seat and speed walking to my side, his hug so tight it lifts me off my feet. “I missed you!” he says, and I literally can’t believe how wonderful he is.

My feet float back down from heaven and find the ground. Am I lightheaded from love or from a brief lack of oxygen? Maybe both. “I missed you too.” I give him a kiss. “But I also don’t want to miss breakfast! Let’s go!”

* * *

Jeremy feigns offense as I stab the last of my pancake onto my fork and shove it in my mouth.

“You didn’t save any for me?” he teases, as I brush off his pouting.

I feel a slight tug in my stomach that not giving him even a bite is a sign of our demise, the final straw in his invisible scorecard.

It’s been months and we haven’t fought yet, a fact that has started to manifest in an overly creative imagination. Are we one bad restaurant choice from the end? Has he been tolerating my family-related complaining silently for so long he’s about to boil over? If his mom doesn’t like me, what will he do?

We stack our dishes and deposit them in the dish drop. I have only a few minutes left with him before he leaves for his office and I have to go pretend to be a professional.

“What are your parents like?”

He steps ahead of me so he can open the door. “Uh, they’re nice, I guess. What do you mean?”

“I mean like, what are they like? Are they strict? Are they fun? Are you close to them?”

“Uh, well.” He scratches his head, surprised by my interrogation. “They’re nice. My mom has a thick southern accent, which surprises people. My dad sometimes talks like a newscaster or something. He’s the most well-spoken person I know.”

I look forward to telling my grandma about these Texan-born people who aren’t white or “Mexi-cans.”

I’m sure her questions will be appropriate.

“Are they retired?”

We’re at Jeremy’s car already.

“I mean, they’re sixty-eight and sixty-nine so, yeah, they’re retired.”

So they’re southern and older, very helpful, thanks, Jeremy. I follow him to the driver’s side. “Do you think they will like me? ”

He pauses long enough for me to notice him glance at my tattoos, my nose ring. “Yeah, of course they’ll like you!”

I can’t decide if I’m mad that they’d judge my appearance, even though my family also hates tattoos, or sad that Jeremy doesn’t seem convinced that I’m a good enough person to win over his family.

Am I a good person?

Jeremy unlocks the door and turns to me. “Would you like to meet them someday?”

My eyelids remain peeled as he kisses me.

He sinks down into his seat, his left hand on the door handle. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

* * *

There’s another mass exodus a few days before Christmas. This time, I drop Jeremy off first, Alexis and Seth the next day. My office empties out, month-long Out of Office emails flooding my inbox. I’ve accrued enough time off for a four-day visit to Atlanta, the ideal trip length to me, but not long enough to make up for my absence from Thanksgiving to Grandma J.

I call her the night before I leave, always afraid she’s forgotten that I’m coming.

“You’ll have to take the Uber from the train when you get here, we can’t pick you up this time,” she says cryptically, diverging from our usual plan.

Most visits Grandpa Wally drives them both down to the airport, I drive them back up to their house and chauffeur them around for the rest of my stay. It’s the least I can do for them. But also, my grandfather should probably not be legally allowed to drive ever again. His car is rife with dents, dings, and scrapes.

“What would you like for dinner tomorrow?”

The ache in my heart is already creeping in. “Whatever is easy for you, Grandma.” I wish I could be normal and let the people who love me, love me, no weird guilt or sadness tainting the experience.

* * *

I’m still an expert at navigating the airport and MARTA, Atlanta’s frustratingly simple train line, with my rollaboard and pre-loaded fare card, compared to the droves of holiday travelers who spend more time dropping their bags and standing in front of the map than actually riding the train. I jam my bag between my leg and the side of the train and watch the city come into view.

This was my view every day. I took MARTA to work every day, the 8:04 southbound putting me at my stop at exactly 8:37.

I try to get a glimpse of my old work building through the smudged train window, but it’s too dark and I’ve already lost my old sense of direction. I have another fourteen minutes from my old stop—I would call my Dad at the next stop and give him an eleven-minute warning and his car would pull up to the station entrance at the exact time I arrived, like magic.

But when I get there, there’s no one there waiting for me, no heater running full blast to warm me up, no ice-cold Coke can from a cooler in the back seat. Eighteen months since his death and I am still re-learning how to walk without him.

I blot the wetness from my eyelashes and request an Uber.

* * *

My grandparents wait at the top of their driveway, watching my slow ascent. Grandpa Wally says nothing when I reach them and takes my suitcase from me while Grandma Judy gasps, “Oh, Sierra,” and hugs me as tight as she can.

I pull away and look into the garage, now completely crammed full of junk. “Where’s your car?”

Probably totaled at this point. They stopped telling me about all of the car accidents Grandpa Wally caused after I suggested they stop driving and find a taxi service instead.

Grandma smiles and beckons me inside with a wrinkly finger, stooping to pick up her wine glass from the garage floor on the way in. Grandpa Wally carefully places my suitcase in my dad’s room (now mine) and rejoins us in the living room, where his wife is shuffling through a stack of papers.

“You can’t tell anyone!” she says, wagging that finger in my face.

I nod.

“We won a new Mercedes in the lottery!” She jabs her finger at the paper, a crappy photoshop job printed crooked on the page.

I don’t play nice and smile for her this time. “Well, then where is it?”

Grandma Judy snatches the paper from my hand. “We have to pay the import tax first,” she says, like that’s a normal thing that happens.

“I don’t think that’s fair you have to pay for something you won. Are you sure?”

I have to tread lightly here. My grandmother glares at me but says nothing. Grandpa Wally silently watches us.

“Yes.”

Okay. Conversation over.

I pretend I need to go change my clothes and stalk off to my room. The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling are dim from neglect.

What else could I do? I’ve Googled. I’ve posted on forums asking for advice. Aunt Cindy seems way more involved in this so I guess that’s probably enough, but damn.

It sucks to watch your grandparents throw money away.

21

The holidays end and everyone returns home in sour moods, memories of overbearing parents and heated political ‘discussions’ refreshed.

Alexis’s gripes about her mom and her ultra-conservative brother end within a week. Jeremy’s complaints-disguised-as-stories continue a little longer, although I appreciate any and all insight into his family.

“She stayed up every night until I went to bed, which is ridiculous because I’m always on Pacific time! But I guess she just wants to make sure I don’t need anything, also ridiculous, because I’m an adult?” Jeremy speaks faster when he talks about his mom, Tina.

I can’t see his face—the lights are off, and I’m curled onto my side, trying to go to sleep. “Oh yeah,” I murmur, “so weird to care about your children.”

The mattress squeaks as he rolls over to face me. “The thing is, I tell her to go to bed and I’ll figure things out if I need to, but she won’t.”

“Oh, so this is genetic?”

The bed collapses behind my back as Jeremy’s hand pulls on my shoulder. “What do you mean?” he asks, his expression hidden by shadows.

I turn onto my other side to face him. “You don’t think you’re the same exact way? You stay with whoever you’re with until their ride comes. You helped your friend move out of his place even though he said he didn’t need help, should I keep going?”

Jeremy scoffs and rolls back over. “No, it’s different,” he insists, the fight gone from his voice. “You’ll see when you meet her.”

I turn back to my right side and roll my eyes. It’s not lost on me that we’re fighting about how nice Jeremy and his mother are. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, babe. I wish my mom was as nice as yours! I wish I was as nice as you! Just funny that you framed it negatively when you’re kinda the same.”

Jeremy mumbles something about me maybe being right.

* * *

Alexis invites herself to lunch at my office, a welcome invitation, seeing as I have inexplicably failed to make any friends in the nine months I’ve been at this job. I never had work-friends before my last job, always finding myself excluded by the other analysts. Despite our similar backgrounds, I was always the shy one, too afraid to ask anyone else to lunch. They could probably sense my desperation.

My phone lights up with an I’m here at five past twelve, sending me dashing down the staircase to the lobby. I print a visitor’s badge for Alexis, clipping it to one of the pom-poms on her sweater. I bring her back inside to our cafeteria, a beefed-up version of how I remember my college meal plan hall—different cuisine stations, Indian, pizza, tacos, a massive salad bar, and a table of the tiniest desserts.

Alexis doesn’t need to know that normally, I get there right at opening so I can snag a table and shovel food into my mouth, alone.

“Wow, I still am not used to this,” she says, unable to decide which cuisine to get first.

Frankly, I’m embarrassed by the displays of opulence. I wonder when I started considering myself privileged.

I used to draw the line sometime after high school, when our water would get shut off due to Mom’s failure to pay, since I lived at home and left college with only a few thousand in student loans. I re-drew that line when I got that airline job after grad school and flew all over the world for free, even though I stayed in hostels, ate meals from convenience stores, and skimped on sightseeing.

Whenever it was, it was definitely sometime before I accepted a decently paying tech job that feeds me.

We load our plates up with fresh vegetables and baked chicken, health magazine-ready if you ignore the tiny towers of sugar cookies and miniature cupcakes. I lead Alexis through the crowd, a growing mass of fellow nerds, taking her across to the patio garden.

The garden is U-shaped with enough room in the middle for two chairs and a side table. We sit down, balancing our plates on our knees.

“How was your morning?” I ask, a forkful of salad halfway to my lips.

Alexis is the only friend I have that doesn’t also work in tech, which is unsurprising since literally all of my friends out here are from my old job. I appreciate having others to commiserate with, truly, but it doesn’t seem like anyone else ever gets tired of talking about work. I’d like to pretend I’m not included in that group. I’m much more interested in Alexis’ upcoming ceramics show or what her next collection will be about than hear another story of a mean old white male bossing someone around, but I don’t want to be patronizing.

I look up from my plate when I don’t get an answer.

She’s staring intently at her plate, pushing food around with her fork. A few grains of rice fall to the ground, unnoticed by Alexis. “I have something to tell you.” Her fork stops moving, as does my heart.

I swallow, the bite of chicken sliding down my throat like a stone. “Okay.” My stomach clenches as every possibility runs through my mind, although I know there’s only one real option. I brace myself, ready to fake excitement when she announces that she’s pregnant.

“Seth and I are moving back to Georgia.”

Well, shit.

I’m afraid to know the answer but I ask anyway.

“When are y’all moving?”

