“Don’t you think you’re going a little overboard?” Kristy blinked her eyes before fixing her gaze on me.
“Really?” My eyebrows shot to my hairline. “You think I’m going overboard?”
“I think you’re being irrational.” The words slipped from her lips, sounding calm and collected as they pierced me with their sting.
Hurt and a little pissed off, I demanded, “How the hell am I being irrational? No really, Kristy, explain this to me.”
“This is Dalton Thomas we’re talking about. The guy you’ve never stopped thinking or caring about for the last ten years. Hell, the guy you’d had a crush on for four years before that. To throw it all away, when he so clearly came here just for you, is not only irrational, it’s irresponsible.” She stared at me triumphantly when she finished, and I suddenly felt like I was witnessing closing arguments in a case I wasn’t aware I was a part of.
“You think I don’t know all of those things? You think they haven’t crossed my mind? I know what I’m throwing away—”
“Do you hear yourself? Throwing away!” she yelled at me as she cut me off. “You don’t throw people away, Cammie!”
I raised my voice to match hers. “I can’t do this with him! I can’t go through what my mom did. If anything happened to Dalton, I couldn’t live through that. Don’t you get it?”
“Don’t you?” She leveled me with a look of anguish. “Losing Dalton would gut you no matter what. Whether you were with him or not.”
“It would be worse if we were together. You know that’s true.”
“We should go see your mom,” Kristy suggested, and I bristled.
“My mom? Why?” I all but spat out at her.
“Because she’s the one who has the best perspective on this sort of situation.” Her eyes lit up as she moved to start getting changed out of her pajamas. “And if we don’t go see her now, you’ll stick with this insane decision of yours for way too long, and waste tons of time not being with Dalton when you could have been with him the whole time. Then you’ll be pissed about all the time you wasted, and I don’t want to deal with that.”
“You just have it all figured out, don’t you?” I asked, shaking my head.
“You know I do,” she said, her voice muffled as she pulled her top over her head.
I cocked an eyebrow at her. “You really think my mom will be on your side with this?”
“I’m not sure. But I definitely think you’re reacting defensively instead of thinking clearly. And I think your mom will agree with my assessment,” she said with a confident smile.
I gave her a snarling frown I didn’t really feel. “No way. You’re not going to like what she has to say.”
“I bet I will,” she said as she stuck her tongue out.
• • •
Pulling up to my old house overflowed my too-full emotional cup. My mom still lived in the same white house with blue shutters that I’d grown up in, on the same street where I learned how to ride a bike as my dad pretended to hold on to the seat while I begged him not to let me go.
I remembered looking behind me to see him halfway down the street as I lost my balance and crashed into a parked car . . .
“You okay, punkin’?” Dad had asked as he ran up to me, pulling my body and my bike up in one swift movement.
“I can’t believe you let go,” I’d said, trying not to cry as I glared up at him.
“You didn’t need me to hold on anymore.” He’d smiled and the warmth had melted my little heart. “You did it!” He’d sounded so proud, and it had filled me with joy that could only come from a parent’s words.
I ran my hand over the roughness of the stucco as Kristy and I stood at the front door, my fingers grazing across the familiar sharp edges. “Did you tell her we were coming?” I asked Kristy, worried that I hadn’t even warned my mom with a text message that we were stopping by.
“I told her,” she said as she led the way. Kristy opened the front door as if she lived there, walked in, and shouted for my mom.
Very little in the house had changed over the years, except for the new carpet my mom had put in two years ago. She finally replaced the worn-out blue with a lighter new sand-colored style. It looked really pretty, and complemented the various shades of brown paint on the walls.
“I’m out here, girls!” My mom’s voice filtered in from somewhere in the backyard, and like we did when we were younger, we both raced toward the sliding glass door, each of us trying to get to her first.
We stepped outside to find my mom kneeling in her flower garden, a hat covering her shoulder-length brown hair. She was pruning her roses, a job she tried to give me as a kid, but I always hated and complained about doing.
She pushed off her knees and smiled as she removed her gardening gloves. “Hi, girls.” She greeted us with open arms, and we both squeezed into her embrace. “I’m so glad to see you. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Kristy turned away. “This one needs your help.” She flicked a finger in my direction as my mother cocked a brow.
“Is that so?”
“She’s being foolish,” Kristy snapped, and I glared at her from behind my sunglasses, wishing she could see the holes I was burning into her.
“I am not!” I whined, suddenly feeling like a preteen all over again.