I opened my mouth to tell her she wasn’t wrong, and more (something I had to chew on), Mia’s fatal mistake was giving up too.
But Mom wasn’t done speaking.
“Like I said, I know my girl. So I know my girl’s a fighter. Now, don’t you make the mistake of doin’ somethin’ you’re tellin’ yourself is right, givin’ him space and time to sort his own self out, when you know it’s wrong. Garrett Merrick didn’t sit at my table tonight, honey. And you need not to waste any time findin’ out what took him away from that table, which meant he took himself away from you.”
“There’s a lot goin’ on that you don’t know, Mom,” I shared.
I shared it and it was lame.
“I know this,” she returned instantly. “I know he knows he sat at my table as the man who brought my two babies in his truck to my home to eat my food with the possibility he’d be at that table a lot in future. He knows me, but he knows what tonight meant. So he would know not to mess that up, no matter what’s goin’ on.”
“He was just quiet,” I told her.
“He wasn’t quiet, Cheryl. Half the time he wasn’t even here.”
She was right and she was also telling me not to fuck this up.
I was just so good at fucking things up, I didn’t know another way to be.
And the biggest part about that was, Merry’s retreat scared the shit out of me.
Mia Merrick didn’t have it in her to fight for her man and I had no problem pointing that out.
Faced with just a taste of what she’d had shoved down her throat, the acid of it burned.
And if I let my head go there, the scary it was would be terrifying.
“Talk to him,” Mom urged on a whisper. “I’ll tell you this, baby girl, that happened tonight at my table and you have to deal. Because that man’s got a woman in his life now, a woman with a son. And he’s lookin’ for a house. And that says other things. I’m not tellin’ you to get things straight with him because I want my girl’s hooks in a good man. I’m tellin’ you to get things straight for him because I know what he’s got with you. I know what my grandbaby will give him. I know that man is far from stupid. I know he deserves good in his life. And I know he’ll kick his own behind and not bounce back from that, he lets you slip through his fingers.”
I loved my mom. I’d fucked her over like I’d fucked a lot of shit in my life.
But I loved her because I did all that and she still said what she just said, which meant she loved the hell out of me.
I looked into her eyes. Then I nodded.
After that, I headed to the table to get the dishes.
It was a school night, so even though we had some time to visit after the dishes were done, we didn’t have a lot.
And through that time, Merry again gave Ethan what he needed but only what he had to give to Mom and me.
This meant she gave me a telling look after the hug we exchanged before we left. But she pretended like it was all good with the warm hugs and good-byes she gave Merry and Ethan.
Ethan chattered on the way home. Ethan chattered when we got home. And Ethan didn’t hide his disappointment when I shared it was bedtime.
He didn’t fight me, though, because it actually wasn’t bedtime. It was half an hour after bedtime, so he knew he’d already gotten a reprieve.
What freaked me (further) was that Merry took Ethan’s bedtime as his opportunity to leave rather than what we did last night after Ethan went to bed—taking time, being together, whispering to each other, laughing quiet so we wouldn’t wake my kid up, and making out.
He gave Ethan another man-to-man handshake.
He gave me a distracted kiss on the cheek.
Then he took off.
The only good part about this was that my son was growing up and there wasn’t a lot he didn’t notice. But he wasn’t grown up enough to know that a man like Merry didn’t kiss his woman good night like that.
Obviously, I didn’t educate him.
I got him to bed and then I sat on my couch with my phone in my hand.
I started a dozen texts.
I couldn’t figure out which words to use, so I erased everything.
I looked at the clock, then I turned my head and looked at the wall, well beyond which was the house that Tilly lived in.
And Tilly was a late-night talk show girl.
“Started the habit with Johnny Carson, honey, a habit that’s hard to break,” she’d told me.
Before I could talk myself out of it, which would mean talking myself into fucking things up with Merry, I pulled my boots back on, grabbed my purse, my jacket, and my keys, and headed out.
Tilly’s house was quiet and dark except for the flickering light of a TV coming from her curtains.
I knocked not too loud but also called out, “Tilly, it’s Cher.”
The door opened almost immediately and I looked down at the round woman with curly hair that was an equal mix of black and steel, who had big blue eyes in a face as round as her body.
“Is everything okay, Cher?”
“Listen, I know this is askin’ a lot, but I need to ask if you’d go over and stay with Ethan. He’s sleepin’, but I…” Shit, shit, fuck, fuck, fuck. “I don’t know if you heard, but I’m seein’ Garrett Merrick and there are some important things I gotta talk about with him. We couldn’t do that with Ethan around, and Merry went home before we got to it. It’s not stuff you can talk about over the phone either. I know this is selfish, but I can’t sleep, Till. I gotta go over to Merry’s and talk things out.”