“At the end of November.”

Only a month away. Tears spill, a cascade sliding down my cheeks. I transfer my plate to the ground—the ants can have it —and yank out the napkins from my jacket pocket.

Alexis reaches her hand out and I give her a napkin, the rough, recycled kind that are supposedly more environmentally friendly but like sandpaper on your face. It’s peak lunch time now, a steady flow of people passing the two crying women in the garden, trying to pretend they didn’t see.

“You’ll be okay,” she says, “You have Jeremy, you have so many good things out here. I just can’t make it here as an artist, it’s impossible. Seth and I, we can buy a house in Georgia. His job already agreed to transfer him.”

I’m nodding, sure, sure, yes this is the right move for her, of course, but my voice is catching in my throat and all that comes out is an “Okay.”

We sit for a minute, just looking at each other while we wipe the occasional tear off our faces.

“I will miss you so much, Alexis, but really, I’m so happy for you. Buying a house! That’s amazing! I will come visit all the time, of course.”

She smiles. “Duh. I won’t even look at a house that doesn’t have a guest room for you.”

I believe her.

“Why Georgia again?” I ask. Wasn’t she just complaining about her family?

“We considered somewhere new but, I mean, we have friends in Georgia and Seth’s family, who are really sweet. And who knows! If we start trying for a baby soon, it would be really nice to have family around to help.”

“Makes sense.” Can’t fault the girl’s logic here. I think about moving back to Georgia to be near Grandma Judy, but then I think about what the proximity to my mother could do to my mental wellbeing. I’m a little scared that if I moved back, I’d fall back into my old ways. And I don’t want that.

My heart literally feels broken.

But I’ll be okay.

* * *

Jeremy picks me up the next night to go walk around downtown and get my mind off things. I shot down all of his other ideas, my own sense of desire thrown out of balance, as if I’m the one deciding—decided—to move back to the South.

“How about here?” I ask. The bar is huge, maybe a converted warehouse, with high ceilings, Millennial-wood paneling. I’d bet anything that their drinks are served in mason jars.

Jeremy opens the door for me. It’s more crowded than I thought it would be on a Tuesday, but maybe the world stopped turning for more than just me.

“How are you feeling? It’s been a day now.”

His drink appears to be a few drops of whiskey and an ice cube that could dent a car.

“I’m still… I can’t believe it.”

My drink—vodka and too many fruit juices—comes in a mason jar. Too easy. “I really can’t imagine her not being here, you know? I’m losing my best friend.”

I can see him calculating in his head whether he should point out that he is my best friend, a playful joke I could normally tolerate.

“You will be okay though, like Alexis said, you have other friends, and now when you go back to Georgia, you’ll just have one more person to see. Maybe you’ll even go back more often, who knows?”

“I guess. Until everyone else moves back home too, at least.”

I feel stupid for believing that this cornucopia of friends would last forever. Isn’t this the dream? Come to Silicon Valley, get rich, then go back home and buy your McMansion in cash?

He’s trying so hard to cheer me up that I’m almost annoyed by it. No boyfriend has ever been this nice to me.

He takes my hands in his, his face the slightest bit red from his drink. “You have me, doesn’t that count for something?”

I laugh and put my credit card on top of the block of wood carrying the bill. “Of course, baby.”

* * *

The month drips by, the house looking more like a storage unit each day. Alexis bequeaths her favorite cactus to me, along with two miniature figurines of my cats she made for me in secret. We neglect Jeremy and Seth for weeks, clinging to each other like Velcro, promising we’ll still talk every day and visit each other all the time. I have to remind myself not to be mad, that they’re moving back not to spite me, but because they’re not happy out here. And I want my best friend to be happy. I do.

I left somewhere once, too. I left my family, my friends. I know exactly how hard it is to leave your family, people who love you. I had no idea how different my life would be, whether I’d get over the homesickness, whether I would miss anyone, how much anyone would miss me. It’s scary and it hurts.

I had no idea it would hurt even more to be on the other side.

22

I move out first to give Alexis and Seth more room to sort through the mountains of stuff they’ve accumulated. My moves in California have been straightforward —clothes, a box of shoes, some framed photos wrapped in towels and stacked on top of my cheap Target plates.

Yes, I am still salty about losing all my furniture when Logan made me get rid of everything when we moved out here to California.

I stood in that studio apartment in Atlanta and watched the junk removers I hired take away the sofa, mirrored end tables, a full bedroom suite Mom bought for me, velvet chairs, and a solid wood dining table. Two tall, white ceramic vases with nothing in them, serving no purpose other than looking pretty. A shoe box of photos that featured my high school boyfriend Kurt too often, earning itself a place in the garbage truck parked below my apartment window.

Logan paid the junk people for me. I was too stunned by the empty room, five hundred square feet of indented carpet and re-circulated dust.

“Glad that’s over with,” Logan had said, opening and closing the cabinets to check for any forgotten undesirables. “I can’t wait to buy new furniture when we move. Stuff that other men haven’t been sitting on and touching for years.”

I would not even consider getting rid of my entire life like this if my job offer had come with a relocation package.

“Yeah, no point in paying to ship an old couch across the country, I guess.”

It’s just things, I told myself. You’ll get better things once you’re in California.

I carried an armful of underwear and socks to the bathroom, depositing them in my wicker elephant hamper. She would be riding in the backseat next to the cats.

Logan came in, the gloating look disappearing from his face when he saw the hamper still there. “You’re keeping this?”

I had this hamper since I moved out of my mom’s house almost five years prior. Once she started talking to me again, we went shopping, where I fell in love with this elephant, three times the price of standard hampers. She convinced me to buy it, assured me that I’d be happier.

I turned to Logan. “Yeah, I am.”

He did not know that we were about to go to war over this wicker basket.

He shrugged and left me in the bathroom, the glued-on black plastic disks-for-eyes staring back at me.

My new place in California is a one bedroom apartment in Santa Clara. It’s a little closer to work and has air conditioning in the living room, so I basically hit the jackpot. I haven’t lived on my own in a couple years. Hopefully muscle memory kicks in soon.

I spend the first night in my new apartment alone, crying in bed. The elephant still stares at me, although her eyes are lopsided now, victims of my unsuccessful repair attempts.

I pick up my phone and dial Mom. I say the only words I know will get a positive response from her. “Mom, I’m sad.”

* * *

Jeremy is right—I’m fine. Caitlyn eagerly accepts my attention, although I refuse to go back to The Goose without Alexis. I change teams at work after a year, still having made zero friends. Work is going really well – I’m learning way more about data warehousing and am known as a great presenter. I do love to talk about data. Mom can hold a conversation with me without calling me evil or bringing up my dad. I’ve stopped wondering when Jeremy is going to realize he doesn’t like me, and I feel safe. It’s really quite pleasant.

He’s taking me to a fancy French restaurant for our one-year anniversary tonight. I’m wearing a tight velour dress, courtesy of the clearance rack at Marshall’s. It bunches up around my waist when I walk. I yank the hem down as discreetly as I can while we are shown to our table. So embarrassing.

I’m flustered by my fashion faux pa and don’t know how I’m supposed to sit down in my chair while our server pushes it in, adding further doubt to the fire. Jeremy is smiling at me, the candle on the table casting weird shadows on his face. I take a deep breath, in, out.

I’m calm. I’m not hyper-focused on my too-tight, but still very cute, dress. I’m focused on my very handsome boyfriend of one whole year.

The wine menu comes in a leather bound book, no wines by the glass, no dollar signs, only three-digit numbers ending in fives or zeroes. Jeremy orders a bottle as our server brings a tiny plate of bread and butter to our table.

“You look beautiful tonight.”

See? He doesn’t even notice my ill-fitting dress. I really should stop worrying so much.

“Thank you.”

I feel weirdly formal, like I’m at dinner with a stranger I’m trying to impress, not my boyfriend of a year who has seen me wear the same pajamas for a week straight.

Jeremy stares at me with those goo-goo eyes for the entirety of dinner, which has to be one of the top ten meals of my life. Dessert arrives, a tiny square of lemon tart and three pinpricks of a raspberry reduction, but he doesn’t pick up his spoon.

“I think I’m ready for the next step in our relationship.”

My attention shifts from making the smallest bite of tart possible to his adorably serious face. “What, move in together?”

His turn to be shocked. “What? Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.”

Hasn’t thought of that? I guess the toothbrush he keeps next to mine, the extra phone charger, the groceries he buys for my apartment, happened by accident.

“No, I want you to meet my family.”

I return to my task— this lemon tart is amazing. No, this lemon tart is good, but not nineteen-dollars amazing. Jeremy is amazing. I feed him a bite, so I don’t feel too guilty for eating it all.

“Okay. Let’s go to Raleigh. Guess you’ll have to meet mine too.”

He smiles and softens, satisfied with my answer. It’s so cute that he was nervous to ask me, but did he think I’d say no?

I split the last bite of the lemon tart with him, eating it in slow-mo while he wastes no time.

Jeremy wipes his mouth with his napkin and leans forward. “So, tell me more about us moving in together.”

Check, please.

* * *

“So, it’s been a few months! Tell me how things with your mom are going.”

I feel guilty about dropping Daniela from a regular rotation, like I’m pretending that my only therapy-required issues are about my mother—but me?

No, I’m perfect. Definitely no self-esteem issues or anxiety here.

“Actually, we seem to be okay right now. I started texting her a while ago and she hasn’t blown up at me. Yet.”

Daniela laughs, a bubbly giggle. “Yet! What does that mean?” Her pen scratches her notepad.

“I mean, I just know that eventually, maybe tomorrow, maybe in two months, maybe in two years, but eventually, she’s going to turn on me again and tell me I’m the devil and how awful Dad was. But for now, it’s nice. Actually, I wanted to talk about Jeremy today.”

“Sure. How are things going with him?”

“Well, he moved in a few weeks ago and it’s fine, although he has way more stuff than I thought he would. But no, it’s good.”

Daniela waits for me to get to the point.

“We’ve talked a lot about what our goals in life are, you know, make sure we’re a good match. We started talking about it when we first started dating, like ‘Oh, do you want to live in California forever?’ and stuff like that. And it’s nice, we’re aligned on like, literally everything.”

