TWENTY-TWO
I couldn’t quite face going into the office, not yet. I knew I needed to be honest. I needed to speak to Dylan. I needed to grovel like I’d never groveled before.
I spent the day tidying my little hovel, taking pride in my space again. Trying to figure out a plan. I logged off social media, and I didn’t look at any of the glossy magazines in the corner shop. I kept checking the time, counting down to when I knew his meeting was.
I called Tola on her lunch break, unable to deal with the nerves. “How’s the office?”
“The usual stagnant hellhole.” I could almost hear her shrugging. “Hunter asked me to fix him up with someone. He thought it was a dating site. The man can’t even read an article, no wonder his reports are trash. Why do you sound like you’ve had eight coffees?”
“Because I have,” I replied, “the presentation is today. I was just wondering if he was preparing, if he felt confident, nervous.”
I just . . . I wished I could tell him that it was a good idea, really. That I believed in what he did, in how he protected his colleagues, in how he’d worked so hard for so long to get them here. That he deserved this opportunity. That I’d always believed in him, for him, not because I was being paid. Just because he was Dylan James, and he could do anything.
“Text him.”
“He’s blocked my number.”
“You don’t know that,” Tola said. “That’s the point. Anyway, he might unblock it and see it. Or maybe you can just send all that good energy out into the atmosphere so you can move the hell on.”
“I don’t want to move on. I want him.” God, that sounded weird to say out loud. As if the universe would hear and snatch away any opportunity.
“You know, life was a lot easier when you dated losers with a clear expiration date.”
“Well, it would have been if I’d known they had an expiration date at the time,” I said. “Such a waste. But at least it was easy. No messy feelings. I feel like my stomach’s in my throat and my head’s up my arse.”
“Such a poet,” Tola said. “Text the boy. Something simple. Nothing mushy. Nothing longer than a sentence. Then get your head back in the game, Aresti.”
In the end, I settled for simple:
I hope the presentation goes well. I know you’ll be wonderful. A x
Of course there was no reply, and of course I counted down the hours and then stalked everyone’s social media in the hopes of some nugget of information. I even called Eric in the hopes that Ben would tell him something. But it was radio silence. I’d betrayed the team; I didn’t get to hear the final score.
I really needed my mother. I took a breath and made the call. The first of all the hard apologies I’d have to make.
“Hello?” She sounded wary, like she was waiting for me to launch into another screaming list of all her faults. It made me ashamed.
“Hi, Mama,” I said and waited for her to scold me for ignoring her. To start defending herself.
Instead I heard her exhale in relief, and then burst into tears.
There is something about being the reason your mother is crying, especially when you’ve always been the one to comfort her, that is particularly brutal. Being on the other end of the phone was not enough.
“You called, you finally called!” she yelped, sounding suddenly so young, and then sobbed again.
“Mama, it’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” she said fiercely. “It’s not okay at all. You were right, about all of it. Who he is, what he’s made me. How”—she swallowed another sob—“how disappointed my mother would have been.”
“I didn’t want to be right,” I said, “and I didn’t want to be mean.”
“I keep thinking about when you came home from university and you weren’t happy. You hadn’t dated, you hadn’t made friends. You didn’t talk to Dylan anymore . . .” I stared up at the ceiling, trying to hold it together. “And I was talking to your yiayia about what we could do, how we could help you. I remember it so clearly. We sat at the kitchen table, and you hadn’t come downstairs in five days. We sat with two glasses of red wine, and I said, ‘Why doesn’t she want to fall in love, to meet somebody? She’s always being strong, always on her own! I just want her to fall in love!’ And my mama just looked at me, so sad . . .” She trailed off.
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘She sees what it’s done to you.’ ” Mama’s voice broke.
The breath I took then felt like my first real one in a long time.
“I thought I could fix everything. If I could just be a better mother and a better wife. More fun, more loving, more independent. I’d fix him, fix you, fix us. But it doesn’t work that way.”
“So I’m learning.” I half laughed.
“This was not your fight, my baby, this was mine. And I’m going to win it. If he wants this house, he can fight me for it.”
I’d been let down before by Mama’s big moments of confidence, her assurances that this time, it would be better. But she sounded certain of herself, strong, and that was impressive enough.
“Okay, Mama.”
“You don’t believe me,” she said softly, “that’s okay. You’ll see.”
“I hope so,” I said, my throat sore. “I’ve made a few mistakes of my own.”
