The Ex Talk(92)

She squeezes my shoulder, and I lean into her touch. “I wish I could have been there for you. I don’t hate Seattle, I swear. I was just so eager for a change. Everything I said was completely out of line.”

“Maybe,” I agree, “but I don’t think you were entirely wrong. The weirdest thing about this is that I feel relieved underneath everything. Relieved I don’t have to keep lying. And a little relieved that I can figure out if there’s a job for me out there that isn’t in public radio.”

“Shay Goldstein not in public radio,” she says with an exaggerated gasp. “What is the world coming to?”

That’s the most terrifying part: that I’ve defined myself by public radio for so long that I’ve never wondered who I am without it.

Maybe the truth is that I’ve been scared to find out.

Ameena opens up her beaded clutch. “I know it’s not traditional to give the daughter of the bride a gift,” she says. “I actually had these made before our fight. I was going to give you yours before I left, but . . .”

“Holy shit. You didn’t.” I unwrap a custom-made silver bracelet with WWAMWMD printed on it. “You got me a WWAMWMD bracelet.”

“So you never forget,” she says with a grin.

“Tell me you have a matching one?”

She pulls out a second one and slips it on. “Duh.”

We continue catching up. Ameena tells me more about her job, about Virginia, about the humidity her hair was completely unprepared for. After a while, TJ finds us and asks Ameena to dance. She lifts her eyebrows at me, and I gesture to her that it’s okay. We’ll be okay, too—or at the very least, we’ll try to be.

I venture back to the wedding guests, sliding into an empty seat next to my mother.

“How have you been dancing for two hours and you still look flawless?” I ask her.

“Oh, stop,” she says, but she’s glowing. “I know you put on an act out there for the wedding, and I appreciate it, but you can be honest with me. How are you doing?”

I appreciate that she hasn’t judged me for lying on air to thousands of listeners. She must have known I had enough of it from every corner of the internet.

“I’m not okay,” I admit, running my fingers along the petals of a nearby calla lily. “But I’m trying to be.”

“And Dominic?”

“He’s back at PPR. As a researcher.” His apologies must really have been empty if he was okay staying on their payroll, working with Kent. The fact that he’s still there, siding with Kent over me, feels like a tremendous betrayal. If only my heart could realize it. “I think I got so caught up in the idea of the show that it didn’t matter that we were lying to people, that they were giving us money because they bought into the lie, and when you think about it that way, it seems . . . really shitty.”

“You wanted to make good radio,” she says simply. “You made an error in judgment. From the sound of it, Dominic made the same one.”

“It would all be fine if I could just stop loving him.”

“You know how many times I thought things would be so much simpler if I could stop loving your dad?” She shakes her head, and maybe it’s strange to bring him up on her wedding day, but this is the proof that he’s never gone. “All the years of therapy, loneliness, grief . . . if I could flip a switch and just stop, it would have been easier, right?”

“That would have been awful,” I say. “Easier, sure, but still awful.”

Now I’m thinking back to all the times in my past relationships I said I love you too soon. I’m certain I meant it, but it didn’t feel anything like loving Dominic. I crave the smallest, simplest things: his rare dimple, the jokes about our age gap, his passion for cast-iron cookware. The way he felt in my bed, yes, but also the way he trusted me with his painful memories, and the way I trusted him with mine.

Maybe not so small and simple after all.

The quartet transitions to a cover of “September,” and more dancers rush onto the floor.

But my mother appears lost in thought. “You know, I used to be jealous of the two of you. You and Dan.”

“You what?” I say, positive I heard her wrong.

“It’s silly, isn’t it? Or at least, it sounds silly now. You and your dad had this thing you were both so in love with. You’d fully inherited his passion for it, and it was fun to watch the two of you, but . . . sometimes I wished, just a little bit, that you could have liked music, too.”

Oh. I had no idea my mother felt this way. It’s reality shattering to hear your parent confess something so . . . human.

“Mom,” I say quietly. “I—I’m sorry.”

She waves this away. “It’s not your fault! You liked what you liked. I couldn’t force it on you. You tried piano lessons, and you tried violin lessons, and you tried choir, and you just didn’t click with any of them. And that’s okay.”

She’s being generous. I was terrible, no rhythm and no patience. Music on the radio, especially the kind of music my mother listened to, didn’t excite me the way NPR did. And maybe I was the only nine-year-old geeking out over Car Talk, but I didn’t care.

“I loved that the two of you had that special bond,” my mother continues. “But you go into parenting hoping, maybe selfishly, that your kid will love the thing you love, and you can share that with them.”