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“That’s not what this is.” I shake my head at her. “The idea of not being with you…” I give her a look that I hope tells her how much I hate that idea. “I just don’t want to put you in a position where being with me alienates you from everyone in your life. I know that’s not what you want. You’re close with your family. You’re not like me who lives several states away and barely talks to them.”
She doesn’t say anything, and for the first time since we started this conversation, I wonder if it’s setting in. “You should call your mom more,” she tells me sadly and I nod in agreement because I definitely should. “And your sisters,” she adds. Tears have sprung to her eyes and when she looks at me it feels like someone’s standing on my chest. “So…I can’t have what I want?”
“I just think you should give this some thought. This isn’t just because your family doesn’t like me. They don’t approve of us together, and that might make things tense and uncomfortable. How would holidays work? Your sister’s wedding? Birthdays? Things that you would want me to come to…they may not want me there and then that’s just going to cause a divide.”
“It already is. I’m so angry at them.”
“In their own way, they think they’re looking out for you,” I tell her as I make my way over to the couch and sit next to her.
“So, what does this mean for you and me?”
I grab her hand and hold it in mine before dragging my lips over them. “I don’t know. I want to be with you, but I don’t know how it can work. We have so many things stacked against us.”
“I hate this.”
“So do I,” I tell her. “I feel like I’ve waited so long to be happy. So long to be happy with you, and I still can’t have it.”
I’m walking through my front door the next morning after a long and teary night with Chris. Neither one of us wants a breakup but even I can admit that it seems like we’re no closer to seeing light at the end of the tunnel than we were two years ago. I’m upset and angry and I know exactly where to place my anger.
I find my mother who’s sitting in the living room, scrolling on her iPad. She doesn’t look up when I enter the room. “Where’s Dad?”
“Golf.” Yep, she’s pissed.
I guess I’m going to have to start this conversation then. “So, you just have nothing to say to me?”
She puts her iPad down and looks up at me before sliding her glasses off. “What do you want me to say?”
“How about I’m sorry?”
She narrows her eyes in confusion. “For what, may I ask?”
“That was not the time for any of that last night. That was…so unlike you.”
“And sleeping with a married man…that’s like you? News to me.”
I shake my head in frustration. “Mom, we didn’t do anything to you. The way you treated us was so uncalled for.”
She stands up and I can already tell I’m in for it. “Uncalled for? Your boyfriend’s wife basically called my child a whore to her face and you think my behavior was uncalled for? You’re lucky we didn’t have the cops called! Had we been anywhere else and I had just a few more drinks, your father would have had to call in several favors,” she says as she stomps past me.
I follow behind her into the kitchen, “I know and I get why you’re angry and that you’re just trying to look out for me but he loves me and I love him.”
She slams the refrigerator closed as she brings out one of her sparkling waters. “Marissa, be serious; you’re in love with the forbiddenness of it all. It’s all of the sneaking around behind closed doors that you’re in love with. Let’s be honest with ourselves.”
“That’s not it!”
“Okay, so explain to me. He’s divorced now. Fine. We’ll put a pin in that for now. How does it work with you working for him? Are you going to quit your job? A job you love? A job you’re doing very well at? Or are you just going to be sneaking around for the rest of your career there? That’s not a life or a relationship.”
I lean against the island and rest my arms on the counter. “I don’t know. We haven’t gotten that far, but I assume we’d have to speak with HR and I wouldn’t be able to report directly to him obviously. That’s currently the least of our problems. I don’t want you and Dad to hate him.”
“We don’t hate him, but you’re asking us to just be okay with how you guys got together and for us to not be skeptical about his intentions. He was married for six years and—”
“Again, there’s more to that and I’ll agree that no one can really know what goes on in a relationship but those two people, and there are two sides to every story, but it sounded like Dad was taking Holly’s side last night by repeating her nonsense back to us.”
She shrugs. “Well, I wasn’t there for that.”
I hesitate, not wanting to ask this question but knowing that inevitably I have to know. “Can you support me being with him?”
Her lips form a straight line. “I don’t know, Marissa, and I never thought I’d ever be in the position where I’d have to be asked that by one of my children. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
