Tweet Cute(93)

She shakes her head. “I banked everything on the idea of New York. I didn’t have any money left. I started waiting tables again, thinking I’d go back to school, or try again … life happened a little faster than I thought it would.”

It’s strange, how quickly the path that led us here rearranges itself, now that I can see it through her eyes. All this time I thought we were in New York because my mom was looking for a fresh start. Only now am I starting to understand that she didn’t come here to find something—she came here to take it back. The dream she had before I even existed.

A dream that’s starting to take some form in me now, that I never knew we shared.

“It’s stupid. But being back here … seeing those stupid macaroons again, and seeing Sam…”

An immediate horror grips my chest. “You don’t—you and Jack’s dad aren’t—”

“No.” She looks genuinely repulsed at the idea. “Not on his life or mine.”

Good, I almost say. But I’m still not entirely sure where my mom stands on the Jack front right now.

She takes a sip of her hot chocolate then stares into her mug.

“I know your sister thinks this whole divorce was my fault, but you should know—it was a long time coming. That’s why your dad and I have had it a little easier than most with the transition. We were always better friends than we were ever going to be husband and wife.”

I can tell she’s telling me this because she doesn’t want me to think she ran off to New York for an old flame, but that part doesn’t matter to me. It’s just nice to hear for its own sake. It hurts—it probably always will, to some degree—but it helps too. Even if they weren’t in love, I never made up that we were a team.

“And that whole café thing—I didn’t know it at twenty, but I was better off for it in the end. What I was imagining would never have taken off the way Big League did. We built that together. You, me, your dad, Paige. Made something better than I could have ever made on my own.” She lets out a contented sigh and says the thing I didn’t realize I needed to hear most: “Even if it never got any bigger than that first little restaurant in Nashville, it was perfect, just the way it was.”

I steal her hot chocolate and take another sip, thinking of that old home away from home—the milkshakes we invented that are still on the menu. The drawings Paige and I made that are still framed on the walls. The beating heart that still pulses in all the Big League Burgers that have opened since. It may be bigger than we ever thought it would be, but I hope, at least, people walk in and feel the way they do at that first restaurant. Like they’re walking into something made with love.

“But after we got here, walking past the deli and seeing he was still selling some of my old stuff, pawning it off as his own—I don’t know.” She takes a moment to choose her words, like she is still not quite certain of the feeling behind them. “That feeling just came back. That anger.”

I stare at our knees, leaning my shoulder into hers. She sighs.

“Do you ever feel like someone just took something from you?”

Yes, I want to say. Sometimes it feels like it’s been four years of this place taking and taking, and I’m all out of pieces to give—like I don’t even know the shape of myself anymore.

But I think I’m finding her. Some outline of what she is, or what she could be. Somewhere beyond this little block I’ve been hiding on, in a city where there are more outlines of me than I could ever fathom, a city I’m opening my eyes to now a little bit more every day.

I take my mom’s hand, and she squeezes it in hers.

“So—revenge via grilled cheese?”

“Not revenge, really. I just—he knocked me down to rock bottom once. I guess I wanted to knock him down a peg too. Make him see we were better off despite what he did. And when corporate started talking about adding grilled cheeses … well, I knew that would get at him the fastest.”

“And Grandma Belly,” I remind her.

To my surprise, my mom isn’t defensive or even rueful about that at all. Instead, she smiles. “You know, I was close with Grandma Belly once too. Only she was just Bella, then.” For a moment I can picture it—my mom every bit a part of Girl Cheesing as I was just hours ago, standing in the same spot at the register, feeling like a part of the same magic. “And truth be told, she used to buy that sourdough bread for the Grandma’s Special from a supplier downtown. I was the one who convinced her the deli should start making their own.”

Another bakery-related plot twist, and this one even weirder, considering I’m still digesting it.

Off my curious look, she says, “Bella figured out what Sam did a few months after he took over and called to apologize. Told me she gave him hell for it, and I was more than welcome to too.”

“That’s some kind of raincheck you took.”

“Give or take a decade,” she says wryly. “She said she told him to stop selling my stuff, but I’m guessing he just slipped some of it back in over the years, not counting on me coming back.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, it’s Sam I meant to piss off, and clearly I did. Just didn’t count on his kids going to bat too.”

“Or yours?” I ask, not without a healthy amount of sarcasm.