I find myself unable to maintain eye contact. “But I’m scared about him changing his mind on the whole no-kids thing.”

Daniela nods with her whole torso, her curly hair bobbing gently. “Remind me again, you don’t want to have children and he does?”

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve told a woman with children that I don’t want kids myself and she says something other than ‘Are you sure?’ I clear my throat. “Yeah, I told him early on that I don’t, and he thought about it over a couple of days then said that he’s fine with that.”

“Ah. And you have your doubts that he’s really thought it through?”

I regret bringing this up with Daniela. Sure, she’s a trained family therapist so she’s probably the best person to talk to, but she can’t relate. None of my friends can. No one is worried about Jeremy changing his mind because they’re expecting me to.

“He went from maybe, no strong opinion, to no kids in a few days so no, I don’t really believe that he’s thought it through.”

He’d be the third boyfriend to go from no to yes to no again.

Daniela taps her pen against her pursed lips. “I think it’s okay to check back in with him in a few weeks. You’ve never given me any indication that you don’t trust him, but I can see how you’d be wary of disagreeing on such an important decision.”

I agree with her, if only to end this conversation. It’s hard to be mad at Daniela, I know she’s doing her job and she’s helped me quite a bit. But just once—once!—I’d like someone to agree with me that, no, not everyone needs to want children and, yes, some people shouldn’t have children, and, no, I definitely won’t end up alone because everyone else is obsessed with their so-called ‘legacy’ or keeping up with the Joneses.

I wrap up our session with some fluff about our upcoming trips to meet each other’s parents. She promises me it will all be okay—the tattoos, my mom, being in an interracial relationship.

She had better be right.

23

Jeremy’s parents pick us up from the airport in a black Audi SUV that looks brand new, down to the vacuum lines on the floor mats. The only thing missing is that new car smell. I climb into the middle row, my face shiny from the North Carolina humidity that is so very reminiscent of home. I regret wearing this cardigan in a last-minute attempt to cover my tattoos.

Jeremy’s mom, Tina, twists around in her seat, the heavy southern accent coming out of her surprising me. “I’m so glad you could come Sierra, it’s so nice to finally meet you!”

Jeremy squeezes my hand as her questions immediately turn to him.

“How was your flight? Did you park at the airport?”

I squeeze his hand back and wonder why she didn’t get out of the car to hug him.

“Now Tina, let’s let them breathe a moment,” Jeremy’s dad, Greg, says. He has a lead foot and an aversion to staying in one lane for too long. I avoid looking out of the windows. “We’ll be home in forty minutes, maybe Mom can make you a snack when we get there.”

“We have Indian for tonight, if that’s okay, or I can make some sandwiches. I think I have some pasta we could heat up too. And for dessert, Sierra, I made brownies with caramel and a key lime pie and tomorrow we’ll have cookies.”

Jeremy doesn’t respond to his mother, but I feel awkward just letting her talk to herself. “Indian sounds great!”

Twenty minutes and a hundred “that’s great!”s later, I stop replying to her, too.

Greg parks in the garage next to two more Audis. I keep my cool as we enter the house, as if the house I grew up in also had a billiards room and large, spiral staircases, but I lose it as Greg loads our luggage onto the elevator. The elevator!

Jeremy’s mom notices my gawking. “We designed the house and figured it will be nice when we get older! But for now, we just use it to bring our groceries to the kitchen, so we don’t have to carry them up the stairs.” Tina pauses at the garage door and kicks off her shoes without dropping her smile.

I rush back to the doorway and slip mine off too.

“Do you want to ride it?”

“Yes!” I say, maybe a little too enthusiastically.

Jeremy declines. Guess the excitement wore off for him long ago. I ride to the third floor with our bags, wondering if it would be tacky to post this on my Instagram.

Jeremy’s dad beats me to the top, waiting to open the door for me. “How’d you like it?”

I like his slow voice, his obvious comfort with silence.

“This is so cool!” I drag the bags out of the elevator.

I wish Grandma Judy and Grandpa Wally could have a big house with an elevator in it. Or a garage featuring a working car, not boxes and boxes of old shit they might “need someday.” I bet they’d happily ignore any lottery scammers if they lived in a nice house like this. My self-doubt creeps in—am I too impressed by this simple engineering feature? I’m so good at pretending that I fit in with the upper echelon, my tech job, less glamorous than it sounds, helps with the camouflage, but once in a while I’m reminded that I don’t know this life. The fact that Jeremy repeatedly told me that his family is not rich, while he knows their house has to be at least half a million, and, hello, has an elevator? We must have very different definitions of rich.

Jeremy appears at the top of the stairs, followed by his chattering mother. He looks tired already.

“Ok, Sierra, honey, you can pick which room you want. This one has a smaller bed, but it has a fan, so that might be more comfortable for you.”

I stifle the urge to look at Jeremy. Separate rooms? Are we sixteen years old?

I follow Tina into the first bedroom. “This is great, thank you! I’ll bring my bag in.”

She waves her hands at me dismissively: “Oh no honey, let Greg do it. Greg?”

He appears obediently with my suitcase, carrying it by the side strap. I’d be willing to bet money that none of the Chen family has a suitcase with a busted handle.

“We’ll let you get settled. Should we eat in, oh, say, ten minutes?”

I smile and nod. Ten minutes is not enough time to mentally prepare myself to make it through this dinner. I haven’t spent time with someone’s parents in so long. Sure, I can be my normal sarcastic self around my family, but not people I am trying to impress. And something tells me Jeremy’s family is not exactly the type to sit around and shoot the shit. I feel like I need to be ‘on’ for them.

“Jeremy, show her where the towels and soap are in the bathroom.”

Jeremy drops his suitcase on his bed and starts pulling off the decorative pillows. I count seven.

“Separate rooms?” I whine. “Don’t they know we live together?”

He opens the door to the bathroom. “Yeah, but we aren’t married so that isn’t, quote, proper. They did the same thing to my brother, Alex, and his wife Lisa before they got married, too. Towels are in this cabinet, and I’ll put the soap in the shower.”

Grandma Judy would never let me share a room with a boyfriend either, I just didn’t expect them to be so old-fashioned. I don’t even know why, since his parents are totally from the Bible Belt too. Did I really just assume Asian people couldn’t be conservative? Embarrassing.

“Fine, I’ll be all right, I guess. It’s only a few nights.”

Jeremy walks to the other side of the bathroom and opens another door. My suitcase is staring back at me.

“It’s a Jack and Jill bathroom.” I start laughing, clamping my hand over my mouth as Jeremy puts his index finger to his lips.

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” he whispers.

I smirk. Good to know he’s not a complete goody-two-shoes.

Jeremy’s parents certainly maximize their time with him, spending every waking second with us until I fake a yawn and send myself to bed. I lay on top of the blanket on the bed, the ceiling fan pushing the thick air around above me. If I don’t move, my body temperature might even drop a degree. I guess Jeremy’s parents aren’t air conditioning fanatics like most southerners I know.

The screen of my phone glows bright in my face as I scroll through the news - nothing’s happened since I last checked two hours ago. Same for Instagram. I expected Jeremy would follow me upstairs sooner, but a real yawn overtakes me, and even the thought of forbidden parents-house sex can’t keep me awake.

* * *

I wake up alone, the other side of the bed still made. I step into my hot shower from the equally muggy bathroom, hearing the click of the door latch a second later.

“Jeremy?”

A blurry tan figure appears on the other side of the frosted glass wall. “I’m in here.”

I grin. “Yeah, I can tell. You didn’t sleep with me last night?” I pour a drizzle of creamy body wash in my hand. Why doesn’t anyone ever give their guests a washcloth?

The shower door slides open and Jeremy leans in to look at me. He’s sweaty. And naked. “No, I made plans to play tennis with my brother this morning, so I slept in the other room and got up early. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

The door slides open further and an arm snakes in.

“Oh, no you don’t!” I giggle, loosening his grip on the shower door with my soapy fingers, the condensation on the glass hiding the shocked expression on Jeremy’s face. I’m down to risk it for some nighttime shenanigans. But I am not going to let Tina feed me some wholesome, hearty breakfast moments after Jeremy’s—

“Hurry up, we have brunch with Lisa’s family in twenty.”

Fuck.

* * *

My first foray into North Carolina is a ten-minute drive to a Chinese restaurant in a strip mall. Jeremy runs through introductions: His brother and sister-in-law, Alex and Lisa; their two-year-old Olivia; and Lisa’s parents.

Growing up as an average white girl in a very white county did not prepare me adequately to be the only white person at a table of eight Asian people. Nor did it prepare me for the humbling yet embarrassing thought that it took me twenty-seven years to ever feel like the minority.

Tina orders all of the food, most of which I can’t identify, but I eat whatever I feel confident enough I can grab with my chopsticks.

“Have you ever had duck before?” she asks me, spinning the lazy Susan until a platter with crispy-skinned meat rests in front of me.

Everyone looks at me from across the great, round table, curious.

“Oh, yes,” I say, hoping there’s enough confidence in my voice to mask the fact that I’ve had duck once before. I breathe out a sigh of relief as I successfully transfer a piece from the platter to my plate.

Jeremy’s mom smiles at me as I take a bite. I accept the token of approval and sit back in my seat, happy the attention is off of me. Besides Jeremy pointing out what’s been ordered, no one talks to me again throughout the meal.

* * *

Jeremy wakes me from an hour-long nap, which was actually twenty minutes of texting Alexis about my awkwardness and forty minutes of self-flagellation. He slides under the sheets next to me, his warm hands snaking around me to find mine. “It’s just us for dinner tonight,” he whispers.

I turn my face back to give him a small smile. “What are we doing tomorrow?”

“I think tomorrow is brunch with Alex and his family, then Olivia has to go have her nap time, and we have dinner with Alex and them, too.”

I’m somewhat disappointed that we’re not doing… anything… besides eating at buffets and playing pool in the basement for four days straight. It’s only been twenty-four hours and I already feel like a bloated whale.

Do I say something? I mean, I have to, right? How else will he know? “Do you think there’s any time to go do something, maybe? It’s really great we get so much time with your family but I’d love to see some of Raleigh, you know? Maybe eat somewhere that isn’t a buffet?” I feel like such an asshole. Hey, we’re spending too much time on this trip we took to specifically spend time with your family.

