Funny Story(39)

The corner of Miles’s mouth hitches. “Petra’s was basically a Norman Rockwell painting.”

I sigh. “Yeah, Peter’s too.”

Miles looks up at me from under a slightly furrowed brow, his thumbs still gliding back and forth along my wrists. “Were you close?” he asks. “With Peter’s parents.”

My chest pinches. “Sort of. I mean, maybe not close. But they were always really nice. His mom came wedding dress shopping with me and my mom. And she got a monogrammed Christmas stocking made for me to match his and his brother’s. They’re the kind of family with a million traditions. Certain plates and specific desserts for each of their birthdays. Every single thing in their house was some kind of heirloom with some great story, and he and his brother, Ben, would argue over who’d inherit what someday, but in this jokey way. The whole extended family always comes here for New Year’s Eve and they do a white elephant gift exchange, and it’s all very . . . I don’t know. I just really wanted . . .”

“To be a part of it?” Miles guesses.

I nod.

“Yeah,” he says.

I hadn’t heard anything from any of Peter’s local friends after the breakup, not even Scott. But both his mom and his brother’s girlfriend, Kiki, sent messages in those first couple weeks. Kiki told me to hit her up if I were ever in Grand Rapids, and I knew she meant it.

Mrs. Collins’s message, however, had only read: thinking of you, with a little purple heart beside it.

“For what it’s worth,” I say, “what Peter said—it sounded like he didn’t really know what he was talking about. Like he got the CliffsNotes from Petra and made the rest up. I doubt she was harping on you.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “She wouldn’t.”

There’s a levity to his voice, but he looks uncommonly distant, halfway here with me and halfway deep inside his skull.

It’s surprising, how powerful the urge to comfort him is, how comfortable it feels to let myself lean against him in one of only a handful of hugs to pass between us in the months we’ve lived together.

His hands slide down my arms to wrap across my back. We stand there for several seconds, tangled up together.

“Want to go egg his car?” I mumble into his chest.

“Seems like a waste of good eggs,” he says.

“I agree,” I say. “I just wish my gynecologist told me that sooner.”

I’m joking, but Miles draws back enough to peer into my face. “You’d be a great mom.”

It’s the kind of thing everyone says to their friends, but I believe him when he says it, and I’m strangely touched. “What about you? You want kids?”

“I wouldn’t know the first thing about being a dad.” He smiles faintly, tucking my hair behind my ear. It makes me feel like a two-liter bottle of soda flipped upside down, all the bubbles suddenly rushing in the opposite direction. “Hey, tell me something.”

“What?” I ask.

“Something about you,” he says. “That has nothing to do with him.”

“Well.” I laugh. “I guess all you need to know is how blank my mind just went. That’s how sure I am about ‘who I am’ these days.”

“What about your family,” he says. “Any siblings?”

“None that I know of,” I say.

His head tilts.

“My dad’s had a lot of girlfriends over the years,” I say. “I wouldn’t be that surprised if I’ve got a few half siblings floating around.”

“Neither of your parents ever remarried?” he asks.

“My mom’s never even dated since my dad,” I say.

“Too brokenhearted?” he asks, which makes me actually laugh.

“Too busy. When I was a kid, she worked a lot to make ends meet, and she always said she’d rather spend her free time with me. I figured once I went to college, she’d give it a try. Instead she got really into CrossFit and made a ton of friends. She’s always basically either exercising with a lady named Pam or taking art classes with a woman named Jan, or drinking smoothies with both of them. She’s really happy, though. That’s what matters.”

Even as I say it, I feel a pang. I know she’s meant it every time she’s told me I could come stay with her, move into her tiny studio. But for the first time since I can remember, she actually has a full life, beyond just taking care of me.

The week Peter dumped me, it took a two-hour phone call to convince her to not cancel the five-day “backpacking journey” she had scheduled with Pam, to come nurse my broken heart. She’d spent too much of her life dropping everything for me, knowing it all fell to her.

I could just as easily weep in her arms at the end of the summer, during my scheduled post–Read-a-thon visit.

“CrossFit,” Miles says thoughtfully. “That explains it.”

“What could that possibly explain?” I ask.

“The screams and clanking metal I hear from the other room when you’re on speakerphone.”

“Oh, no,” I say, “that’s unrelated.”

“I don’t want any more information,” he plays along. “I feel totally uncurious.”

“My regularly scheduled calls with Christian Grey are completely mundane.”