your smile, and the way you carry yourself. You’re Ellen’s blood, but you’re Holly’s daughter.”
Tucker interrupts our moment, barking at a couple of squirrels that he chases up a tree, and we both lean back in our seats, drying our eyes again as we laugh at his failed attempts.
“Tell me about Rose and school. And how are things going with Matt?” Diane lifts her fork, cutting into her untouched breakfast, and I follow, not even minding that it’s gone cold.
“I’m going to end things with Matt tonight,” I tell her.
Diane blinks in rapid succession, and she stops chewing the bite of food in her mouth as she stares openly at me.
“I mean, we’ve kind of been broken up for a while. But I’m going to gain closure on it for both of us because I’ve met someone, and I want to go into things with him with a clean slate and no misunderstandings between Matt and me.”
Her lips curl. “You’ve met someone. Tell me about him.”
I set my fork down and wrap my hands around my coffee, telling her about Arlo, about his curse, and how he believed I was his good luck charm, which has us both laughing. I tell her about how he makes my coffee and understands the importance and significance of being there for the good and bad.
We talk about school and about how the play she’s working on is going and how much she’s dreading summer because she’s never liked the heat.
I help her wash up the dishes and pack away the leftovers, and then we talk more about my mom, and she tells me stories of when they were girls like she used to when I was little. These are more unfiltered, though, adding in things like boys and drinking and other topics she always avoided before.
I bask in the stories, imagining my mom drinking too many beers and dancing—stealing the attention of every guy in the bar they’d snuck into like Diane tells me. And though my heart aches, missing her fiercely—there’s a comfort in talking about her and allowing myself to remember her laughter and smile and all the details I push to the recesses of my mind because like Diane, they’ve always hurt so much that I’ve never known how to get past the pain to discover it was where I found comfort. Remembering her isn’t what hurts—forgetting her did.
“You know, if you want to come back to Texas next year after you graduate, you can always stay with me,” Diane says, folding her arms around me again. “You can stay here as long as you’d like.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do after next year,” I admit to her.
Diane looks surprised. “Really?”
I nod. “I might switch majors.”
This leaves Diane smiling and nodding. “You always were a storyteller.”
I shouldn’t be surprised that she managed to guess this right away. I’d shared my dream about writing from the time I was young, and few know me as well as Diane. Maybe the shock is that she knew this about me before I realized it for myself.
When I hug her good-bye, I cry again, but this time it’s in appreciation that she helped me sort through so many of the feelings and emotions that have been haunting me for weeks. “I love you,” I tell her.
Diane kisses my hairline. “I love you, too. Your mom is so proud of you. Remember that.”
I nod a couple of times, wiping at my cheeks as her words fill my heart.
The walk back to Sophia’s is hotter than the walk to Diane’s. The sun high in the sky, intense and unrelenting. I check my phone again and discover a text from Arlo that makes me stop in the middle of the sidewalk—sunburn be damned.
Arlo: I’m sorry I didn’t message you yesterday. Pax, Lincoln, and I got wasted and fell asleep like a bunch of novice balls.
Arlo: I hope you’re having a great time.
Selfishly, I wish he’d told me he missed me. That he couldn’t stop thinking of me, and it drove him to drink too much. That he thinks about kissing me and touching me like I’ve been obsessing over for the past twenty-four hours.
When I make it back to Sophia’s, only Carrie is home. Sophia had a class this morning and afternoon. “How was Diane? I haven’t seen her in so long.” Her words have me pausing, thinking about the dynamic and relationships here. Carrie and my mom would chat when one of them was