“Maybe no one hurt me, and I’ve just never met the right person.”
“Yeah,” Abby said. “But you’re how old? Because at our age, most people have had a few serious relationships.”
“I guess I’m the exception,” he said lightly.
“Are your parents married?” Abby asked.
Sebastian felt his shoulder blades draw together, and his hands tighten on the handlebars. Avoid, avoid, avoid. “They are.”
“Happily?”
Sebastian found himself remembering his college graduation. His parents and Lincoln’s family, out to dinner at a restaurant in Middletown with a view of the Connecticut River. They could see the men’s and women’s crew team, rowing up and down, through the windows. He remembered his mother ordering a bottle of champagne—“To celebrate our sons!”—then drinking most of it, plus a number of glasses of white wine. Lincoln had been looking at Sebastian, and Dr. and Mr. DeVries had been looking at each other, their faces increasingly concerned as his mother’s voice got louder, her gestures more emphatic. His father, eventually, had excused himself and helped his mom to her feet, guiding her out of the restaurant and back to the car.
“They love each other” was what he said to Abby. His voice sounded hollow. He thought that what his mother really loved was white wine, and what his father really loved was having a problem to solve. That, and being the hero, riding to his wife’s rescue, saving the day. “It’s…” He paused. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not the healthiest relationship.”
He waited for Abby to press him about it, or connect the dysfunction of his parents’ marriage to his own failure on the relationship front. Instead, she said, “I’m sorry.” Sebastian felt an unexpected lump in his throat. He’d never talked to anyone but Lincoln about what was going on with his parents, or what it had been like when he’d gone home in 2020.
“What about your parents?” he asked.
When she answered, he could picture her rolling her eyes. “Oh, Lord. That’s a saga. Honestly? I don’t think the two of them should have ever been married at all. My dad’s basically a hippie, and my mom… well. You’ve seen my mom.”
“She doesn’t seem that bad.” She was sober, Sebastian thought, and actively taking an interest in her child, both of which made her a significant improvement on his own mom.
“She’s a fancy lady. She has her charities, and her exercise classes, and her friends, that’s all she ever wanted. I really do not know what she was doing with my dad in the first place. But they’re both remarried, and now, I think, they’re both with the people they should have been with all along.”
“Everyone’s living happily ever after, huh?”
“Well, isn’t that what everyone wants? To be with someone who loves them and understands them, and isn’t trying to change them?” Again, Sebastian heard, or thought he heard, that note of envy, or sorrow, or something other than straightforward happiness, in her voice. Was Mark trying to change her? Did Mark not understand her? If he was trying to be her friend, Sebastian should know these things. A friend would be interested. A friend would want details.
“That sounds right,” he said cautiously.
“You should keep that in mind,” Abby said. “You know, just in case you ever meet someone you decide you want to be in a relationship with.”
Glumly, Sebastian realized that he probably wouldn’t be meeting anyone anytime soon. How much time would have to pass before the stink of Internet humiliation would fade? Before he wasn’t instantly recognizable as a cautionary tale, a walking red flag? He’d have to give up the apps, he realized. Maybe he’d move as far away as possible, to somewhere like Alaska.
He must have made some amused noise out loud, because Abby asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Just that I’m probably going to have to move someplace far away, if I ever want to…” He considered saying have sex and decided, instead, to say, “date, again.”
Abby looked at him, eyebrows scrunched, nose adorably wrinkled. “You think so?”
“Well, yes. Insofar as I’m currently an Internet scandal. Hashtag fuckboy.” Which was, actually, one of the milder hashtags he’d seen applied to his situation.
“Yeah, but you’re also…” She gestured at him with one small hand. Her cycling glove covered her wrist and palm but left her fingertips bare, and he wanted, very badly, to feel her hand in his own hand, or against his cheek, or his chest.