Jeremy releases my hand and turns onto his back. “Yeah, I get it. I feel like I’ve been eating ever since we landed.” He turns again and looks at me. “No promises, since my mom really likes to do all of the planning, but I’ll see what I can do.”

I’m so glad to hear him say this, but why do I feel so weird?

It’s only after Jeremy arranges for everyone to go bowling together (thank you baby Jesus) that I realize how badly I was expecting that conversation to go. How Logan would have made me feel like a piece of shit for even asking for what I need. But somehow, I knew Jeremy would listen. I was only a tiny bit nervous.

Is this what it’s like to feel… safe?

* * *

I play several games of pool with Jeremy and his dad while Tina shuffles around in the kitchen. Greg and Jeremy give me pointers every time it’s my turn. I lose every game, but barely. Tina appears in the doorway, her tiny frame wrapped in a frilly yellow apron. “ Y’all, are you ready for dinner?” Her eyes snap to my arms, the dark swirls of ink visible for the first time. I had hoped adequate air conditioning and a cardigan would be a good enough shield.

“I am,” Jeremy says, and we’re off to the dining room, where Tina has a spread.

We have the leftovers still, looking like we didn’t even eat any of the Indian from last night. She’s also made more sides consisting of a heaped bowl of mashed potatoes and a tray of cornbread. Greg offers us beers, and I’m so thrilled I say yes, not caring what kind he has.

I eat far more food than anyone should, but nothing compared to the amount Greg and Jeremy put down. Jeremy drains his beer and excuses himself to the bathroom.

I pause to wipe sauce off my lips. “Tina, this was wonderful, thank you for all of this.”

Something about eating a meal with my family makes me sad. Maybe it’s the idea that this could be one of our last meals together. Maybe it’s the always-growing realization that these people would do anything for me, even more than reheat some butter chicken and mash a potato. And there’s never going to be anything I say that will convey how much I appreciate it.

“Oh, no problem, sweetie. Did you have enough?”

“I did, thank you.”

She gives me another small smile. Greg brings another round.

“You know, Sierra, I’ve been wondering.” Tina sounds like she’s trying to sound nonchalant.

Oh, no.

“What’s that tattoo on your arm for?”

I look down, even though I already know which one she’s talking about. One of my newer ones, a black-and-grey heart with DAD inside, just below my shirtsleeve on my left bicep.

“Oh,” I try to stall.

Jeremy sure is taking his sweet time in the bathroom.

“It’s for, um, my dad.” My throat thickens. Two years. It’s been two years, and I still can’t talk about him.

“Did he pass?”

All I can do is nod, wishing Jeremy had warned her. Honestly, though, he would never think to do that. I don’t talk to him much about Dad. It’s so much easier to hide how often I think about my dad or how frequently I relive that phone call from my Aunt Cindy, than it would be to truly impress upon him the magnitude of the gaping wound in my chest.

Tina reaches her hand out, the only part of her that shows her age, and pats me on the wrist. “Well, how about your mom?”

This one, I’ll just have to lie about.

24

The humidity in Georgia squeezes your lungs just like it does in North Carolina. Jeremy and I are huddled underneath a tiny speckle of shade outside of a Red Lobster, thankful for the two degrees of relief.

A drop of sweat rolls down between my shoulder blades. It happens so often, I barely notice. I reach for Jeremy’s hand but drop it almost immediately to wipe his sweat on the hem of my dress. “You nervous?”

He shrugs noncommittally—always unbothered. Did my pep talk about acceptable topics of discussion and escape plans for her eventual poor-me monologues not resonate with him?

If I had the mental capacity right now, I’d be concerned that, maybe, he doesn’t believe how insane my mother is. I wouldn’t blame him, I mean, why would I agree to meet her and introduce her to Jeremy if she really was as terrible as I say she is?

Daniela says it’s because she is my mother and, what a surprise, humans are wired to want their mothers. Even if the mother in question isn’t nurturing or even nice to you.

A tiny red convertible pulls into the far end of the parking lot. It’s the same model as the tiny yellow convertible I used to own.

My stomach drops. I turn back to Jeremy. “I won’t leave you alone with her, I promise.”

He squints at me, confused as to why I would promise this to him. I smile, hoping to skate past my awkward comment, where I should’ve just admitted that I don’t know what normal parent-child relationships are supposed to be like.

His hand, still very sweaty, finds my lower back. I feel steadied. “It will be fine,” he whispers.

She parks her car and waves excitedly at us. The two-seater has been turned into a one-seater; in the passenger seat, a suitcase is buckled in, grocery bags stuffed with what looks like fabric and construction paper surrounding it. I’d bet ninety percent is for her high-school math students and the rest is for her own DIY decoration ideas. She is quite crafty.

We step out of our shady solace, waiting for her as she swipes lip gloss on. Jeremy smiles at her, and then me, and then her again. Maybe it’s okay that he doesn’t see her as an evil witch. Maybe, after Mom’s borderline personality disorder diagnosis, she’s been able to get some help and the days of name-calling and threatening secret-reveals are over. I let out the breath I’ve been holding in. I unclench my jaw.

The car door opens and Mom steps into the sunlight. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, the strands too thick and shiny, and—oh, okay, it’s a wig. Jeremy stiffens beside me, his eyes searching the sky like god is up there.

Then, I see why. Her long black dress is completely see-through. True to her nature, there’s no bra holding in her cartoonishly big breasts.

My grin widens as she reaches us, pulling the both of us into a hug. I cannot wait to tell Alexis about this.

We’re the first, and only, group to be seated. Guess July Fourth celebration lunches at Red Lobster aren’t a thing over in East Atlanta. Mom flirts with the barely legal waiter while he rattles off the specials, his eyes glued to the reading glasses bouncing around on her boobs. At least the sad, dim interior provides Jeremy with some welcome relief.

“So! What are you guys up to these days out there in Cali?” Mom asks.

I take Jeremy’s hand beneath the table. “Hmm. Not much, working mostly. Jeremy plays in a bowling league every week. I am thinking about joining next time!”

“Oh wow! Are you a good bowler? How long have you been doing that?”

“A few years, actually. It’s mostly a social league so it’s not too competitive, but I’m okay at bowling,” says Jeremy.

“Mom, don’t let his humility fool you. His team wins almost every year!”

She perks up and smiles. She must be impressed.

Oh, never mind. The waiter is coming back to take our orders.

We leave exactly an hour later, Jeremy winning the “No, I’ll pay” fight. I don’t even bother trying.

I start the car and turn the air on to full blast, leaving the doors of this furnace on wheels open. We wave to her as she pulls out of the parking lot. She doesn’t use her blinker.

His face drops the second we lose sight of her car. “What the fuck!”

I know it’s not normal to see your girlfriend’s mom’s tits the first time you meet her. (Or ever?) It’s not normal to worry about your mom hitting on your boyfriend, either. Or worry about your boyfriend trying to fuck your mom.

To be fair, nothing about Mom has ever been normal. Not the jumping out of cars, not the random late-night drives to get an ice cream cone at McDonald’s, not the photo of myself she asked for to show her plastic surgeon what she wanted, and definitely not the amount of therapy I need to process how my own mother “loves me too much.”

But as far as all that goes, watching Jeremy try to avoid eye contact with my mother’s nipples is by far the best outcome I could have hoped for.

“Yeah, so I knew she wouldn’t wear a bra, she hasn’t worn one in public,” I pause, pretending like I have to think, “ever. But the sheer dress is a new one for me.” I sink into the slightly cooler car and test the steering wheel with my palm. Not too hot.

Jeremy looks at me, his disapproving head shakes sending me into laughter again.

“You should have seen your face!” I cackle.

He snorts gently, still too traumatized to laugh about it. “I thought I’d have to stare at the ceiling the whole time. Did you see how far away I hugged her from?”

“You did great, baby.” I’m not being fair. He did incredible, and I’m not just saying that because he isn’t talking about how hot she is.

“Thanks, babe.” His hand reaches across the center console to rest on my leg. “Your mom seemed…”

Something hitches in my throat. My shoulders feel like boulders attached to my neck.

“Nice. She seemed nice. Except for the whole, you know,” he finishes, gesturing to a wide area in front of his chest.

I don’t say anything and exit the highway. My tongue tries to dig out something stuck between my back teeth. “Yeah, I guess she was okay,” I concede. Compared to her normal self, yes, she was more than okay.

But compared to Jeremy’s mom, Tina? Who, yes, was a little overbearing but otherwise basically what I picture when I think “typical mother.” Tina is the type to take her kids to the neighborhood pool and slather them in sunscreen and bring snacks and watch them from her lounge chair, while my mom is the type to send us on our own or join us to suntan in a sexy bikini.

Not that women shouldn’t feel free to wear sexy bikinis no matter their age or parental status. But come on, when you’re seven years old, it feels different.

I know for a fact, based on how Tina spoke about Jeremy, that she’s so proud of him. She’ll be proud of him no matter what. I wish I knew what that felt like. Dad was proud of me. I know that. But, he’s not here anymore. So yes. Mom was okay today. But I’m not sure that it makes up for her being not-okay for so long.

Jeremy brings me back to reality. “Was it better than you expected?”

I expected long rants about how being a public-school teacher is the same as being a prisoner of war. I expected crocodile tears and sad stories. I did not expect the healthy interest into my life or her charming anecdotes or the very brief admission that, yes, being a public-school teacher is like being a prisoner of war, perhaps the shared PTSD diagnosis being the link, but no, Jeremy, tell me what it’s like to grow up in Raleigh?

“Yes and no.”

I park alongside the curb in front of Grandma Judy’s house. Jeremy’s shock has worn off and he grins at me. “Good.” His tone, his sparkly eyes, even the way his right hand is lifted, ready to open the car door, all scream at me: I told you so.

I just grin and lean in for a kiss.

He cracks open his door to exit the car, but I put my hand up to stop him.

“So, I know we had a super fun time with my mom and all but I have to warn you about my grandparents,” I start, feeling a bit like a traitor. “Grandma Judy drinks way too much and Grandpa Wally repeats himself constantly and is also kind of racist?”

