Page 64 of You've Got Hate Mail
And that pisses me off.
I might not like the constant vibrating energy that she seems to have, and the way she tries too hard, or the way we’ve both dealt with parents with ridiculous expectations, or the way Lav is clearly attached despite us not knowing how long Cricket will be here, or how she’s bringing up old memories of the chaos that happened when Ava got sick, but I’ve been nice, dammit.
Even when it’s been hard, I’ve been nice.
“Did you have a nice wedding?” she asks.
The question startles me.
Probably shouldn’t, but it does.
“Courthouse wedding,” I tell her.
She tilts her head at me.
“Ava was pregnant. Her parents were—her parents. Mine had travel on the books. Made sense to do it quick and easy.”
Pissed her parents off.
Added bonus, looking back on it.
“Did you wish you had a bigger wedding?” Cricket asks.
“No.”
“My sisters had massive weddings. Like, you would’ve thought they were celebrities. And I’m not saying that just because I hadn’t been to many weddings. I was still in high school for both of them. They’re…older than me. But I’ve been to a lot of weddings since then. Once, I did a lifestyle piece on a couple who got married at ValuKart, and I got to go to their wedding. Since they met in the cheese section, a big cheese corporation sponsored everything, and they brought a cow intothe store and the justice of the peace wore a cheese costume and all of the guests went home with cheddar and gouda.”
I’d say that’s weird, but I live at a closed winery with a commune of women who’ve gone viral for everything under the sun.
Nothing will ever be weird to me again.
She bites her lip and looks at me.
“What?” I say.
“I just caught myself about to apologize for talking so much about my job since my parents always said it was unsophisticated. But I—you were right. And I’ve been meaning to say thank you for that. For telling me—for telling me what I needed to hear. About how they should be more supportive.”
I grunt and nod.
And when she doesn’t say anything else, I realize I need to fill the silence. “Did you enjoy your job?” I ask.
She hesitates, then nods while she pulls another stake out of the pile. “It felt like cheating to enjoy it as much as I did. If I’d been an investigative reporter embedded in a war zone, they would’ve?—”
She cuts herself off as I shift a look at her.
“Right,” she says. “Don’t ruin the day talking about people you’ll never satisfy, Cricket.”
“Talk about whatever you want.”
“It’s just—if Lav told you she wanted to be the first goat herder in a colony on Mars, I mean, after she grows up and is supporting herself and doing what she loves, you’d tell her to go for it. That’s—that’s not something I ever had. I got yelled at for things she does every day, and I live right under your house and I can hear you walking and sometimes talking too—not like loud enough to hear what you say, just like, the sound of voices…I don’t listen in, I swear. But you never yell or tell her she can’t do things.”
“Yelling rarely makes situations better.”
“I’m just saying, I didn’t have that. I didn’t even know it was an option. And that—it makes me want to be a better person. And it also makes me so mad that my parents were so strict. I was a good kid. I really was. But I still got told I couldn’t sayshitwhen I was like, seventeen. Not that you cuss or like she does or anything, but I’d like to think if she did, you’d be like,yep, exploring your words, not likeyou’re a terrible person for ever letting those letters leave your mouth in that order.”
I let her go on, nodding and pulling stakes out of the pile, wanting to put a fist through her parents’ faces.
And then getting irritated with myself for violence being my first instinctive answer to solving this for her.