“Yes,” she said, reproachful, “it was very annoying to be in the doghouse so I couldn’t tell you off!” But she laughed, and I laughed along with her. “Oh, my darling, what are you doing? Tricking Dylan? Working for kitten princesses?”
“Kitty litter, Mama.” I waved it away. “It doesn’t matter. It was a mistake.”
“Dylan always tried the hardest to be whoever you wanted him to be. You could see it with his father. He’d be strong, he’d be invisible, he’d be sensitive. Play the joker, the fool. That boy tried on every personality to find the one that would make people love him.”
I winced. “Don’t, I feel awful enough as it is.”
“What was there to fix?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “I just wanted to be with him again. I just wanted an excuse.”
I imagined my mother nodding sagely. “I know there were times when . . . I let myself fall apart and I let you hold everything together. You cooked dinner and tidied and got your clothes ready for school. You asked me how I was and did everything you could to fix my heart. That wasn’t fair of me.”
I said nothing.
“But Dylan was there with you, too, wasn’t he?” she said softly. “Making you laugh, holding your hand, burning all my good frying pans. He was there, by your side, making sure you were okay. That’s love, darling, that has always been what love is. What I’ve wanted for you. What your grandparents had. Caring and being cared for. Equals.”
I pressed my lips together. “He won’t forgive me for this.”
“That’s fear and shame talking, Alyssa. Never be too proud to apologize. To make things right.”
“To fix it?” I hiccuped wildly, the words bubbling up.
“Just one more thing for you to fix, sweetheart,” she said. “But only because it was your mess in the first place.”
I exhaled, feeling the tears well up again. “Yes, Mama.”
“Come to dinner tonight, I miss you. And we’ll make a plan together. What to do about the house, what to do about Dylan, all of it. You and me, we’ll make it right.” I didn’t realize how long I’d been waiting to hear those words until she said them. The tears tracked down my face as if they’d been hoping for permission to fall.
And so I got on the train back home, that journey tied up in nostalgia, like everything about my life lately.
I was ashamed of how I’d treated Dylan, ashamed of how I’d let myself fall again. More than anything, I was ashamed that I kept asking him for truths when I kept feeding him lies. If I’d been the friend I was fifteen years ago, I would have told him the moment I saw him: This woman doesn’t get you, doesn’t know the truth of you. You deserve someone who loves all of you.
My mother greeted me with a huge hug, wrapping her arms around me and swaying me side to side. She breathed relief, and I clung to her for a long time.
She ordered pizza, and we sat at the table with a good bottle of wine whilst I told her the whole tale. All of it, no hiding how lonely I’d been, how worried I was that I’d given everything I had to these men who moved on to better lives without a second glance. How powerful I’d felt, ever so briefly, when I started the Fixer Upper.
“You helped people, Alyssa. You just need to find the right way to do it now. Not all this tricking and scheming and controlling people. You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.” She gestured at herself with her wineglass. “Look at me.”
I went to argue, but she smiled, tears in her eyes as she looked up at the photo of her parents on the mantelpiece.
“Love is only meant to be terrifying right at the beginning, right before you fall,” she said softly. “Then it’s meant to feel like home.” I reached across and squeezed her hand.
At that moment, the doorbell rang, and we looked up in surprise.
Mama laughed, wiping her eyes as she went to open the door. “Maybe the pizza is here early? Rom-coms on the sofa—I’m thinking Dirty Dancing, yes?”
But when she opened the door, I heard her voice harden.
“Yiannis.”
Dad.
I stood up, gearing for a fight, terrified she was going to fall back into the pattern.
But then Mama peered round the doorframe and said, “Your father and I are going to talk.”
She walked across the room and kissed my forehead. “Go for a walk, yes? Half an hour. You can go out the back if you’d rather?”
I blinked at her, the first sign of this new person she promised she was becoming. Then I picked up an old hoodie from the chair, pausing to grab her wrist. “That’s not what love looks like, right?”
Mama nodded, repeated our saying back to me.
I kissed her cheek and escaped into the back garden, not even bothering to open the garden gate, instead just swinging my legs over the low part in the wall and jumping off into the alleyway. I’d smoked my first cigarette here, with Dylan, of course.
I knew before I even stepped onto the street that my wandering half an hour was going to be a walking tour of our history. How could it be anything but, when he was the only thing on my mind?
You didn’t give me the chance when you disappeared, Aly. I could hear him in my head. Fair’s fair.
I walked past our old school, impossibly small now. I could still see where I’d hid from the other kids at lunch, reading my book, afraid to make friends. This lanky boy had rolled in front of me and put his finger to his lips, shaking his head. I heard the other boys coming looking for him and wander off. He’d managed to piss off a group of kids in the first two days of school.
