Wild

I nodded. “Great. I’ll text you.”

Once inside my loft, I stood alone and stared blindly into space. I quickly thought about my last glimpse of Logan’s face before he walked away. So hard and impassive. As though he felt nothing when I rejected him in front of his brother and Pepper. I’d handled that badly, although I’m not sure, if it happened all over again, it could go down any differently. Some things just weren’t meant to be.

THE WEEK PASSED IN numbing monotony. I walked around in a daze, functioning, but not really caring about my day-to-day tasks. It was reminiscent of when Harris dumped me. That same vague state of bewilderment. As though I’d just been punched in the gut and didn’t quite know how or why that happened, only that it hurt like hell.

Where it differed was that this was worse than my breakup with Harris. I’d spent four years with Harris and just a few weeks fooling around with Logan, but this felt worse. My stomach was off like I’d eaten something bad.

I had successfully killed any chance of being with Logan again—even in a physical no-strings-attached kind of way. He had too much pride to come around me again. Not after I shut him down in front of Reece and Pepper. Which was what I had wanted. What I had set out to do. End it once and for all.

So why did my heart ache so damn much?

Saturday afternoon I was bingeing on popcorn and M&M’s, zoning out as I watched a Walking Dead marathon. I’d deliberately avoided anything remotely romantic, flipping past Bridget Jones’s Diary so fast I might have sprained my thumb. People running for their lives from flesh-hungry zombies fit the bill nicely.

I was in the same clothes I had worn to bed the night before, greasy ponytail and all. I may or may not have brushed my teeth yet.

When my phone buzzed beside me on the futon and I saw it was Mom, I suppressed a sigh and answered it. I’d dodged her call earlier this week and knew I couldn’t do it again. Not without her sending out the National Guard.

“Hey, Mom. How are you?”

She dove straight from guilting me over not calling her back to pressuring me into coming home for a visit before fall semester began. She insisted there had to be time in my schedule for family. Even if just for a long weekend. And there was. I could leave on a Thursday and come home on Sunday. Except I didn’t want to. Despite my current misery, I liked it here. I liked the cooler northeastern summers. I liked working for Dr. Chase. I liked my apartment above Mulvaney’s with Cook slipping me fried pickles every time I passed.

But how could I explain that to Mom? I loved my family. Everything I did was to make Mom proud. To prove that my birth had not been a mistake.

I knew that was messed up. I should be confident enough in myself, but it was still an internal struggle, needing my mother to simply say she was glad I was born, that I was not a constant reminder of her lapse in judgment.

“Mom,” I interrupted the latest news of my cousin Marianne’s engagement to a plastic surgeon in Auburn. “Do you remember the little pool house we rented behind Mrs. Flanagan’s house?”

“Why are you bringing that up?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s my earliest memory, I guess. I remember eating Popsicles on the edge of that pool with you.” You had seemed happy with me then. When it was just the two of us. I had seemed like enough for you. These thoughts scudded across my mind, but I didn’t dare say them. If I did, it would sound like I regretted what came after. My stepdad. Amber. Our very serious and respectable suburban existence.

“I try not to think of those days. Life was hard then. Being a single mom, trying to finish school and work. I don’t think my life really began until I met your father.” And by father, she meant my stepfather. Not my real dad who knocked her up and bailed on us.

It shouldn’t have hurt to hear her say this, but it did. I was tempted to say: but you had me. Didn’t that make it all worth it? Wasn’t I enough, even then, to make you feel complete?

Except it would sound like I was bitter and resentful that she had married my stepfather. That she had Amber. And it wasn’t that at all. I loved my stepfather and sister. My struggle was with Mom and this overwhelming compulsion I felt to be everything for her. To be the best so I could justify the mistake of my existence.

Mom dove back into the subject of Marianne’s wedding and how I needed to be sure to reserve that entire week the following March because I, of course, would be one of the bridesmaids.

Mom circled back around to when I was coming home. She pressed me for a precise date. “I’d like you here before August third. That’s when Harris is leaving. He and his family are going on a cruise.”

A sour taste tickled the back of my throat. “Mom, what does Harris have to do with when I come home?”

“Georgia, I hear things are rocky between him and the other girl . . .”

“You mean the one he left me for? The one he cheated on me with?”

Mom ignored that and continued, “It’s just like I told you. It would never last.”

I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Mom, I’m not getting back together with Harris. He left me for someone else, remember? I don’t want to be with him anymore.”

“We learn from our mistakes, Georgia, and we’re stronger for it in the end. Better.”

“Yes. I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve learned from mine.”

“Oh, Harris was a mistake then? Four years of your life?”

“Yes . . . maybe. Look. He’s part of my past, Mom. That’s where I want to keep him.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Georgie. First you wanted to stay up there for the summer, rejecting Mr. Berenger’s kind offer to intern at the bank. Embarrassing me, I might add. Now you’re not even interested in patching things up with Harris. I don’t know who you are anymore.”

The disappointment was there, ripe in her voice, and I felt suddenly suffocated. Like I couldn’t breathe under the pressure of it. That I could break apart from it at any moment.

“Mom, I have to lead my own life and do what’s right for me. Just because I don’t make the choices you want doesn’t mean my choices are wrong.” Did I honest to God just say that?

“Georgia,” Mom’s voice sharpened with authority—it was her principal voice. “Let me remind you that these choices you make are at my expense. Your father and I are paying your way. You are not as free as you think you are. We had an understanding when we let you go so far from home—that you would be there with Harris had a lot to do with our agreeing for you to go to Dartford.”