I don’t know why I say it like it’s a question.

He is racist.

Jeremy just keeps looking at me, so I finish my pep-talk.

“He probably won’t say anything fucked up to you but if he does, let’s just get up and leave. Deal?”

Jeremy shrugs. “I’m not too worried about anything. Doesn’t bother me. You ready to get inside?”

I’d almost be happier if he was upset. How can one person be so easygoing?

We open our doors and head up the driveway.

* * *

Jeremy gives no indication that he wants to rip his ears off his skull, which is how I feel whenever I find myself in a good-granddaughter-obligation-trap of listening to Grandpa Wally drone on about his life on the railroad. I can repeat his story of his extremely radical decision to hire a black man as his office assistant by heart. I look at Jeremy out of the corner of my eye as Grandpa Wally describes how the black man would bring fried chicken for lunch and “suck the meat off the bones.”

So, yeah, I’m a little worried about Jeremy’s first impression of my grandparents.

Grandma Judy interrupts Grandpa to ask if we’d like any wine.

Jeremy asks me with his eyes, thankfully catching my quick nod. “That would be great,” he says.

His parents did not start drinking at three o’clock. But they also didn’t tell a bunch of racist stories. I need some wine.

My grandmother shifts forward from her place deep in the couch.

Before she’s able to gain any momentum, I jump up. “We can get it!” I volunteer.

Jeremy follows me into the kitchen.

I open a cabinet door and take out three wine glasses—I figure Grandma will leave her wine-mug to impress her guest.

“Wow, they have a lot of glasses,” Jeremy comments, the equivalent of a small department store in front of him.

“Yeah, they keep everything.” I mean, everything. They probably have enough silverware for fifty settings. We could all use a new glass every time we took a drink and wouldn’t need to re-use one for a week. “If you need a break from, you know,” I jerk my head towards the living room, where my grandparents have fallen silent. “Just say you want to lie down a bit and you can go hang out in the bedroom.”

Jeremy picks up the bottle of wine and a corkscrew and kisses me. “I’m fine,” he insists.

I follow him back into the living room with the wine glasses. Grandma and I watch him adoringly as he opens the bottle.

He pours her glass first, a generous pour. I snicker as she scoffs.

“Is that it? Don’t be shy! You can give us more.”

Her demand is softened by her sweet voice, but it was clearly a demand, not a request. Jeremy doesn’t hesitate and fills her glass to the rim.

“Thank you!” she chirps.

The wine intermission puts an end to Grandpa Wally’s rambling. Grandma asks how my mom is doing, how our visit was. I recount our meeting, accompanied by a soundtrack of “mmhmm”s and “that’s nice”s. I leave out Mom’s outfit.

The wine does its job and anxiety slowly rolls off me. Our conversation turns from a pleasant, mild-mannered discussion on how my mother is doing into a loud gossip about the rest of the family. We are just about to launch into why I think my brother Brian doesn’t want to marry his girlfriend, even though he proposed, when the garage door beeps, announcing my aunt Cindy’s arrival.

“Hiiii!” Her voice carries through the kitchen and into the living room. “Y’all hungry?”

“We’re in here!” Grandma shouts weakly.

I stand and help her off of the sofa. I put down the empty bottle of wine and my wine glass on the counter, next to the Styrofoam boxes Cindy unpacks from a huge paper bag.

“Well I see y’all are having a good time!” She chortles.

Jeremy introduces himself, brave man, and Cindy wastes no time in recruiting him to help set the table. After directing him to the cabinet with the plates, she asks me if I can help her get the rest from her trunk.

Surely there’s not a lot left—one trip, max—right? Jeremy is bent over the table, making sure the silverware is perfectly perpendicular to the edge of the table. He should be fine for two minutes. Max.

“Sure.” I follow her out into the muggy garage. Her SUV is at the top of the driveway. Trunk closed…

“Look, I don’t know if it’s better for me to let you stay out of this whole mess, but you already know about it, so, I’m just going to tell you.”

My heart thumps, sending a rush of blood into my ears. She’s really going to have to stop this whole ‘I’m here with some bad news’ thing. I’m having flashbacks of her phone call telling me that my dad died.

I inhale sharply through my nose. “Okay, sure, you can tell me.”

“Mom and Dad are in way, way deeper than we thought.” Cindy’s shoulders sink down her sides like she’s deflating. “They have three hundred thousand of unsecured debt.”

My face scrunches around my nose. “How?”

She shrugs. “These scammers were opening up accounts in their name. Mom took out a reverse mortgage to try and pay, but…” Cindy pauses. I have never heard her voice in anything less than a quiet yell, but now it’s coming out in fast, shaky whispers.

“The scammers got that money too.”

That ‘oh shit, something bad is actually happening’ feeling descends on me like mist. Was I delusional in thinking that everyone could somehow all band together to put a stop to this lottery scam before it got this bad? I guess so. I know that whatever Cindy is going to say next is going to be one of those things that you wish you could go back in time and never hear. As if that would be enough to stop whatever heartache it causes.

“There’s more.”

Here it comes.

“The FBI is involved. Apparently, they were using Mom and Dad to launder money and they’ve helped these scammers launder over a million dollars. The FBI said that if Mom talks to them ever again, they could be charged with helping these people.”

I run the thumb and pointer finger of one hand across my eyes and squeeze the bridge of my nose. Pain radiates through my face. My hand drops to my mouth as I bite my thumb.

Cindy claps me on the shoulder. “I know it’s a lot. Doug and I are watching them like a hawk. We found a bankruptcy lawyer to meet with next week. Can you try not to think about it too much and enjoy your time here?”

I nod rapidly. I forgot I’ve left Jeremy alone with my grandparents. We walk back in together with empty hands, but no one notices. Jeremy is opening another bottle of wine for my grandma as she coos over him while my grandfather sits at the head of the table, watching his family like we’re a movie.

I swallow back the acid burning in my throat as Jeremy hands me another very full glass of wine before returning to his own at the table.

Grandma J shuffles over to me and kisses me on the cheek. Her skin is so soft against mine. “He is so nice, Sierra,” she whispers in my ear.

I take my seat at the table and raise my glass to Jeremy. He handles all of Cindy’s questions like a pro, sprinkling in the right amount of southern charm on top of his personality.

I can’t finish my wine. It tastes sour.

* * *

I lie awake for what feels like hours that night (in a separate room from Jeremy, obviously). The glow-in-the-dark stars are still on my dad’s ceiling. It’s hard to think about them coming down if my grandparents do lose their house.

My mind is racing. Is Jeremy having a good time? Does he like my family? They’re so different from his family. Every family has problems, duh, just listen to literally anyone I know after they spend a few days visiting their family. But ours feel… worse?

Then again, maybe I just don’t know what the Chen family’s problems even are. My family is quite open.

Which, honestly, I think I prefer. I don’t have to sweep anything under the rug around them. I don’t feel any pressure to be any certain way (the photos of my ‘punk rock’ phase as a thirteen-year old can serve as evidence).

At least Jeremy fits right in with my family. My grandparents really seem to like him. Mom likes him, but I can’t say that I care too much about her opinion here.

I like Jeremy a lot, too. I hope he sticks around for a long time. Like, forever. I’ve never felt like this before.

The only thing stopping me from being one hundred percent all-in is that he only recently decided he’s fine to not have children. What if he changes his mind, again?

He also does like to visit his family a lot, too. Way more than I do. I’d like to stick to visits on the major holidays, but not every time, you know? Wouldn’t it be nice to take a Christmas vacation somewhere with Jeremy, just the two of us? My brain makes a note to ask him about future family visitation schedules tomorrow.

Damn. Look at me getting ahead of myself. Our first time meeting the families and I’m planning our next ten years of travel. Calm down, Sierra.

25

I wait to tell Jeremy about the whole FBI thing until we’re on the road, heading up to Big Canoe for Alexis’s wedding. I take us through a detour to drive through areas where I used to live. I ooh and ahh, gasping at how much an area can change in just a few years. Driving through Georgia makes me feel so nostalgic, as if another Starbucks and Yet Another Quirky Consignment Store are what I’m really missing in my life.

We bumble along the congested roads. The pride I felt from not needing GPS to get around, for once, slowly fades as the red light in front of us cycles through three times before we make it across the intersection.

The very first apartment I had of my own watches us from behind a bowling alley, recently renovated, atop a hill. The birthplace of the elephant hamper. The first place I ever lived alone after finally cutting Kurt off. “Would you ever want to move back to North Carolina?” I turn down the radio. All of the pop stations out here cut out the rap parts from every song. I get us back onto the interstate and breathe a sigh of relief. The sides of the road quickly fill with thick forest. It feels like home.

Jeremy looks at me, then back out of the window. His head tilts ever so slightly to the left, then right, as if he’s having a serious debate with himself. “No, I don’t think I would. Not anytime soon, at least.”

Talking about the future with Jeremy, even this very hypothetical future, sends flutters to my heart. I’ve always been afraid of the future, afraid to get my hopes up. After countless hours of therapy, I finally understand that I learned so much from my mom, and most of it is garbage. Including the idea that things never get better for anyone. Moving to California, which admittedly has ended up way better than I imagined possible, even though my closest friends are starting to move away. Alexis has been gone for over a year. It’s only a matter of time before Caitlyn’s gone, too.

I’m weirdly not afraid of this anymore. Maybe I will stay in California forever with Jeremy. Maybe we don’t even work out. Maybe I will make another group of friends and it will all be fine. Maybe it’s the guilt that tugs on my heartstrings and makes me forget how much I hated living within driving distance of my family.

“You don’t want to live near your family or anything?”

Jeremy’s lips scrunch to one side of his face. “Not really.”

I don’t need him to elaborate.

After a few minutes of green streaking by the window, Jeremy asks, “Do you?” in a way that lets me know he is a little afraid of my answer.

“I don’t know. Kind of yes, but mostly no? I just found out that Grandma and Grandpa are being investigated by the FBI for money laundering.” The words bubble out of my mouth, my body trying to rid this poison from itself. “If they ever talk to the scammers again, they could be arrested. Arrested! And it’s not like they’re even gaining anything! No, they’ve lost money. How is that fair?”

