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“Hey, Mom.”
“Ian! Sweetheart. What are you doing right now?”
“Me? I’m…” I frown. I can’t really tell her what I’m actually doing, which is stressing out about a “maybe, maybe not” date with a woman I can’t stop obsessing over. I clear my throat. “I’m at the rink Dad used to take me to.”
“Oh, your father loves that place. Is he with you?”
My nose wrinkles with distaste; my father hasn’t been anywhere near the ice with me since I was at least fifteen, and as much as I wonder where he is, since my mother doesn’t seem to know, I don’t comment on that either.
“No, I’m meeting a friend.”
“A girl friend?” Mom teases.
“Mom…”
“Don’t think I don’t surf the web, too, son. I’ve seen the pictures of you and the Baker girl. Delilah? She’s so gorgeous. She was always a cute kid, but my, what a looker she grew up to be.”
I swallow around the lump in my throat; my mother has no idea how much I’m struggling with that very fact. “Yeah,” I say. “She has. But you know it’s all a stunt.”
“I don’t know,” Mom says slyly. “Those pictures looked pretty convincing.”
I snort. “That’s the point.”
“Mhm.” Her tone suggests she still isn’t quite convinced. “Whatever you say.”
“I say we’re just friends,” I stress, the words sounding weak to my own ears.
“You should bring her to dinner. Oh, that would be lovely. I could make my chowder, and we could—”
“No,” I say quickly, too quickly. I can hear the way my mom pauses, can practically see the hurt in her expression. It makes me feel even more shitty than I already do. “I just mean…” Fuck. I wish I could tell her everything. It would be nice to have someone else to comb over all the complicated feelings I’m having, but I know that’s a road I can’t go down. Not when I can’t tell her the entire truth. “I just mean…I don’t want to put any pressure on her. She’s already helping me out.”
“Oh.” My mother does her best to hide her disappointment, but I hear it. How much more disappointed in me would she be if she knew everything? “Well, that’s okay. Maybe later, yeah?”
“Sure,” I say, not sure if I actually mean it. “Later.”
“Well, I just wanted to check in with you. I miss you, son. You’ll come see me soon, at least, won’t you? I know you’ve been busy, but your old mother misses her boy.”
A painful squeezing sensation spreads through my chest, and I close my eyes against its sting. “I miss you too. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. I’ll come visit soon, okay?”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she chuckles. “I love you, Ian.”
My voice sounds a little too thick when I answer, “I love you, too, Mom.”
We say our goodbyes and I stow my phone back in my pocket, the added layer of guilt over my mother only worsening my nerves. There are so many anxious thoughts rolling around in my head, so many people to potentially disappoint that I can hardly keep up with them anymore. My mother, Lila, Abby, my father—not that it would be anything new with him—it makes it hard to breathe sometimes, the weight of it. It makes me wish things were different.
“Only you would suggest ice skating on your day off as an outing,” I hear behind me, followed by a soft chuckle.
I turn my head to see Lila approach, her hair tucked under a pink knit cap and a pensive look on her face. Those anxious feelings are still swirling inside, but at the sight of her, strangely, they almost seem to settle. Her small smile seems to almost knock away the cobwebs forming on my brain, and even if those doubts and fears still linger, they feel less overwhelming when she’s here.
It makes the feelings I keep having for her even harder to ignore.
“Too on the nose?”
She shrugs one shoulder, plopping down beside me on the bench and shucking off her shoes so she can don her own skates. “With you? I don’t know. It kind of feels right.”
I watch her tie her laces as a silence settles between us, and I can feel it, the awkward air still lingering that I’d hoped would have thinned since I last saw her. It feels like too much, seeing the obvious disappointment she’s carrying; I’ve disappointed so many people in my life, and Lila is someone I desperately don’t want to add to the list. She doesn’t look at me throughout her entire task, keeping her eyes on her skates until they’re firmly in place. Then she stands, testing her balance before moving toward the opening that leads out into the ice.
Only then does she turn back toward me, that same dull expression on her face that feels so unlike the Lila I know. Like she’s doing her best not to let her emotions show. “You coming?”
