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“Barrett, I know you. Your tone is weird. And you’re wearing mopey clothes, even if I have been wondering where that sweatshirt went.”
“It’s so soft and perfectly worn.”
“Exactly. That’s why it’s my favorite.”
“I really am fine,” I tell her, pushing the words past my teeth. It’s an effort, but I manage it. “It’s just been… an adjustment.”
Her dark eyes search my face for a long moment, as though trying to find evidence of something being wrong in the faint freckles across my cheeks or the bend of my chin. Then her phone lights up in the cup holder. “That’ll be Jocelyn. She just got off work.”
Fortunately, cooking is enough to distract my mom from what may or may not be wrong with me and/or the universe. We busy ourselves in the kitchen, grating cheddar and scooping the innards out of potatoes until Jocelyn shows up.
And it’s only when I hear her voice that I remember.
Jocelyn is planning to propose to my mom tomorrow night.
In all the chaos of the past three days, I completely forgot. A few weeks ago, she volunteered to take me shopping for some last-minute dorm essentials. After we filled the trunk of her Kia Soul with notepads and staplers and silverware, we stopped for tacos and she showed me her grandmother’s ring, a shimmering emerald. Jocelyn is a lawyer, and I’d never heard her voice shake as much as it did when she talked to me about the proposal. She wasn’t asking for my permission—nothing as archaic as that—but she wanted to take my temperature on it first. “My temperature is off the charts,” I told her emphatically. “I have a fever, and the only prescription is you proposing to Mollie Bloom.”
“Mollie?” Jocelyn calls from the hall, deep-red lips curving into a grin when she spots me. “Double Bloom! I thought we wouldn’t see you until Thanksgiving.”
My stomach lurches. I want to be happy to see her, this shred of familiar normalcy that I’ve missed over the past few days. I want that feeling from the drive home: sun on my face and a sense that everything might be okay.
When, in reality, I am stuck in the day right before what might be one of the happiest moments of my mom’s life.
“Wishful thinking?” I ask, clinging to the hope that sleeping here, or perhaps not sleeping at all, will jump-start my timeline.
After she kisses my mom hello, Jocelyn lassos me for a hug. “Never.” She hangs her coat on the back of a kitchen chair and runs a hand through her long dark hair.
Over the years, my mom has dated both men and women, and as far as I know, Jocelyn’s her longest relationship. They met two years ago at her shop, when Jocelyn Thierry, a willowy brunette with a penchant for bright lipstick who terrified most of the other lawyers at her firm, lamented the difficulty of finding wedding cards for queer couples, and my mom proudly pointed her toward Ink & Paper’s inclusive selection. She came back every weekend searching for a different kind of card, until she ran out of people to mail them to and bought one to send to my mom, asking her out.
The framed card hangs in our living room: a tiny hedgehog holding a bouquet of roses with Jocelyn’s neat cursive inside.
It must be a side effect of growing up in a stationery shop that I’m so eager to see the cards flood in for my mom and Jocelyn. Aside from me, she’s been the steadiest person in my mom’s life. Even though we had help from my mom’s parents, they weren’t wealthy. She built her store from the ground up, rarely taking a day off, and she hadn’t left the West Coast before she met Jocelyn. She’d been wholly focused on the store and on me, anxious to give herself permission to even get out of King County. Jocelyn’s adventurous streak and love for travel have made my mom lighter, more fully herself, someone capable of taking vacations and hiring another employee to watch the shop while she’s gone. She’s never been happier than when she’s with Joss—except for when she’s with me, but it’s a different kind of happiness. And especially now that I’m in college, I hate the idea of her spending nights and weekends with only Netflix for company.
Whether their timelines are slowed down like Miles said or they’re simply suspended in space somewhere—I have to get out. For all of us.
Jocelyn leans against the opposite counter, munching on a handful of cheddar cheese. Her blunt bangs skim the tops of her eyebrows, a look I’d never be able to pull off. “So, did your elusive roommate finally make an appearance?”
“Unfortunately.” I line up the potatoes on a baking sheet. “Do you remember Lucie Lamont?”
“Editor in chief of the Navigator? Lucifer in tiny human form?” Jocelyn exaggerates a shudder. Lucie and I were already past-tense when she and my mom started dating. Then realization settles on her face. “No. She’s your roommate?”
My mom looks up from the potatoes. “You didn’t mention that.”
Because it’s been three days and the shock’s worn off. “Yeah, uh, it was definitely a surprise at first. They had to do some last-minute reorganizing. But I think she’s joining a sorority. So either I’ll be roommateless again or I’ll get someone new.”
“My college roommate and I talk every weekend,” Jocelyn says. “Carrie—you met her when she came to visit last year. I still remember when we flooded our sorority’s second floor in the winter and it froze, because Minnesota. We turned it into an ice-skating rink, which was pretty epic until the floor caved in. Law school was a little more serious. But undergrad was a wild time. God. College. They really are the best four years of your life.” She turns a smile on my mom. “Except for the year I met Mollie Bloom. And every day I’ve been fortunate enough to spend with her since then.”
My mom opens the oven and slides the potatoes in. “I’m sure college was great for everyone who wasn’t raising a screeching, vomiting infant,” she says.
“I thought you always said I was a good baby.”
“Sure, but you were still a baby.”
“You must be confusing me with someone else. I’m pretty sure I was one of those babies who never pooped or spit up.”
“Just keep believing that.”
“Let us know who you end up with,” Jocelyn says. “So we can plan to intimidate them into submission, if necessary.”
