Funny Story(67)

“Holy shit, Miles.” I pull his hand into my lap, cup it between both of mine.

He drags his eyes up to mine. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” I say.

“That’s the thing, though,” he scratches out. “I need it to be okay. Because I need to be okay. As a kid, I just felt so fucking scared and powerless, all the time, and now I just need to be okay.” He shakes his head. “I honestly think that’s partly why Petra and I worked together. I’ve never met someone who was so . . . ‘in the moment,’ and that’s where I have to be, because if I think too much about the past or the future, I come apart. So I mostly just keep all of that stuff where I don’t have to think about it.”

I drop my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to pry.”

His eyes come back to mine, his voice a scrape. “You’re not,” he says. “I want you to know. I just . . .”

“What?”

He looks over my shoulder. “I don’t want you to look at me like I’m broken.”

“Miles.” I touch the sides of his neck and pull his gaze back to mine. “You’re not broken. You’re okay. But what happened to you isn’t. It’s fucked up.”

“It’s over,” he says quietly, his hands ringing my wrists.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t still have feelings about it,” I tell him.

The corners of his lips flutter, for just a second. “That’s the problem, though. Whenever any of us had a negative emotion, it only made things worse. She turned it around on us, and we’d end up apologizing for being hurt or angry or sad, and I never knew what was right or normal. I mean, everyone who met my mom loved her. Teachers, the other parents, my friends.

“If she wants to, she can make you feel like the center of the universe, like her favorite. I used to love having friends over, because she’d turn into this different person. This funny, warm mom who loved me.

“All I wanted was for that version of her to stay. So I stopped showing it when I was upset, just went along with whatever she said and did. And eventually, I just sort of . . . stopped getting upset. Stopped feeling the bad stuff. And things got better. For me, anyway.”

He looks down, his eyes dark and glossed.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, running my thumb over the hinge of his jaw. “I get why you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s not just that. I mean, I do hate dwelling on this shit, but . . .” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I let her really fucking hurt Julia. And when Julia’s around, it’s hard not to hate myself. All those feelings, they just come back. And my mind starts to feel so loud, and dark. I just want to escape.”

A dagger spears through my heart. I wrap my arms around him and burrow my face into his chest. I don’t want to make him keep talking, but he is, like he’s been uncorked and now it’s all coming out.

I picture it spiraling down a drain, hope that’s what this confession is doing for him, rather than scraping at an old wound.

“She was way worse with Julia than she ever was with me. She’d compare Jules to our cousins, tell her who was prettier and smarter, or better behaved. She’d compare Jules to herself at that age, shit that probably wasn’t true.” His voice wavers. “She’d scream at her for the dumbest shit, as long as I can remember. And I let it all happen.”

I rear back. “What were you supposed to do?”

“Stop her,” he says immediately, like he’s thought this through, knows with certainty the right answer. “Stand up for Julia instead of shutting down. Not run away to the city the second I turned eighteen, and come back once a week like it made any fucking difference.”

“It did make a difference,” I say, “or she wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Maybe.” When he looks up at me, his eyes are stark, tired. “But I don’t even know why she’s here, because she won’t tell me. No matter how hard I try, I always make the wrong decision. I fuck it up and people get hurt.”

“Miles.” I grab his shoulders, turn his upper body toward me, and scoot in close, nearly into his lap. “She got out.”

“On her own.” He shakes his head. “She saw through the shit way before I did. Chose an out-of-state college, and when our mom tried to tell her she couldn’t go, she went anyway. Applied for her own loans, had me cosign, moved to Wisconsin. Mom stopped talking to her to punish her, which completely backfired, so then she did her version of an apology. Sorry I wasn’t perfect, but you’ll understand when you’re a mother someday. You can’t do everything right, and your kids will hate you for it.”

“God,” I say. “I’m so sorry. Is that when you stopped talking to her?”

He laughs coarsely. “No. I wanted everything to be okay so badly. So I tried to broker peace. Just one more bad decision. My mom kept trying to pit me against Julia, and it didn’t matter how many times I tried to set a boundary, she wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t take any blame. Won’t say she’s sorry, or admit she did anything wrong, so eventually I had to cut her off too.”

“And your dad’s just okay with this?” I say.

“Not okay,” Miles says. “Just avoidant as fuck. Travels a lot for work.”