bed, and the danger of looking me in the eye has passed.
Mom, softly: “Are you in love?”
“You don’t have to ask.”
“I want to know.”
I squirm in my seat. “I screwed everything up.”
“You did?” Her eyes get big. It’s cute.
“I tried to get him back. Sort of.” I trace a heart carved deep in the bench’s center slat. This is so weird. “But I don’t really know how. I think it’s too late.”
“Oh.” She sighs. “Honey.”
A cursor blinks in the conversation. She looks like she wants to give me advice, the way she gave Nat advice before Nat shaved half her head and stopped listening, but I know she can’t. Especially not here, with the big gold cross on the St. Matt’s spire looming above the trees. She’s probably doing the math: Give your gay son love advice = twelve and a half years in Purgatory.
There’s nothing much else to say. I reach in my back pocket, pluck out the rolled-up David Darras head shot. I push it across the table to her.
“He couldn’t sign the TV Guide, but I got this.”
She smiles a thank you—not because of the autograph, but because I’ve changed the subject.
“I forgot I asked you,” she says. Her glossy fingernails rake the rubber band off and the picture unrolls.
“He did sign it. It’s just kind of messy.”
“How was he?”
“Funny. Really nice.”
“Was he just as handsome in person?”
I nod. “Even more.”
She reaches across table and grabs my hand. She pretends she’s looking at the Darras photo, but really she’s looking right through it. A light breeze curls the corners of the photo and ruffles her pale yellow curls. In the distance, Father Mike and the kids are running through “His Banner Over Me Is Love.”
“Are you staying?” she says. “For the fair?”
“I can’t.”
She nods; I can tell she expected that. I watch her gaze shift to the crowded food tables and the jumble of raffle prizes. She’s scrawling one of her checklists in her head, thinking about all the stuff she has to do before the Funfair starts, and if I fast-forward the future I can see her and Dad here year after year, arranging decades of gelatin stars and angel eggs and repainting the same ten game booths until the two of them are finally old and sitting side by side in their blue canvas lawn chairs, counting fireworks together.
The sun’s starting to slip away. More volunteers are coming with stacks of raffle-ticket rolls, bags of game prizes. She’s still holding my hand. I let her, for a long time.
Then I’m like, “Save me an angel egg?”
I squeeze her hand twice.
“I’ll save you two,” she says, and then she lets go.
***
I’m already in the car by the time Father Mike realizes I’m leaving. I see him with his guitar as I ride the brakes past the Funfair field: strumming another song with the kids, a whole fresh flock to teach. He looks small and breakable, like one of those ceramic saint figurines Gram keeps on her windowsill.
If this were a hey_mamacita fic, I would have confronted him before I left. The dialogue: “Bring back any nice souvenirs?” “Yeah—a boyfriend.” That would’ve left him comically stewing, his face purple and steam shooting out of his ears. I remind myself he’s not a cartoon. He’s not even a bad guy. I don’t need him now, but I don’t need to hurt him, either.
He glances up, catches me idling in the car. He lifts a hand from the guitar strings and waves, like C’mon over, bud. Come back. I stick my hand out the open window and give him a gentle return wave. Goodbye.
I slip Cadmus and Sim out of my pockets and drop them both in the dashboard cupholder, their limbs tangled loosely together. Then I shift into drive and start rolling forward, down the winding road away from St. Matt’s.
Chapter Thirty-One
I’ve got a plan.
Home first, to shower and change my grubby travel clothes. Francie’s Florals next, for the biggest arrangement of sunflowers I can afford (which at this point isn’t much). Then the candy shop in the mall—do they have cinnamon jelly beans? I call them up while I’m whizzing past the DQ, my old high school, the pizza place where I worked last summer. They do.
I’m three stoplights from my street when the phone rings.
ABEL CALLING.
This was not part of the plan.
I white-knuckle it past the post office. Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus shoot plastic glares of judgment from the cupholder: Pick up, dumbass. My thumb