“Something smells amazing,” I say, walking into the massive kitchen my father has built for her, the basket of muffins on the counter.
“Don’t you touch that unless you wash your hands,” she scolds with her back to me, and I roll my eyes. “Then get your skinny ass on that stool so we can talk.”
I groan as I walk to the big stainless-steel sink, turning the water on, and washing my hands. I grab a strawberry muffin as soon as my hands are clean, sitting on the stool while my mother drizzles icing on her lemon cakes. “So talk,” she says, and I just look at her.
“I don’t know what to say,” I answer her honestly as my heart speeds up in my chest, and instead of enjoying the muffin, suddenly my stomach rises to my throat. I’ve been a fucking mess since he came into the office and told me the wedding was cancelled.
“How about you start with why you look like someone told you Santa wasn’t real?” she asks as she side-eyes me.
I look down, wondering how to say the next words but all words escape me. “I got my first client,” I say, and she looks over, smiling.
“Knew you would,” she states.
“It’s Matthew.” I say his name and her hand stops mid drizzle. “Yeah, that.”
“He’s getting married?” she asks in a whisper.
“No,” I reply. “Well, he was but the wedding is now cancelled.”
She puts the fork down. “What?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” I say, frustrated. “I don’t know anything. All I know is that I was fine. I was over him.”
She looks at me with her eyebrows going higher. “You were over him.” She picks up the way I phrased it past tense.
“I am over him,” I cover quickly, but then I put my hand on top of my head. “I thought I was.
“He’s been out of my life for the last two years.” I slap the island. “I didn’t even think about him except when it was the day of his birthday and our anniversary,” I admit for the first time ever. “But why, in just a couple of weeks, is he now consuming my thoughts all the time?” My voice goes louder and louder as I get more and more frustrated. “This whole thing is pissing me off because I’m not supposed to give a shit.”
“Maybe it’s because you didn’t get closure,” my mother suggests softly, and I tilt my head to the side. “Sending his stuff back to him with a guy who he always thought was into you isn’t closure.”
“He could have called me.” I glare at her now.
“Didn’t you change your number?” She folds her arms over her chest, mimicking me. “Bottom line, Sofia, you need to sit down and talk to him.”
“About what?” I throw up my hands. “About him being an asshole and breaking my heart? About how I waited to see if he would chase me but was let down because he was never coming after me? About how I loved him so much that every person I’ve dated since him I compare to him?” The tears escape and run down my cheeks. “I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to discuss it. He had his time to discuss things with me and what did he do? He sent me back my stuff.”
“Sofia, a lot has changed in two years. You are both different people.” She tries to be the voice of reason. “You owe it to yourself to talk to him. If not, you’ll be forever comparing everyone to him.” She picks the fork back up and continues to ice the cake.
My phone pings from the couch and I get up, walking over to it, not sure what to say to my mother. Taking it out of my purse, I look down seeing the text from the man who I just can’t escape all of a sudden.
Can we talk?
matthew
I walk out of the plane, ducking my head, holding on to the side rail as I take the steps down to the tarmac. The breeze runs through me as I make my way to my car, the sun in the sky slowly going down. I open the door to the back seat, throwing in my carry-on bag before I sit down in the driver’s seat. We were gone for one game on the road, so I don’t have that much I took with me. I take my phone out and power it back on, looking down to see if I got a text. The circle keeps going around and around as it finally loads up. The pings coming one after another showing me I missed four texts.
Opening up the text app, I see I have one from my mother.
Just thinking about you.
I want to laugh because I know she wants to say a lot more. I know she has a lot more questions for me, but I also know my father is holding her at bay. The second one is from my sister, Zara.