Page 69 of The Getaway List
“Nothing compared to the back-alley brick wall view of the new place with the band,” I quip.
“Yeah, I bet not,” she says wryly. Her shoulders soften a bit, a resignation in them. “You were never planning on coming back for good, were you?”
A beat passes where I’m still scared to answer. I can tell she’s already come to terms with it, but it feels like it’s deeper than that even. The way Tom was insisting his leaving wasn’t a big beginning or an end—telling my mom face-to-face would make this decision finally feel like one, once and for all.
“No,” I admit. “I should have said something earlier. I just—I missed you. I didn’t want to drive you away again.”
My mom shakes her head. “You didn’t drive me away. I was—trying to give you space to let you make your own decisions. I’ve been wrapped up in the ones I made at your age. But I know that’s not fair to you.”
“Well,” I say, glancing at Tom’s empty bedroom. “You can still have an ‘I told you so’ moment about falling for Tom.”
I’m partially saying it to break the tension, but also so she doesn’t have to say what I know has probably been on the tip of her tongue since the moment she took my call last night. Instead she waits until I meet her eye and says carefully, “Maybe. But we’ve talked enough these past few weeks that we both know that what you’re trying to do here isn’t about him.”
The relief of hearing her say that is like cool water through my veins. Tom’s being here had nothing to do with the real problem I’ve been running from, or the future I’ve been running toward. Loving Tom is something that exists separately from that. I’m learning that’s a lot of what love is—stepping aside for the sake of each other’s futures. The way Tom wouldn’t let me come with him. The way I wouldn’t ask Tom to stay.
But I’ve been missing that same resolution with my mom, because it’s not the same. She’s already lived a version of this life I’ve chosen. I’ve thought of it as a sticking point the entire time I’ve been here, but now that she’s actually here, I’m understanding that it never should have been. It should have been common ground.
“I was wrong to assume you and Tom would get into trouble up here, but you have to understand where I’m coming from, too.” My mom’s eyes fall from my face and toward the view in front of us, and for a moment I don’t think we’re looking at the same New York at all. “I know you’ve heard some of this over the years. But when I came up here I was the exact same age you are now. I had all these big dreams about performing, but I never made a plan to pursue them. I got caught up in a person, one I thought I could trust. He felt like my best friend, too. It didn’t take long for me to get caught up in his world instead of mine, because that was how he wanted it to be. Everything was about his music. The partying. The shows. The travel. Before I knew it, I was burnt out and broke and spending more time trying to support him than myself. I lost track of myself before I even knew who I was.”
There’s so much of this I want to ask her about while this unexpected door to her past is open, but I’m still too tangled in the present. The bruise of that conversation we had earlier in the summer still hasn’t faded. I need to press down on it again before it can start to heal.
“And then I came along,” I prompt her.
My mom shakes her head, turning to me and saying firmly, “I’d lost track of my plans before that. I hadn’t even been to an audition in months. I know we haven’t talked about this much, and it’s mostly because I didn’t want you ever thinking you had anything to do with why I gave up on those dreams. I need you to know that I left New York before I found out I was having you.”
She waits me out like she’s expecting to see the relief in my face, but I don’t feel any yet. I press on the bruise harder.
“You were still so scared I’d make a mistake and get knocked up, too,” I say pointedly.
My mom sets down her seltzer and puts her hands on my shoulders, waiting for me to meet her eye. “That’s what I should have made clear from the start. That was never the mistake, Riley. It was losing sight of myself for the sake of someone else. I don’t need you to go to a certain school or live a certain place. I just need you to live your own life, on your own terms.” She squeezes me lightly, her eyes misting. “I’m lucky that I figured out a way to do that back home after my time here, but I just—you’re so spirited and so much like I was back then, and the last thing I want is to see that spark of yours blown out by someone else.”
My own eyes are watering, my voice thick with frustration. “That’s what I don’t understand, though. You watched Tom grow up. You know he’s not like that.”
She nods carefully. “But you two still had a bit of a track record for trouble. And maybe it was harmless, but it was hard to think about that when the rest of this threw me for a loop—you moving so suddenly, and practically moving in with him. It was like watching my past self in a time machine. Especially at the start of this, when it felt like you didn’t have much of a plan, either. There were just too many parallels. It scared me.”
“It scared me, too,” I tell her, my voice suddenly unsteady, my cheeks warm with the strange relief of the confession. “Being here without you. And thinking—thinking you were mad at me for it. That maybe I was the thing that wrecked this for you, if you wanted it as badly as I do now.”
My mom wraps me up in her arms fast and says fiercely into my ear, “I regret a lot of how this summer was handled, but if you ever thought for a second that you weren’t the best thing that’s ever happened to me, that’s the worst regret by far.” She pulls back to look me in the eye again, holding me there. “You are my everything, and I’m grateful for every second of the life we built together.”
It’s nothing I don’t already know, nothing she hasn’t told me in other words before. But it hits me sideways in this moment, I think, because it’s the first time she’s said it not just as mother and daughter, but as two fully grown people. Before I know it we’re both blinking back tears.
She lets my shoulders go, her voice as choked up as mine when she says, “I was scared of losing you, and you have to know that’s never going to stop for me. But I know things have to be different now. You’re your own person, no matter how much you remind me of the old me.”
“Mom,” I say wetly, trying for a laugh. “I would never, ever wear rhinestone Ugg boots.”
This earns me a wry smile. “Don’t knock them until you try them.”
We move toward the couch then, sitting side by side, still facing the sprawling city view. The way the lights from the city cast over her face, I have that same sense of being displaced in time. Like I’m looking at some version of my mom from before I existed, one who must have felt the same magic in the glow of those lights, walked the same streets and felt the same kinds of dreams.
“We’re the same but we’re not,” I say quietly. “Because you’re right. I came here without a plan. I’m still not sure if I have one. But I want to find out who I am, and I think—that’s what the city does for me. Gives me the space to figure it out. To make a plan someday, even if I don’t have one now.”
My mom nods slowly, taking this in. I brace myself for her objections. For her to remind me that I don’t have her or my aunts or cousins here. That as of tomorrow I’ll be living in a glorified cabinet drawer paid for with the exact job I could get at home and could be saving the money from.
Instead she says, “When did you get so grown up?”
I feel my face flush. “Funny how the passage of time works.”
She sinks farther into the couch, and then so do I. There’s something about reaching this point in the conversation that already feels like a relief before it’s over. This feeling that we can say whatever needs to be said right now, and whatever we’re opening up in ourselves will find a way to seam itself together again.