“Uh, wow, that’s horrible. I had no idea it was that bad. How are your grandparents doing with all that?”

“I mean, bad, I guess. They might lose their house. I don’t really know much from Grandma because we just ignore the whole topic. I feel totally hopeless and there’s nothing I can do to stop it from happening. Aunt Cindy tried and they just sneak around her and do this behind her back. She’s gonna file for financial guardianship or something but that could take awhile.”

Jeremy is quiet for a few seconds. “Sorry, I was just thinking about what I would do if I was in your shoes. Honestly, I don’t know what I would do. That sucks. I’m sorry that it’s happening.”

The finest layer of mist covers my eyes. But thankfully, the smile I give Jeremy stops any potential waterworks. I take a deep breath and flick on my blinker to take us to Alexis’s house.

* * *

Alexis and Seth throw a joint bachelor party and graciously include Jeremy. Watching him flow through the small crowd of mostly college friends, all strangers to him, reminds me of before we started dating, back when I had no clue he was just as shy and awkward as the rest of us. I would have bet money that he would be the more extroverted one. But even here, in familiar territory with my best friend, with people I’ve met at least once before, I find myself hiding in the kitchen alone under the guise of making myself another drink.

From the kitchen, I can see Alexis and her friends from art school, a rainbow of hair colors and fabrics and large homemade jewelry, bunched up in a knot as each person takes a turn at inventing a new dance move. I swirl melting ice cubes around in my cup, suddenly embarrassed of my plain white t-shirt and denim shorts.

Jeremy comes into the kitchen from the basement.

I consider his arrival for a moment. “Weren’t y’all upstairs?” I ask.

His eyes are glassy, but he doesn’t wobble on his feet at all. I keep my hand along the edge of the counter.

“We went around back to see Seth’s lawn mower.” The blip of a smile on my face brings Jeremy closer to me. He smells like pot.

“Are you okay?”

I look back at the group of women laughing uncontrollably. I take another swallow of my vodka-Sprite and find the moment I needed is over. Who am I kidding? I love socializing!

“Yeah, I’m fine, just making a drink!”

Jeremy comes in for a kiss, lips mashed against mine, his body practically steaming. “Wanna take a shot?” He finds two empty plastic cups and unscrews the bottle of vodka, his face waiting for my answer while he simultaneously hands me a cup.

I make eye contact with Alexis as I lift the cup to my lips and see, but don’t hear, her say, “Wait.”

She climbs up the stairs to the kitchen, breathing hard, grinning. “You weren’t going to make me one?” she says, but Jeremy is already handing his cup to her and pouring a new one.

“To Seth and Alexis!” We cheers. The vodka goes down like cement.

Alexis pulls me by the hand. “Come on,” she says, “it’s time for Charades!”

* * *

It’s late. Charades might be responsible for ending the party—for everyone but me and Alexis. After the first round, we take another shot, after which our miming and terrible guesses ends with us howling on the floor with laughter while the other girls, who are sober, look on with boredom and soon turn their attention to their phones. They leave in pairs, the group quickly dwindling.

I have no idea where Jeremy is.

Alexis turns on a TV show I’ve never heard of before, something about a doctor in Alabama or Tennessee, and it’s just like old times.

“Are you excited for Saturday?” I whisper.

“Yeah.”

“Getting married. Wow.” For some reason, Alexis getting married makes me feel like our friendship is even more separated than her moving back across the country. I probably have some deep-rooted internalization of married women not being free to live their own lives. Thanks, Mom.

“Yeah. But nothing really changes, I mean we’ve been together for so long.” She rubs at her eyes sleepily.

I should be polite and let her go to bed, it’s gotta be after two, but I have been waiting so long to have her to myself. “Do you ever miss living in California?”

“Not really. We just could never afford it.” She pauses, as if she can’t believe there’s not a single thing she misses about it.

I’m holding my breath.

Alexis reaches her hand across the couch for mine. “I miss you, though.”

I take Alexis’ hand in mine. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Can we please get some fucking sleep now?”

She laughs.

* * *

I continue my gross, sappy declarations the rest of the weekend. I hug Jeremy for way too long after driving us to the clubhouse perched on the shores of Big Canoe Lake. He has no duties as a regular guest, so I leave him to fend for himself while I head downstairs to the bridal suite to act in my capacity as unofficial bridesmaid. Alexis and Seth are going the non-traditional route of no wedding party, but Alexis told me I’d totally be her maid of honor otherwise. (I’m secretly very glad they chose this so I can avoid giving a speech).

Seeing Alexis in her wedding dress gives me goosebumps and I start crying immediately.

“You saw me when I first tried it on!” she laughs, far more composed than I am.

“I know! It must be hormones. Who knew weddings made me so weepy?” I dab at my heavily made-up face, careful not to disturb my fake eyelashes. I leave Alexis after two glasses of champagne, feeling like my heart is going to burst.

Alexis is my first friend to actually get married; everyone else I know got married years before we met. Lately I find myself thinking about getting married and why I even want to. Twenty-year-old Sierra would have said she never wanted to get married. She would say she’d travel the world for years at a time and live in a studio with cats and plants and never answer to anyone. Not anymore. This Sierra dreams about stability and coming home to someone who adores me and knows everything about me.

I know it’s silly. I’m young. There’s still plenty of time. Maybe marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and everyone is secretly miserable in their marriage. Not to mention, a man who loves me dearly and treats me so nicely is literally waiting for me in the lobby.

But still, I’m curious to know what that feels like—to know that someone is willing to legally bind their life to yours, for better or for worse.

* * *

The tears start again as Alexis’ dad walks her down the aisle. Surprise. Luckily, this seems to be the end of the waterworks.

Later I drink down another glass of champagne while Alexis and Seth step to the dancefloor for their first dance, followed by a short speech from Alexis’s dad, a joking-but-not hint that he will shoot Seth in the woods if needed, and Seth’s mom, who is crying so hard I cannot understand her. Seth’s best friend gives a speech and I feel the blood drain from my face. Was I supposed to give a speech? I thought no bridesmaid means no speech! I thought these were all planned in advance! Should I just go say something? I’m a little tipsy and no one else is drinking—seriously, are they both from Puritan families?

Alexis and Seth head over to their table. My chance is gone.

Alexis drops into her chair, her wedding gown turning her into a satin-y mushroom. “I’m so glad those are over,” she huffs.

My shoulders remove themselves from my ears and I sink back in my chair.

Seth ignores the flute of champagne waiting for him and sucks down an entire glass of water. “I just want to rest,” he moans. He presses a linen napkin to his forehead, glittering with sweat. “We haven’t even had any of our own food yet!”

I look down at the scraps of barbecue on my plate guiltily as two older women rush up to the newlyweds and start talking about so-and-so’s cousin and his job at the hospital.

I stand up and whisper into Jeremy’s ear, “Let’s go make them a plate of food,” and he follows me to the picked-over buffet table.

We stack the plates with ribs and bread.

Jeremy leans over to inspect my serving sizes. “Get some more macaroni.”

I scoop up some gooey pasta as he leans over again.

“What kind of wedding do you want to have?” he asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know, something very small. I’ve never thought about a big wedding.” Nor have I thought about how to artfully dodge the whole dad-walking-me-down-the-aisle thing.

“We should talk about that.”

I fucking love this man. “Yeah, we should.”

I’d marry him right now in the coat closet of this clubhouse if I could.

26

Jeremy and I return home to the cats and our six-hundred square foot apartment. Calling California home feels weird still, like I’ve just stepped foot into a bare-walled apartment and claimed it as mine. Everything about this state—the astronomical rent prices, the gag-inducing amount of time people want to talk about their jobs, the absence of good food (okay, this one is hotly contested, but every time I ask someone for their list of favorites, I get the same three places: Mission Burrito, The Place, and Secret Ramen)—makes me look at Georgia with such rose-tinted glasses that I see red.

I feel a little lost. I’m doing the things I set out to do: make more money, make some friends, find a partner who is amazing. My confidence is increasing. Therapy is un-teaching me some of the really unhelpful things I learned growing up. So why do I feel like something is missing?

I dump my suitcase and backpack, now crammed with more random knick-knacks from Grandma Judy, next to the front door and scoop Midnight into my arms. She cries and leaps from my grasp.

Jeremy scratches Biscuit behind her ears. “I’m glad to be back,” he sighs.

“Yeah, me too.” I sink into the couch. The unpacking can wait until later. I close my eyes, just for a minute. “My family is so exhausting.”

Deep down, I know I can never move back to Georgia. I don’t know what exactly happened to me, whether losing my dad made me realize how short life is (vomit), or that spending time far outside the grasp of a mentally unwell mother opened my eyes to the fact that, hey, life isn’t actually so bad and I don’t really feel that sad anymore.

But I can’t go back, I can’t risk leaving myself behind.

I just can’t.

But where can I go?

* * *

I bury my existential crisis with the trusty social calendar and work. We set up a biweekly game night with an old friend from work. Jeremy invites me to the Margarita Nights, again hosted by Nadine. I exchange numbers with a new coworker and make plans to go bowling.

Daniela has advised me not to involve myself with the whole FBI-scam thing, as if I can even do anything from out here on my golden throne, but sure, sometimes being told not to worry about something does encourage me to worry about something slightly less. Or even worry about entirely new problems, like the text I just got from Mom. She’s coming to San Francisco for a job fair and wants to know if she can stay with me. For a week.

Say yes! I can sleep on an air mattress. Or the couch.

I take the wet plate from Jeremy to dry it off with a dish rag. But it’s a whole week! That’s not comfortable for you! I protest, playing a game of mental Tetris in my head. If we push the stools up under the countertop and stand the coffee table up on its end, there might be room for an air mattress. “I really don’t think she’ll mind staying on the blowup, since it’s saving her like, at least two hundred bucks a night.”

I finish drying the plate and stack it in the cabinet as Jeremy hands me the next one. This is about as far as my kitchen skills have progressed.

“Well, we can decide later. What is she coming for, again?”

“An international teaching job fair?”