“Can I stay here? Just until they’re gone?” he asked, pushing back the dark fringe that kept flopping over his eyes.
I closed my book, narrowed my eyes in consideration, and said, “Sure, but you’ve got to tell me something interesting. And it has to be real!”
He thought about it for a good thirty seconds and then said, “I’m deathly afraid of watermelons.”
It was the first time I’d laughed in a long time. He spent the rest of lunch telling me about growing a watermelon tree inside your belly, and I didn’t pick my book up again. We were eleven.
My chest hurt thinking about it, so I ambled down the next street, looking at how the houses had changed, passing the little bakery that made my favorite little lemon pastries, covered in powdered sugar. I passed the coffee shop where all the teenagers got iced coffee in the summers, holding up the street with the queue. The pharmacy where I’d had my ears pierced, and the corner shop where we’d paid some twenty-year-olds to buy us beer and they’d returned to give us a pack of Haribo and our full change, saying we should enjoy being kids.
I let my feet decide the route, but I knew where I was coming up to—Dylan’s street. I couldn’t stop myself. I just wanted to stare at that house, the one I hadn’t seen since I snuck out in the morning full of self-loathing and shame and loss. I would just peek at it. Wonder what might have been. Stare from across the street for an outline of Mr. James in the living room, the flick of the tail from the ancient cat next door. Just a moment, that was all I needed. To say good-bye to our past.
And there he was.
Leaning up against a beat-up blue car, staring at his house. He was wearing his blue suit, the crisp white shirt, top buttons undone. He looked every inch the businessman. But he didn’t walk up to the front door.
He never did, did he? He turned up, stared at it for half an hour, and left, never getting what he came for. Whatever that was.
I sidled up, unsure of whether I was ready for the onslaught, for what I deserved. Something real.
“You going in this time?” I asked, staying a safe distance away, and he didn’t even look round, just shook his head and exhaled, like he was saying Of course, of course it’s you.
“I never do,” he said, eyes still zeroed in on the front door. “Did you come looking for me?”
“It’s the last place I would have looked,” I replied. “How did the presentation go?”
Endless questions, batting back and forth. We could manage this, as long as he didn’t look at me.
“Well,” he said with a nod, “they’re going to take EasterEgg into the fold, put their funding and backing behind the projects . . .”
“That’s amazing!” I yelped, a little too enthused for the situation.
“And . . . they’ve offered me a job.”
“I thought the meeting was the job. They’re investors.”
Dylan swallowed, clenched his jaw. “They will invest in EasterEgg. Priya and Ben will stay here and take on new staff. And I’ll be working on the promotion side. They thought . . . they thought I was suited to it, with my recent ‘exploits.’ I’m famous now, after all.”
I winced. “Is that what you want?”
“I figure it’s time for a new start. Where I’m not the guy who . . . well, the guy who needed fixing. The guy whose girlfriend would go to extraordinary lengths to make him good enough.”
“Dyl . . .”
“The job’s in California. Silicon Valley. I leave in a couple of weeks.”
I inhaled sharply, then tried to cover it.
“That’s soon.”
Dylan shrugged and said nothing.
“I need to explain everything, and apologize. It was complicated—”
“A hundred grand’s a lot of money. I’m sure you had your reasons.” I hated that dull, dry voice. The way he pretended it didn’t matter.
“Mama was going to lose her house, and I, well, I . . . tried to undo it. I called it off, I never took the money.”
He looked at me then, seriously. “Is she still going to lose it?”
I shook my head, and he nodded, speaking quietly. “Good. That’s good.”
I tried to figure out where to start, how to explain it all. I didn’t have my flash cards or a playbook. I didn’t have a plan. All I had were the same words going around in my head like a mantra: I love you, I love you, I love you.
“I need to apologize, Dylan, and I’m not really sure where to start . . .”
He shrugged, looking across at his old front door, back to that guy I met again last month. Guard up, unimpressed, aloof. Saving his smiles for everyone but me.
“I can’t really blame you, Aly, I was always a fixer upper, right? We knew that from the beginning . . .” He paused, trying to decide if he was going to say any more. “It’s just hard when it’s the one person who always made you feel like you were enough.”
I made a noise, but Dylan didn’t let me interrupt. “It’s fine. The guys will stay here and live their lives, and I’ll start over in the States. No more running a team, worrying about letting people down or trusting the wrong people. I can try something new. Paint a different picture.”
