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The plane touches down, and I look out the window at the gloomy sky. My head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, my eyes itch with dryness, and my chest feels as if someone is sitting on me. I grab my purse, putting on a smile to the flight attendant who saw me sob as soon as the doors closed. I tried to keep it in me, tried to hold it together, but the minute I heard the click of the door locking me in, I lost it. The past three days of being on cloud nine feels like thunder just ripped through them.
I walk out of the plane, the drizzle of rain falling on me, and see my parents at the chain-link fence waiting for me. My mother waves with a big smile, and my father has his arm around her. I grab my suitcase, wheeling it to them. The sound of sirens in the distance is foreign to me now.
“Welcome home,” my mother greets me when I step out, and she can hug me. “Wow, I expected you to come back all skinny and your face sunken with black bags underneath your eyes, but you came back glowing.”
“Um…” I try to take in what she is saying. “Thanks, I guess.”
“What your mother is trying to say, and failing miserably at, is we are happy you are home.” He grabs me in his arms, and I look up at him, smiling tightly.
“It’s good to be home,” I lie to them because it’s not good to be home. I don’t want to be here. I want to be at Gabriel’s house, sitting on his couch, wrapped in his arms.
“Let’s get out of the rain,” my father urges, grabbing my suitcase and making his way over to his SUV. My mother gets in the front while I get in the back, waiting for my father. “It’s going to come down hard soon.” He looks up at the sky, and I have to wonder if the sky is a mirror of what I’m feeling inside.
We pull up to the brownstone my family owns, and I get out, the rain now coming down hard. “Go inside, I’ll get your things,” my father says to us. My mother and I run up the steps to the front door, where she unlocks it and steps in, followed by myself and my father, who is dripping wet.
“Are you sure you want to stay here?” my mother asks when she slides out of her jacket. “You could stay with us for a few weeks.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Time to get back to normal. Or whatever my new normal is.” I kick off my sneakers before going into the house.
I see it exactly like it always is. “We put all your stuff in storage, but if you want, we can go and get some things this week so you can make this space yours.”
“We’ll see,” I reply, the sounds of honking horns blare from outside. “It’s so loud.” I walk to the back of the house, where the kitchen is, opening the refrigerator and grabbing a water bottle. “Do you guys want to stay for dinner?”
“No,” my mother says, “we are going to get out of your hair so you get yourself unpacked.”
I nod at them as my father takes my suitcase up to the bedroom. “We did put a couple of your throw covers in the living room and on your bed,” she mentions as I walk her to the front door. “You have a walk-through scheduled tomorrow at the house at ten a.m. Daniel’s broker will be there to ensure you don’t destroy anything.” I snort.
“If I wanted to destroy anything, I would have done it when I caught him balls deep in his coworker.” The minute the words are out, I catch my mammoth mistake.
“What?” my father yells from behind me at the same time my mother shrieks, and I close my eyes and ball my hands into fists for fucking up the way I did. My eyes go big but not as big as my mother’s. “Excuse me?” he retorts, and I see my mother freaking out internally about it and wanting to say all the things. We both know that if one of them has to be contained, it has to be my father at this point. We both look at each other thinking about what to say, when I turn and look at him. “What did you just say?”
“I—” I stop talking. “What did you hear?” I ask him, thinking maybe he didn’t hear what I think he heard, or maybe he heard a bit of it and not all of it.
“He cheated on you?” he asks me in bewilderment.
“Okay, so you heard the whole thing.” I wring my hands, and he looks like he’s about to come out of his skin. “Don’t freak out and call in reinforcements.” I hold up both hands, turning to my mother also. “You either.” She rolls her eyes. “But yes, he cheated on me.”
“That motherfucker,” she hisses out. “That pencil-dick motherfucker.” I roll my lips to stop from laughing at her saying that to my father, who is quiet—too quiet.
My father says quietly and almost deadly, “That’s why you called off the wedding.” His tone is scary.
“Obviously, that’s why she called off the wedding!” she shouts. “You should have burned the whole house down.”
“Dear God.” I put my hand to my head, and it’s the wrong thing to do because I get a whiff of Gabriel, which makes me want to feel his arms around me. “Can we just”—I look at both of them—“not say anything about this to anyone?”
“They know?” my mother asks. “Your cousins who were at the house with you, they know.” She glares at me.
“They do, and I swore them to secrecy, so there’s that.” I turn to my father. “It’s over now. It’s in the past, and I’m moving on. I’ve moved on.”
“If I see him—” my father threatens.
“If you see him, you don’t give him the time of day. He’s not worth your time, and he’s not worth your time.” I point at my mother, who glares at me. “And he’s not worth my time.”
“I’m not as mature as you,” my mother replies, shrugging. “Sorry, not sorry. If I see his face, he’s going to know exactly what I think of him.”
“Zoe,” my father says her name, and she turns her glare to him.
“Don’t you Zoe me, Viktor Petrov.” She spits out his full name, and we share a look as she points at my father. “This, this calmness is all you.” Her hands fly through the air. “But if she had a bit of me in her?—”
