Page 85 of More For Me

Everly

“Hi, baby,” Mom says, sounding every bit as excited to hear from me as she would if it had been a month instead of a mere day since we last spoke.

“Hi, Momma,” I say, and then burst into tears.

“It’s going to be okay, Everly,” she says gently, not seeming the slightest bit surprised by my outburst. I don’t know if that’s the product of raising four somewhat emotional girls or if the family gossip has reached my parents and she actually knows what’s going on. Either way, she says soothing words in that tone only she has until I calm down enough to speak again.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

“None of that. Now tell me—do you want me to send a car to bring you here or do you want me to come over?”

I have to grin through my tears. Of course there’s no doubt in her mind that I want her company right now.

“Can you come here? I think Dad will have a coronary if he sees me crying like this. And then we’ll have to comforthimand it will turn into a whole spiral of freaking out and comforting and more freaking out and on and on.”

She laughs. “He is most definitely not a fan of seeing any of you hurting.”

That makes fresh tears fill my eyes. “I’ll be there in just a few minutes,” she says. “You want to stay on the phone with me while I drive?”

“No, that’s okay. I’m going to wash my face.”

“Good girl.”

My mom is true to her word about arriving quickly. I’ve barely had time to change into yoga pants and wash my face before she’s at my door, weighed down with shopping bags filled with snacks.

“I was already at the store. Figured we’d start with ice cream and then move to the salty stuff,” she says as she marches right to the kitchen and starts unloading the goods. My mom takes wallowing food very seriously and I almost laugh in spite of my shitty mood at the familiarity of seeing her line up boxes of cookies, bags of chips and popcorn, and a seemingly endless amount of candy.

“Ice cream sounds perfect.”

She fills two bowls with heaping scoops of cookie dough—our favorite—then follows me out to the couch. Once we’re settled next to each other, she pulls my favorite fuzzy throw blanket up over our laps and digs into the ice cream.

“Okay. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I screwed up so bad, Mom.”

“Don’t worry.” She smooths some hair out of my face, smiling. “We have enough ice cream to tackle any screw up.”

So I tell her everything that happened. How embarrassed I was about the stupid dates my sisters and cousins tried to set up. How, in spite of my annoyance, I started to see Bodhi differently during that time together. The way I felt so aware of him when he helped me with my necklace. The certainty I had that he would kiss me before the fireworks.

And I tell her about being stupid and avoiding him afterwards and how that led to me completely missing the fact that he was dreading the upcoming anniversary. I tell her about that terrible dinner, how hurt I was when I realized he’d had a brother that he never told me about. How we fought in the car and he told me I wasn’t his best friend.

Then I tell her about getting drunk that night and how he’d still come to rescue me from sitting on the floor in the middle of the party, even though he was so clearly hurting himself. How we woke up later and talked and that I kissed him.

“And then he stood there in my office and I completely lied to him.” I wipe at my eyes. I managed to get through most of that without crying—my mom is right, ice cream totally helps—but I can’t think about the way he looked that day without breaking down.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I tell her as she hands me a tissue. “I just…I got so scared. Which is stupid because it’sBodhi. I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that the kiss wasn’t the only thing that happened in the sunroom. He told me about his family. He shared really personal, painful things about his brother. And I told him I didn’t remember, all because I was too cowardly to face the fact that I kissed him.”

“I think you said something pretty important there, Lele,” she says. “You said you shouldn’t have been scared because it was Bodhi. I think you need to remember that right now. Maybe you screwed up and hurt him, but it’sBodhi. He knows you. If he sees that you’re genuinely sorry, he’ll forgive you. I know he will.”

I shake my head, fresh tears falling. “I apologized to him tonight and he said he understood.”

“See?”

“And then he left to go on a date with someone else.”

Her mouth drops open. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”