“You were a good leader,” I said softly. “It suited you.”
He shook his head. “No, it suited her.”
I was suddenly desperate for him to look at me, to stop resolutely pretending that I wasn’t there, that he was just quietly talking to the air.
“What about the little house by the park? Your dog, and your orange walls, and Sunday roast dinners?” I said. “Don’t think they do a decent Yorkshire pudding in California.”
He shrugged again. “Dreams change.”
“I . . . Is this really what you want?” I asked.
He exhaled a laugh. “Oh, it matters what I want now? Here’s the real question, what do you want?”
The minute he turned, I took back my wish. He was looking at me with such disappointment. It wasn’t just that mocking dislike when we’d first seen each other again—this time he might actually hate me.
“This isn’t about me.”
“Well, no, that’s not really true, is it? Because it’s always been about you. It’s about you fixing people and making them better. Fixing your parents, fixing me. Drunkenly making declarations fifteen years ago and then running off and leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces! What part of this hasn’t been about you, Aly? And you still don’t know what you want?”
His voice was rough and his eyes demanded an answer. We faced each other, and I found myself unable to move.
I wanted to say it: I want you, I want us. But I’d already ruined his chances here. He had the opportunity to start over in the US, be someone new. Be free. I’d already taken enough away from him, I couldn’t take his fresh start, too. Love was letting people go if it was best for them.
So I stayed silent.
I just shook my head, and Dylan half laughed again.
“You know what the hilarious thing about all this is?” He scoffed, shaking his head. “If you’d told me, I would have gone along with it. I would have done what I was told to be Mr. Perfect, because I figured that was the only way anyone gave a damn about me. And it still wasn’t enough.”
“That’s not—” I moved closer, but he cut me off.
“If you’d trusted me with the truth about your mum’s house, I would have helped. You know that.” He met my eyes, and I couldn’t argue. My beautiful friend.
“I know it’s not enough, but I’m sorry. At first you hated me, and I hated you, and then . . . it was a chance to be a part of your life again.”
He shook his head.
“You didn’t do this for me! You did this for her!”
“I thought you were happy!”
“And I thought seeming that way was the only way to keep you.” He shook his head, sighing at himself. “I’m still a mug, all these years later. And now I get to start all over again, new life, new friends, new job. A whole bunch of new people to pretend in front of, to make them think I’ve got the script, that I know what I’m doing.”
I couldn’t help myself.
“You don’t have to go.”
He met my eyes, holding my gaze, and I fought the need to look away.
“Be brave, Aly. You gonna give me a reason to stay?” He tilted his head. “How many months of training would I need for that?”
“No, it’s not . . .” I put my hand to my mouth. This was my fault. There was no fixing this. Not this time. I didn’t deserve his forgiveness.
Dylan looked at me with disappointment, his voice hoarse. “You realize you’re the one with this sad, small life, so desperate to control everything and keep yourself safe that you’re not actually living. More concerned with how it looks than how it feels. You’re still pretending.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded. I couldn’t argue.
He stepped away from the car and opened the door, painting a completely blank look on his face. “Well, I’m giving you a gift, Aresti, more than you gave me: You actually get a good-bye. A proper ending.”
He got into the car and I watched, wordless, from the pavement as he drove away.
—
When I got back home, my father was gone, and my mother was upbeat. Not jittery, faux positivity. Actually upbeat. We ate pizza on the sofa as promised, her arm around my shoulder, and we curled under a blanket as we watched a movie. When I trudged up to my childhood bed, unbelievably exhausted, she tucked me in and swiped my hair away from my face like I was a child.
“I am going to sell this home,” she whispered like she was telling me a fairy story. “And I’m going to buy something that I can make beautiful, something that will have my memories. Someplace you’ll come and visit, and we’ll drink wine on the patio. Somewhere that isn’t tied up with you and me and your father.”
“Even though it means letting go of Yiayia?” I asked.
Mama smiled and nodded. “I have thousands of memories of my parents, littered across the world! It’s time for me to do something for me. Just like it’s time for you to do things for you. Good things are coming for both of us. It’s time to be bold, yes?”
I nodded.
“It’ll be a little scary, but I’m ready,” she said to herself, and I was suddenly overcome by how proud I was of my mother. Finally, here she was, ready to shine.
I thought of Dylan, his beautiful, angry face under the streetlight as he waited for me to give him a reason to stay. How I thought letting go was a gift. But I still hadn’t been honest. I still hadn’t jumped.
“Yes,” I said, “you are.”
And so am I.