Kiss Her Once for Me (97)

“I’m moving forward. I’ve showered. I’ve put on a real bra.” I gesture to my damp hair and fully supported breasts in turn. “Progress is being made.”

Meredith permitted me a single day to mope and cry and lounge around in my own filth over losing Jack. Then, this morning, she went into full problem-solving mode, kicking my shins until I agreed to wash myself and to research new living arrangements before I’m evicted from this nightmare apartment. And it does feel good—to focus on the path forward instead of dwelling on all the things I did wrong. Instead of wondering if the Kim-Prescotts are still at the cabin, if Andrew and Dylan are together, if Jack is okay, if I’ve caused her to retreat deeper into her aluminum shell…

“Look, would it be easiest to fall into your old patterns and return to Roastlandia?” Meredith asks in her lawyer-voice. “Yes, of course. But would it be healthiest? Especially when there is an email from a publisher just waiting to be answered…?”

I begin to curl into the fetal position on my end of the futon, then catch myself. I un-fetal. “I… that’s… it’s not relevant. I need money now.”

“But you are going to answer the email, right?”

“I—I don’t know, Mere,” I tell her honestly, because part of moving forward is being honest, always. Even when it’s hard. “She wants to publish the comic that literally outed me and Andrew to his entire family, and I don’t know how I would ever finish writing The Arrangement, let alone share it with the world. And…” Even when it’s hard. “Drawn2 was the one place I could do art just for me. It was the one place where I didn’t have to be perfect, where I could just be a messy work-in-progress. What if turning those comics into a graphic novel is more than I can handle emotionally? What if it becomes like animation, where I’m doing it for the wrong reasons? What if I become a perfectionist monster again? What if… what if I start hating it?”

Meredith clicks her tongue. “It sounds to me like you’re preparing for failure before it’s happened again.”

I don’t have time to sit with that before my phone starts buzzing on the coffee table in front of me. My heart shoots into my chest with hope, because maybe, maybe, it’s her.

It’s not.

“Hi, Mom.”

“What is this about your engagement getting called off?” my mother demands without greeting or pretense, just a disapproving pterodactyl screech in my ear.

“How did you hear about that?”

“It’s on his Instagram! A photo of him with someone else, and a caption about how the two of you ended things on ‘amicable terms’?” I shoot Meredith a look across the futon, but Linds is screaming loud enough that Meredith is already opening Andrew’s Instagram on her laptop. Right there, at the top of his flawlessly curated grid, is a photo of him and Dylan sitting side by side beneath the messy Christmas tree they decorated together. I feel a brief bubble of joy in my chest at the sight of them together. At least someone got their happy ending.

Linds sounds highly aggravated and mildly drunk as I shift my attention back to her. “He left you for someone else?”

“Yes,” I sigh, unable and unwilling to explain beyond that.

“What did you do?” Linds demands. “How did you fuck this up?”

“I—I didn’t,” I say. “He was in love with someone else.”

“Get him back!” my mother shouts in my ear. “You have to get him back! He was perfect! He was rich! You have to fix things with him!”

“There’s nothing to fix.”

“Tell him you’re pregnant! That’s worked for me before.”

Nausea seizes my stomach. “I’m not going to do that, Mom.” On the other side of the futon, Meredith pantomimes a strangling motion.

“Then beg. Beg him to take you back! Do whatever it takes. You are never going to do better than a man like Andrew.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, close my eyes, and try to pretend my own mother didn’t just say those words to me. “I’m your daughter,” I squeak into the phone. “Shouldn’t you think I deserve better than a man who doesn’t love me?”

“Don’t be na?ve, Elena.”

“And it was Christmas yesterday.” Linds emits an audible gasp of confusion. “It was Christmas,” I clarify, “and you didn’t call me.”

“I—” She clears her throat. “I didn’t want to bother you, darling. I thought you were with Andrew’s family.”

“It was Christmas. It wouldn’t have bothered me to get a phone call from my mom.”

“I’m sure your father didn’t call, either,” she snaps.

“No.” I sigh again. “He didn’t. But that’s not really the point.”

“You could have called me, too, you know. This works both ways.”

“I could have,” I concede. Meredith looks ready to pounce, ready to rip the phone from my hands if I dare retreat into an apology. But I’m not going to apologize to my mom. “But I’m the kid, and you’re the parent, and it would have been nice if you called.”

“I’m calling now, aren’t I?”

“You are,” I say calmly. “But if you’re calling about money, I need to tell you that I’m not going to be sending you money anymore.”