Page 30 of Never Forget

“They should be proud,” Scott says quietly. “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t be.”

“The music thing… It’s a long story.”

Scott settles back against the railing and opens his hands. “We’ve got time.”

Maybe I should shut the conversation down. Change the subject. Tell him to mind his own business. I feel like I’ve talked enough for today.

Instead, I hear myself open up.

“My dad followed the path the way he was supposed to until spring break during his last year of grad school. He and his school friends went to Puerto Rico for some kind of boring conference, but they ended up at a music festival. That’s where he met my mom…”

I tell him everything. How my father was immediately captivated by my mother, who was a singer in a band playing at the festival, and how they spent that entire week together making plans for the future. My father went back to the States to continue his schooling, but they planned for my mother to visit over the summer to see if she’d like to move there with him. They spoke on the phone, long distance, every day, which drove my frugal grandparents mad. A few weeks after he got home from the trip, my mother found out she was pregnant. Instead of being scared or upset, he was happy. Over the moon, even. He’d decided on the first night he met Elena Nazario that she was it for him. He was just waiting for the right moment to figure out how to make it all happen.

“Nazario… that’s where you got your name?”

“Yeah, I got her last name as my first, and my father’s first name, Marcus, as a middle name.”

“I like it.”

“My grandparents didn’t.”

My grandparents didn’t approve of any of it. Most especially my mother. Not only because she was just some girl their son had met and gotten pregnant. But because they felt she distracted their son from his path to greatness or something. And she wasn’t like them. She wasn’t buttoned up and socially conscious. She was a free spirit who didn’t care what anyone thought.

“Must have been genetic.”

I can’t help but smile at that.

“She was always playing music or singing. I don’t have a lot of memories of them, but the ones I do have are of them dancing and singing together.”

“What happened to them?” Scott asks softly.

“When I was five, they went on a trip back to Puerto Rico for a music festival. My mom was performing with her old band for some kind of reunion, they’d been locally popular but not super famous or anything. That night after the festival, their van was hit head on by an eighteen-wheeler. No one survived.”

“Jesus,” Scott whispers. “That’s terrible.”

I clear my throat, nodding. “I think my grandparents blame my mother for taking their son away. And I remind them of her. I look like her, for one. And then when I decided to be a musician, they treated it like it was some kind of sickness I’d inherited from her.” I huff out a long breath. “I don’t think it matters how successful I am or how successful I become. I’ve always been too much like her, and it hurts them. I’m a living, breathing reminder of what they lost. And I couldn’t replace him.”

Scott moves in front of me and drops to one knee, pain filling his eyes. “That’s not fair. But for the record, I think you’re fucking amazing, and I’m not the only one. Your mother and father would be proud, Naz. I know they would. It wasn’t your mother’s fault that bad things happened, and it’s not your fault you remind them of her. If anything, they should focus on the fact that she made their son so happy. But pain and grief make people do stupid shit.”

I nod, swallowing down a lump in my throat. My eyes sting. The air feels heavy. I fidget with the bottle in my hand.

Scott takes mercy on me and doesn’t try to make me talk about it any more, instead taking the bottle from my hand and taking it inside to the recycling.

I can’t believe I unloaded on him like that. It’s not something I talk about. Even Jesse only knows half the story. There’s something oddly cleansing about getting it off my chest like that.

We don’t talk much as we head inside and get ready for bed. When I bring some extra blankets and a pillow out and set it on the couch, I shake my head at the likelihood Scott will be able to stretch out his too-big body on the two-seater sofa.

“Well, good luck getting comfortable. If you insist on staying after spending a night on that thing, maybe tomorrow you can go out and find a tent and sleep in the yard instead.”

Scott, of course, takes my bullshit in stride and promises me he’ll be just fine. I stand there for a long moment, staring at the couch and trying to figure out how he’s going to sleep on that thing. Then Scott winks at me from the kitchen where he’s brushing his teeth at the kitchen sink, and I leave him to it.

What feels like hours later, I’m wide awake and staring at the ceiling, tossing and turning, making shapes out of shadows and trying not to think about whether Scott is too uncomfortable.

He’s just on the other side of the wall. Mere feet away.

I suppose I could have let him sleep in here. This bed is only a queen, but it’s technically big enough, if only I could stand sleeping next to anyone. Especially a big, clingy bear like Scott. We’d basically have to sleep on top of one another to make it work.

No. I won’t give in. I do not negotiate with terrorists, especially ones who know exactly how to play me. Walking around here in his slutty pajama shorts and no fucking shirt, still damp from the shower. What a joke. Did he really think that shit would work on me? I’m fucking smarter than this.