She took off her bra and sat on the floor, leaning back against the bed frame as she pulled out her phone.
Her mom picked up after the third ring.
Instead of a normal greeting, Riley said, “Do you think our family is cursed to die alone?”
She didn’t mean to spring something so heavy on her unsuspecting parent. Especially not at—she checked her watch and winced—eight in the morning. It just came out. All of Riley’s finely honed “bad bitch” bravado crumbling at the sound of her mom’s voice.
Jordan Rhodes didn’t respond right away. Instead, Riley could hear her dragging out a kitchen chair, plopping herself down with a sigh.
“What happened?”
“I fell in love.” The admission came a little breathless.
She and her mother talked about love sometimes. The surface details of other people’s relationships—a neighbor’s new beau and whether it would last, actors with enough onscreen chemistry that they must loathe each other in real life. But it had been a long time since they’d had a reason to discuss it like this—when it was close and disruptive and precious.
“Ah.” Riley could hear her mother’s knowing smile all the way from New Jersey. “The infuriatingly handsome Englishman, huh?”
Now that they were together, Riley wanted to argue with the shorthand she’d been using to summarize Clark for weeks, but yeah—still true. Sometimes his face made her want to punch his mouth with her mouth. She groaned instead.
“I’m so happy and also such a mess.”
“Sounds about right.” Her mom hummed a little. “Come on, enemies to lovers. It’s right there in the label. Don’t tell me you didn’t see this one coming.”
Truthfully, Riley hadn’t. There had seemed like too many good reasons why it shouldn’t work between her and Clark. They came from such different worlds. Had complete opposite approaches to how to handle pretty much everything. They’d hurt each other on purpose. But most of all, Riley had used curse breaking to keep people at arm’s length for so long.
“I didn’t think I was capable of it.”
Her mom went quiet, long enough that Riley pulled the phone back from her face to check the call hadn’t disconnected.
“Mom?”
She blew out a long breath. “I fucked up.”
“What?” Riley picked at a loose carpet fiber. “What do you mean?”
“I mean . . .” Her mom sounded tired, or like she was getting a cold. “I grew up without a dad, so I thought—I let myself think—that you not having yours wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Mom,” Riley said fiercely. “No. We never needed him.”
They didn’t talk about her father. Not since that night when Riley was nine. It wasn’t that she’d never been curious, never had questions, but asking had always felt to Riley like some kind of betrayal—like simply speaking his name would suggest her mom wasn’t doing enough, didn’t love her enough when the exact opposite was true.
“Curse breaking and romantic partnership are not mutually exclusive,” she said in that “you’d better hear this” Mom Voice, and then, softening again, “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”
Hurting her mom, especially by accident, made Riley feel like her chest was collapsing. But now that this conversation was out there, she had to keep going. Had to lead them out, through.
“But you kept it a secret. Told him Gran was a seamstress. That I spent my summers helping her cut cloth.”
She could picture her mom at the kitchen table, running her fingers over the familiar wooden grooves, trying to pick her words.
“I kept curse breaking a secret from him not because I was ashamed of Gran or of the practice, but because I was ashamed of myself for abandoning it.”
“What?” Riley had never considered that. Her mom had always seemed so at peace with her decision. And while she’d been supportive about Riley picking up the family mantle later in life, she’d never shown any signs of wishing she’d done the same.
“When I was growing up, before I left for school, I trained the same way you did. I wasn’t a natural the way you are, and I didn’t have your drive, but I think mostly, I’d watched my mom pour everything she had into it—solving other people’s problems—for what always seemed to me like little recognition or reward. I didn’t feel prepared at twenty-two for the degree of resilience curse breaking requires. Fuck, at fifty-two I still don’t.”
Lacking a teleportation device, she settled for FaceTime.
When her mom switched the call over, she was still wearing her flannel pj’s. A mug of coffee was steaming at her elbow.
“Mom,” Riley said, staring down at her phone, trying to make her tone firm, her own version of Mom Voice. “I swear you’re the most resilient person I know.”
Her mom covered her face with her hand, then took a long sip of her coffee before she said, “Thanks, kid.
“You know what I’ve realized? It didn’t matter in the end if I chose curse breaking or not.” She lowered the mug. “I used to read her journal when you were at school or asleep. Looking for a way to be close to her. Looking for advice. And I realized, all those pages of reflection and advice, all the cross-outs and footnotes. Gran didn’t care in the end if either of us decided to follow in her footsteps. She wanted us to know her. And she wanted us to believe in our ability to change things, to help people.”
In that moment, staring at her mom’s face, still slightly puffy from sleep, Riley knew the answer to a question she had never asked. Did you ever worry that you made the wrong choice, sending him away?
There was never a choice. The right person didn’t make you choose.
“I miss you,” she told her mom. “I miss Gran too.”
“She’d be so fucking proud of you, kid.” Her mom beamed. “Almost as proud as me.”
Riley started to cry, a big noisy sob into her hand. She had to get up and grab tissues from the bathroom. Had to put her mom on mute while she blew her nose like a trumpet.
“I’m kind of floundering at the moment,” she admitted.
Now both of their faces were puffy on the screen.
“I used to worry about failing at curse breaking a normal, reasonable amount, but now my personal life—this man I really care about, that I want to figure out a future with—is involved, and for the first time it’s like I have a partner.”
Clark and breaking the curse. Two things she wanted that had become hopelessly entangled.
“And now all of a sudden, I’m not in total control anymore. We have to trust each other. He’s there up close for every mistake. And it sucks because I want to impress him. As shallow as that sounds.”
“Sounds like love.”
“I’ve never had more to lose.” It was frustrating. Terrifying. And part of her did desperately want her mom to step in and somehow make everything better.
“To your credit, you’ve never shied away from a situation that demanded a leap of faith, but in some ways, when it comes to finding a partner, that’s the easy part. There’s no time to think. For better or worse it’s over quickly. But if you want to make love last, you have to take smaller steps, match your pace to someone else’s well enough that you can hold their hand.”