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Nothing for me to do but to go.
***
“Are you frigging kidding me? You called me back to town for this?” I point a finger at my mom who’s sitting, perfectly healthy and slightly tipsy, on her bed, and wish my finger was a laser saber like Luke Skywalker’s. “You lied to me about being sick, so you could rant about some random guy who ditched you?”
“It wasn’t some random guy”, she says in a voice husky from too many cigarettes. “It was Josh. I told you about Josh.”
“No, as a matter of fact, you haven’t. And it wouldn’t matter if you did.”
“Josh is different, baby. He cares about me.”
“I thought he ditched you. Hello?”
“He was upset.”
“And why might that be, I wonder?”
“Because he saw me kissing another guy.”
My sarcastic smartass comment dies on my tongue. “You what?”
“I kissed, like you said, a random guy at the club, and Josh saw us. That kiss… it didn’t mean anything. I don’t understand why Josh took it so badly.”
Oh God. My mom and I, we’re the same. This is tragic. And horrifying.
“Mom, of course this Josh got upset, if he thought you were together and you went off kissing another man. Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he’s a man,” my mom wails, and dear God and baby Jesus, when will she get over this nonsense?
“Men have feelings, mom. When will that get through that thick skull of yours?”
“That’s nonsense, Cassie. If your dad could just walk away, what more proof do you need to believe me?”
“When are we going to stop taking my dad as the proof for anything? He was one man, Mom. Just one. That doesn’t make him prime example of manhood any more than your actions make you a model of motherhood.”
Oh boy. I said it. I hadn’t meant to.
Holy crap.
Mom is staring hard at me, her eyes so like mine, her hair a bleached white-blond. She’s my mirror, an old and cracked reflection. Who I could be in the future if I follow her path.
“Is this because of that boy you’re obsessing over?”
“I’m not obsessing,” I say, because she’s right, I am.
Smitten. Head over heels.
In love.
“Has he told you he loves you?” She swings her bare legs over the side of the bed. She’s dressed in a fluffy pink robe, a lacy nightie underneath, sexier than anything I’ve ever worn. “Has he, huh?”
“No.”
“See?”
“So what? Maybe he’s not ready yet.”
“Have you told him you love him?”
