weather. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“It doesn’t stop the words in my head telling me I could have done more. I should have done more.”
I prop myself up on one elbow. “You don’t believe that.”
“Stassi, a mind in mourning is complicated. There’s guilt, resentment, anger, relief, and that’s all before you’re fully awake in the morning. I can tell myself it’s not my fault but it doesn’t stop the pain in my heart every time I think about your mom or even…Tessa.”
My heart races hearing his first wife’s name but I don’t know why. Maybe because he didn’t talk about her much and I feel like I’m getting an inside look to this part of his life he’s kept away from me until now.
“I don’t know much about your first wife…”
“We dated in college, got married right after we graduated. Not much to tell.”
“I mean…did you love her…more than you loved my mom? Was it weird when you started dating my mom?” I hold my breath as I prepare for his answer.
He squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t want to have this conversation, Stass.”
“Why? It’s not like she’ll ever know. I was just wondering.”
“I loved them both in different ways. With Tessa, everything was one hundred miles an hour. We were still partying hard every weekend. Staying up all night. Smoking. Drinking. We did this well into our thirties. Then I got tired, but she kept at it. It was hard to keep going to class to teach on Monday morning after I’d just come off a two day bender,” he explains.
“Sounds like you grew up and she didn’t.”
“I guess,” he sighs. “And then I met your mom and she was obviously so settled because she had you. But she was just so sure about everything. She’d just started interning at the hospital when we met. She was so positive and understanding. She was like a ray of sunshine in my darkest days. I was still so devastated over Tessa and she was just there. You were too young to notice but I swear she spent the first year of our relationship healing me.”
My mother in a nutshell: everyone came before her.
“Fuck, I can’t believe I’m telling you all of this.” He presses his hands to his face and scrubs his jaw. “I need to go to sleep.”
“Dominic, you can talk to me, you know. I am an adult.”
“That’s right,” he chuckles. “Eighteen. God, where does the time go?”
“No clue. It feels like just yesterday I was ten years old and I had the biggest crush on you.” My eyes, which were previously closed, fly open. Shit. “I mean before you met my mom.”
“Wait what?” He’s still on his back, but he moves to face me.
“Okay, don’t get all weird, but I had a crush on you when you moved here and started teaching at my elementary school, okay? Let’s not make it a thing. I was ten.”
He looks at me and then back at the ceiling. “I see.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. I rarely think about that. Obviously.” Sell it better than that, Stassia. He still doesn’t say anything and I turn over on my back and let out an indignant huff. “Stop being so weird,” I grumble.
“I’m just…high as hell, Stass.” I see the glazed look in his eyes; he’s fading fast underneath the strong weed. “Not being weird.”
“That doesn’t explain why you’re acting like this over me having a crush on you when I was far from legal. It’s not like…” I swallow, my tongue suddenly very dry and feeling super heavy in my mouth as I prepare to speak these particular words. “Like I have a crush on you now or something.” I roll my eyes like it’s the most absurd thing in the world. I say it as if even at this very moment, I don’t feel something slowly shifting inside of me. Something I thought I’d lain to rest the second my mother said ‘I do.’
I’d told myself I couldn’t have a crush on my mother’s husband.
And he was still my mother’s husband.
Right?
* * *
The feeling of someone pressed right up against me is the first thing I feel as I make my way out of unconsciousness. I’m vaguely aware of the sound of birds chirping outside of the window and the smell of coconut and lime that is oddly familiar. Still somewhat out of it, I reach for the smell, expecting to be hit with a wave of nostalgia as