She’s been teaching high school for longer than I’ve been alive, spending the first fifteen years in well-funded school districts, tutoring child actors and the governor’s daughter, and being elected Teacher of the Year. My brother, Brian, and I used to go to the high school with her and help staple colorful paper polyhedrons to her bulletin boards. I was grading algebra and geometry exams with her by the time I was ten, comparing the students’ unsure scribbles to her answer key, written out neatly in red ink. I was lucky enough to inherit her math brain. Brian was not.

A couple years after she kicked Dad out on day thirty of moving into their new home, she sold it and moved us out to a cheaper place. The schools traded golf teams for in-school resource officers, and unlimited printing allowances to signs taped up over the Xerox machine telling teachers to keep it to a hundred pages per week or less.

I watched the joy of teaching slowly drain away with every write-up slip she had to complete and every seven o’clock evening phone call she had to make to someone’s mom, asking her to please speak to her darling son about his attitude and cussing in class. A huge, dramatic fight between her and Brian took him to live with our grandparents and Mom and me to an even cheaper area.

The schools only got worse. She came home foaming at the mouth, ranting about the principal forcing her to give all of the students who refused to complete a single homework assignment—and there were a lot of them—sixty percent on each of their assignments, instead of zeroes. For the first time since she started teaching, she refused to sign a contract for the upcoming school year, after a girl’s mom bullied her way into the classroom, and shoved Mom into a door frame.

And you know how it went, she never had money left over, not a dime in savings. She took odd jobs that year, tutoring at those strip-mall education centers, working overtime at H&R Block during tax season. I didn’t dare ask for any spending money, but I was fed and clothed. I pretended not to notice when the internet cut out.

Her increasingly alarming gap on her resumé was plugged when she was hired to teach for an online university. It worked out well for us, me getting help on my college statistics homework, and her earning a steady income again, without the constant disciplining and parental politics complicating her job. She made it through the first semester with just one class, moving to four classes a semester by the end of the second year.

She loved teaching older children and adults, people who wanted to learn and participate. I could hear her throughout the house, shouting for joy when a student answered a question correctly.

She was close with her students, knew all of their life stories. Donna, a woman in her mid-fifties going to school for the first time, drove to our house from Kentucky and moved into our basement after she fell on hard times. It was like watching a meteor coming straight for us.

Donna was weird and I was an awkward eighteen year old, and I couldn’t stand to be in my own home anymore. She interrupted me while I studied and ate, trying to be my friend. Back then, my version of standing up for myself was a quiet “Please don’t interrupt me.” But it did the job.

Donna apologized and avoided me for a week straight. Then she disappeared. She left all her things, her suitcases, her clothes, her computer. Donna’s family started calling eventually, threatening to sue my mom for theft. They called the school and that was the last semester for my mom.

The only public school that would give her a job was in East Atlanta. Ninety percent of the students were on the free lunch program. Mom didn’t even bother to report misconduct, which was probably for the best, since she also accused the principal of sexually assaulting her.

After drying this plate for a long time, I finally stack it up in the cabinet.

“I don’t think her current school is all that good, so I guess it makes sense she’d want to go abroad, I mean, why not?” Maybe the change of scenery is exactly what she needs.

* * *

Her visit comes quickly. The night before finds me anxiously walking around our apartment, ensuring any paraphernalia has been sufficiently hidden away. I stash the weed gummies in the junk drawer and artfully cover the tin with a bag of foreign coins. I relegate a handle of vodka and a fifth of whiskey to the back of a cabinet and prop a cutting board up against them.

Let’s just hope she doesn’t open my bedside table.

I pause after triple-checking we have enough clean towels and send her a text. Will you be free any day for dinner with me and Jeremy?

“She’ll probably have to wear real clothes this time since she’s going to interviews, right?” I ask Jeremy, who is having a totally normal evening of ignoring the TV show that’s playing, in favor of scrolling through the phone.

“Probably.”

I roll my eyes as my back pocket vibrates.

I’m just going to eat PB&J and cheap food. I’ll find a store near you. You don’t have to plan around me.

I reply immediately. We can take you to the Safeway nearby. How does Thai food sound for dinner one night?

As always, I’m just trying to strategize. We’ll see her in the evenings at home, but who knows how she’ll behave without any witnesses? Maybe our favorite Thai place isn’t the best choice, it can be strangely empty at times. Maybe a louder place?

Her next message interrupts my planning. Sierra, I know that financially I have been a big disappointment to you. If we were to go out I would pay, but I am down to my last dollars. I don’t need to go out to dinner. You are saving me hundreds by letting me stay there. If you can take me to the grocery store that will be perfect. Love you.

I move my nervous cleaning into the bedroom. Clean sheets wait on the dresser with an extra blanket. I sit next to Biscuit, curled up on the bed, her eyes huge, watching me, and press my fingertips over my eyes. “Why does she have to make things so difficult?” I ask Biscuit, who does not speak English, but has never disappointed me in her life.

She chirps and stands, stretching out the very long and hard day she’s had, before climbing into my lap.

I’ll admit that yes, I do think my mother is a disappointment financially. I didn’t know what “I took out my entire retirement savings to pay our bills” meant as a thirteen-year-old, but I sure do now. Am I happy she kept me fed and alive with this money? Yes. Do I know how fucked up the retirement system in America is and how bad this could hurt her later? Also yes. I remember being in stores with her while she’d call the credit card company to make a payment so that she could put something else on the card. I think she’s on bankruptcy number two.

I was stupid enough to hear “take out five thousand dollars extra in student loans so I can pay our bills and I’ll pay you back when you graduate” and fall for it. I paid off my student loans, Mom’s portion making up over a third, by donating my eggs twice.

Maybe I’m too harsh. It’s hard out there. Especially for single mothers. I would never be this critical of a stranger. My anger, my disappointment, isn’t that she’s bad with money. It’s that every financial hardship she has somehow finds its way back to me. She buys me a laptop (that I didn’t ask for), so now she can’t pay the cable bill. She spent every penny she made on her children, so her savings are a bit lacking.

If you’re going to rely on your children as your retirement plan, you should probably spend more time making sure your children like you.

What would Daniela say? Probably something about how I should not judge so hard, that she did the best she could, and I should focus on the matter at hand.

I swallow back the golf-ball sized shame and send my reply. We would be happy to treat you to dinner! Our treat. We can pick a day tomorrow, see you then! Love you.

Biscuit trots over to her food bowl and chomps through kibble. I reread our exchange again and again and again until I’ve convinced myself that she doesn’t want to have dinner with me, and my stomach is in a knot.

27

I drag the black-tipped eyeliner across my eyelid slowly, like a precise line will successfully hide my puffy eyes. “I slept like ass,” I tell Jeremy, like a ventriloquist, my face frozen, afraid to move a muscle and have to start over again.

“I’m sorry, baby.” His hand presses against my waist then falls back to his side.

I appreciate his reply—no “It will all be okay,” or even worse, “There’s no reason to worry.” Normally I want a little bit of commiserating, even if it’s forced. There is an embarrassing number of blogs I’ve read about how we should just tell our boyfriends that we don’t want someone to solve our problems and we just want him to say, “Wow, that sucks!” but today, I don’t mind.

I finish my eyeliner, which is only slightly wobbly.

“We never did decide on a place for dinner. I guess we can do Thai.”

Her flight leaves in half an hour and lands at noon. I could meet her at my apartment and let her in during my lunch break, but I decide not to. I’m irrationally afraid to leave her alone in my place.

“Sounds great, babe, just let me know. I might have to meet you there.” He gives me a kiss. “Love you. Have a good day.”

He turns to leave the bathroom. Before he gets too far, I wrap my arms around him from behind, pressing my face into the space between his shoulder blades. Probably smudging my hard work. He doesn’t move or pull away. He just stands there and lets me hug him.

* * *

I have a favor to ask.

Should have known Mom would want me to come home early. In any other circumstance, letting your own mother navigate SFO and the trains and find a way to entertain herself for four hours until I get off work? Worst daughter award material, right there.

I’ve just found a seat on the bus. This will be the last thirty minutes I have to myself for six whole days. If I had been a little more considerate, I would have driven to work today so I could go pick her up. But I didn’t.

I reply, What? and balance my phone on one thigh while I dig around my backpack for my Kindle.

The phone buzzes on my leg. She must be trying to get confirmation real fast before they take off.

Can another potential teacher stay at your apt also? We are renting a car. There may be more women interested in which case I can give you money. But right now I’m hoping the one gal is ok with you.

I want to laugh as I type out my answer: No, there’s not enough room.

She’s in for quite the shock if she thinks our humble abode is even going to fit the three of us comfortably. She’s probably imagined my apartment as some enormous floor-to-ceiling glass penthouse, and not a poorly insulated rectangle with a leaky faucet and a serious lack of closet space. These days, luxury to me is getting two washing machines in the in-building laundry at once.

Her five hour flight is due to take off any second. Another bubble pops up on my screen. What if Jeremy stays with a friend?

My face is hot from all the blood rushing to it. I subconsciously wipe my palms on my pants as they grow slick with sweat. My heart rate climbs high, higher, until I’d swear you could see it pounding through my shirt.

I don’t even have to think about it. No, that won’t work. He does live here, you know.

I screenshot our conversation and send it to Jeremy. We need a game plan in case she shows up with strangers…

I send the screenshot to Alexis. OMG can you believe her?

I lean against the bus window and stare out of the window, willing the tears to stay away. I thought we’d have a good time together. For once. Sure, she didn’t come out to California specifically to visit me, but she is making an effort to see me, at least.

Right?

Or am I a fool being used for a free place to stay?

How am I supposed to make it through the next eight hours of work? There’s a pit in my stomach and my head is pounding. What’s going to happen when she lands? How am I going to fight off a gaggle of teachers expecting a free place to stay?

If this is how her visit is starting, I’m nervous.

* * *

My fingernails are bitten down to the quick by the time the bus drops me off back home. My messages to Mom are still unanswered even though she landed hours ago. She should at least be in the area by now. Sweat dampens my armpits on the walk home. I feel like the stupid blonde in a scary movie who’s about to willingly walk into a trap.

But she’s not there. Not that I really expected her to wait on my doorstep for me, but still. I let myself in to find Jeremy home already. “Hey. Has my mom come by? How long have you been home?”

“I just got here. Don’t think anyone has knocked. Why, did she say she did?”

