and I can’t find a way to be friends. Or if not friends, then at least something that looks close enough from a distance, because the alternative would be some awful feeling of incompleteness every time the three of us are in a room together.
I’ve never needed a father. Mom was more than enough, and if you asked her she would say the same thing—that I was enough for her, too. Yet I feel like there’s this programed patriarchal voice buried deep inside her, maybe the remnants of the society that raised her, saying she’s a failure as a mother and a woman if she doesn’t have a man in her life or can’t give her only daughter a male role model.
“Do you like him?” I ask awkwardly. “Because really, that’s more important. I saw no glaring flaws in him other than maybe don’t let him near an oven again.”
“I do like him,” she confesses. “I think he was nervous last night. Chad’s a private guy. He likes simple things and not a lot of fuss. I think getting you two girls together for the first time, having all of us together, was a lot of pressure for everyone. He was worried you might hate him.”
“I don’t hate him. And I’m sure he and I will find a way to get along if, you know, this is going to be a thing.”
Although I suppose it already is a thing. Wasn’t that the point of last night? Why we all nearly burned to death for a pot roast or whatever that blackened mess was?
My mother has gone and gotten herself into a thing with a Chad. A hockey Chad, to boot. What the fuck is it with us and hockey?
Did my dad play hockey? Isn’t it also a huge sport in Russia?
Has this been festering in my DNA this whole time like a dormant virus?
Am I going to be one of those fucking clichés who grows up to marry her dad?
Did I just insinuate I’d marry Conor?
Fuck.
“How will it work long term, though?” I ask. “I mean, if long term is where this is headed. Are you going to keep commuting or—”
“We haven’t discussed that,” she cuts in. “At this point it isn’t—”
It’s my turn to interrupt. “Because you realize you can’t leave MIT, right? For a man. I don’t want to be a snob or a bitch or whatever you want to call it, and I’m not trying to be mean. But you’re not leaving MIT for him, okay?”
“Taylor.”
“Mom.”
A flicker of panic tears through me, and I realize that maybe this new development is getting to me more than I’ve been willing to admit. It’s not like MIT and Briar are that far apart. But for a moment there, I imagined Mom selling our house, my childhood home, and—another jolt of dread hits me. Yeah, I definitely haven’t quite processed everything yet.
“Taylor. I need you to know something,” she says firmly. “You will always come first.”
“Yeah.”
“Always. You’re my daughter. My only child. We’ve been a team your whole life, and that’s not going to change. I’m still here for you above anything else. And anyone else. If you decide—”
“I’m not going to tell you to stop seeing him,” I blurt out, because I can see where she’s going with this.
“No, I know—”
“I want you to be happy.”
“I know. I’m just saying, if it came to it, I’m always going to pick my daughter over anything and anyone. It’s not even a question. You know that, right?”
But there were times she didn’t, and we both know it.
There were times when she was competing for tenure and promotions, writing books and touring campuses for speaking engagements. When she spent all day on campus then all night locked away in her office or hopping from one plane to another. Forgetting what time zone she was in and waking me up in the middle of the night to call me.
There were times when I wondered if I’d already lost her and that’s just how it was supposed to be: your parents get you walking and talking and able to heat up your own Hot Pockets, and then they get to go back to living their own lives while you were supposed to start creating your own. I thought I wasn’t supposed to need my mom anymore, and I started taking care of myself.
But then it would change. Get better. She would realize we hadn’t had dinner together in months; I’d realize that I’d stopped