“No, I haven’t heard from her since her plane took off.”

Jeremy pats the couch cushion next to him and I join him, the length of his right side pressed against my left. I scroll through today’s bizarre messages, but no, I didn’t miss any changes of plans or anything. “I really don’t know what is going on,” I murmur, typing probably-not-the-last where are you? message.

Just as I switch over to text Alexis, a message pops up.

I am at a pizza place. My bag was stolen. All money, cards, charger (including portable) and laptop. I will get to your apt probably in a few hours. I have to buy some vaseline (lips r very chapped), tylenol, and a charger. The bank gave me $100. All my conference stuff is gone.

And another right after.

If you need to leave, do so… don’t wait around for me. I had a tablet shipped to your place from Walmart, can you check for me?

Jeremy looks up at me after he finishes reading, his face a twist of confusion. “Is this… real?” He sounds like he’s afraid to ask the question.

I hold up a finger, already dialing her number. She sends me to voicemail. Twice.

I toss my phone down on the coffee table. Hard. It bounces right off the other side.

“I don’t know,” I huff. “What the fuck?” I grab a fistful of hair on the top of my head. “What the fuck?” I repeat.

Jeremy watches me, calculating how he’s going to handle my impending bitchfit.

“I realize that it’s pretty messed up to hear your mom say all her stuff was stolen and to not like, feel sorry for her,” I begin.

Poor Jeremy.

“But, what the fuck? How hard is it to watch your stuff? Where even was she?”

Honestly, I don’t know what to think. I would not be surprised at all if she is lying right now. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if she just left all her valuable belongings unattended and fucked off somewhere for thirty minutes and expected nothing to happen.

Jeremy’s hand gently squeezes my thigh. There’s no chance for him to get a word in.

“Why would the bank give her a hundred bucks if she has no cards? They givin’ out charity now?” My southern accent resurfaces. “How is she going to buy Vaseline and a phone charger if she has no cards? Did she have one card on her? Why would you do that?”

My sweet boyfriend continues his knee-rub as he watches Midnight chase Biscuit around the living room.

“Ugh,” I grunt, scaring the cats away along with Jeremy’s hand.

When I was three or four – I don’t even know if I remember this happening to me, or just remember the stories— me, Mom, and Brian flew out to California to visit Mom’s dad, my grandfather. He lived in some fancy house in southern California with a hot young wife. After two days with him, he kicked Mom and us out.

I never understood how your own family could kick you out after you spent so much time and money to come see them.

Guess I should have realized that his version of the story probably didn’t match hers.

Also, he was a nudist, so that was weird.

Another message lights up my screen. I can’t help myself, such a glutton for punishment, and snatch up the phone.

I would like to get the tablet if it came in. I have enough money in paypal to get uber to your place. I was extremely hurt this morning in our conversations and think we both need space from each other.

So I found another place.

I promise that after I get my tablet I will never bother you again.

Oh yeah, Mom? Is that a promise, now?

“Sierra.” Jeremy’s voice sounds muffled, like I’m underwater.

I wipe my nose, suddenly sniffly, and stand up. There’s a small box on the porch, presumably the tablet in question.

I bury my face in my hands. Where did I go wrong? Is it so awful of me to not want a bunch of strangers to stay in my tiny apartment? Why didn’t my mom want to, you know, spend time with me? My lips do that weird just-about-to-cry quiver.

I reply to her message. The tablet is on top of the a/c on my porch. You can reach it from the sidewalk.

Hot, angry tears fill my vision. My tongue presses against the roof of my mouth, my whole face a wobbly frown. It feels like someone is raking knives over an open wound every time I swallow. Every part of me hurts.

Jeremy reads the next message that arrives before I can. “You don’t need to see this right now,” he insists, but lets me claw the phone out of his hands anyway.

I never thought you would ever be as hateful as your dad. I gave you everything I had. But you became him.

You don’t even know the truth about him. If you knew the truth, you wouldn’t be so happy. But i protect you from it. Maybe one day you’ll learn.

I just wish I was the one that died. It’s not fair that now he gets all the attention, and no one cares about me. I can see you don’t care about me anymore. I won’t be bothering you from now on.

For the first time ever, I swear at my mother.

Are you fucking kidding me?

My heart is pounding. She wishes she were the one who died? So she could have more attention? Give me a fucking break.

No I am not. Lots of people see it.

I pick up a throw pillow from the couch and scream into it, then turn my phone off.

Maybe because she’s never felt this way, she doesn’t see it in me. She doesn’t know that I’m not actually like her. I’m not depressed, I’m not sad. I’m actually doing pretty well, if I may say so myself.

And I know, without a doubt, that I am loved. By a lot of people. Sometimes that group includes my mom. Today it doesn’t. Not in the way that I want to be loved, at least.

My pulse slows even though the tears do not. Instead of blood thrumming in my ears, I just feel an ache inside me, waving through my entire body. I surrender. I give up. She is never going to be a normal mom. We will never have a good relationship. Nothing I do or say to her will make her a better mother. It fucking sucks.

Jeremy collects his wallet and car keys. “Let’s go to dinner.”

I wipe the tears from my face, leaving tiny black smudges on my fingers.

All that’s left is a niggling feeling that I agree with her. Maybe it would have been better if she were the one who died.

28

I won’t say I regret how I handled that night, but I don’t not regret it.

Really, what I regret is letting my mother—among numerous others—walk all over me for so long. If I could go back, I’d go back before that last fight, before Logan’s insecurities, before Kurt’s drug problems and infidelity, back to that day when I was thirteen-years-old.

My pre-adolescent body curled around the toilet like I was praying to this disgusting ceramic god. I vomited red into the bowl, over and over again, my entire body turning bright pink.

“Mom, please, just take me to the hospital,” I begged in between gags.

She stood above me, holding a wet rag I desperately wanted to press against my forehead. “Not until you admit it.”

“Mom, no! I swear!”

The rag plopped into the sink. “We will go as soon as you admit it, Sierra.” Her voice grew higher, louder.

I hurt everywhere. “I’m not pregnant, Mom,” I paused to spit in the toilet, “I swear!” I’d never kissed a boy. Or held hands with one. Or even sat with one on the school bus.

Mom looked down at me, finally handing me the wet rag, giving me immediate relief on my scorching hot forehead. “Let’s go to the doctor, they’ll know the truth.”

I sat there on the exam table, my insides twisting so hard I thought I would shit myself at any given moment, while the ER doctor took all my vitals and asked me questions, Mom hovering right next to him.

“Are you sexually active?”

“No.”

“She’s lying!” Mom squealed, sending herself back into a frenzy.

The doctor rolled his eyes and was surely thinking either A) I was lying to him or B) this mother is a nutcase.

I just sat there.

I’d go back to this moment and tell little Sierra that this is not normal. That she shouldn’t have to be scared of her mom. I’d tell her that it’s okay to have her own desires and opinions and goals and it’s totally fine if Mom doesn’t agree with them.

I would tell her that she should not bother fantasizing about how, if maybe she was the perfect daughter and did great in school and liked everything that Mom likes and always agreed with her, that Mom would be happy and normal and a good mom. It will never happen, Sierra. I’m sorry.

But I can’t tell myself that, back then. So I tell it to myself now.

#

Jeremy and I get married in a gazebo in a park on a chilly April day in Atlanta.

Jeremy’s parents fly in. They don’t even bat an eye at my tattoos anymore. Grandma Judy attends. Grandpa Wally died last year after they finally lost their house to foreclosure. Grandma lives with my uncle Doug now. Alexis, Nadine, and Caitlyn are here, too. We talk in our group chats just about every day.

Mom is not invited.

#

Now I answer her texts as long as they are void of any hateful or judgmental words. The minute she sends something nasty, I simply reply I told you I won’t talk to you if you’re rude and we try again in four to five months.

I guess it works for me. It’s not like I’m missing out on any of her mothering this way.

#

I think that night, waiting for my mom to show up to our apartment in California, was another before and after for me. Before realizing I don’t have a mother. After realizing I don’t have a mother. Ever since then, I’ve been good.

Really good.

I was promoted at work, and now manage a team of three other analysts. My favorite part about my job is helping other people accomplish their goals - doesn’t even matter what the goal is!.It doesn’t surprise me that much to realize that I love working with people. I mean, being a people manager is basically the same as organizing happy hours, right? Right up my alley.

I don’t worry about money (as much). Omega pays that good tech-money, but I still haven’t quite worked my way out of the scarcity mindset that growing up in a quasi-unstable household instilled. I fired my therapist Daniela years ago after finally recognizing what terrible advice she gave — she didn’t tell me to run for the hills after hearing about how awful Logan was, really? But hey, every now and then I do read a self-help book.

Every year with Jeremy is better than the last (I know, I know, disgusting, but no one is as surprised as I am to learn that good, true love is a real thing). For our one year wedding anniversary he got a vasectomy - no more worrying about him changing his mind about kids. He’s wonderful. The best part about marriage is sitting on the couch in the evenings with our cats (still alive, but getting up there in age, sadly) and just talking about whatever for hours. No matter what I’m feeling or thinking, Jeremy makes me feel like I’m absolutely normal.

My friends are great, too. Still besties with Alexis, although we see each other less than I’d prefer (which is daily - unreasonable!). I haven’t made any really deep friendships since Nadine and Caitlyn, some acquaintances here and there, but I know a few friendly faces from the rock climbing gym. Of course I wish I had more friends, but I feel confident I’ll find the right people in time. I’m not in a rush to surround myself with just anybody these days.

I drink a little less than I used to, ever since turning thirty. Just can’t hang like I used to.

It hasn’t been the easiest to get here, but that’s something else I’ve come to terms with - sometimes you need to go through some shit to get to the other side.

I like myself. Like, a lot.

But I gotta be honest. All these nice things happening in my life are great.

I only wish I had my parents to share them with.

About the Author

Ashley Parker is a data scientist by day and a writer by night. She is thrilled for her debut novel, Everything Will (Probably) Be All Right, to get out of her brain and onto paper. Not just an author, Ashley also loves hiking, reading fiction, bowling, and shouting her deepest, darkest secrets into the void (AKA blogging). She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and two cats.