together. And yeah, they fought a lot, I guess, but they’ve always fought a lot. Arguing was just, like, what they did for recreation. It didn’t mean anything; it wasn’t scary. At least, not to me, it wasn’t.” She shook her head. “Anyway, the three of us have been going to this potluck together every year since I was five, but this time my dad had to work late doing something for Hal, so the plan was for my mom and me to go, and he was going to meet us when he got done. And my mom was in this terrible mood about the whole thing. I didn’t know this then, but she thought he was having an affair—which he was, I’m pretty sure, with Lisa—on top of which she’s always hated having to socialize with other parents.”
“I mean, fair,” Colby joked with a gentle grin. “Other people’s parents are awful.”
“I mean, sure. Yes.” Meg tucked her hair behind her ears. “So whatever, she and I are at the thing together, but mostly I was actually with my friends, and Mason and I had just started dating, and we were having fun, and I guess I just didn’t notice how much she was drinking.”
Just like that, Colby wasn’t smiling anymore. “Uh-oh.”
Meg nodded. “Yeah.” She’d never told anyone this story before; it occurred to her all at once that she hadn’t even thought about it in ages, had in fact kind of forced herself to forget it, and that telling Colby now was a kind of remembering she suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to do. Still, she made herself keep going. “Anyway, by the time I finally realized what was going on, she was totally off her ass. And I was trying to keep anybody from noticing, and trying to convince her that we should go home, when my dad showed up.” She tugged at her bottom lip. “And I was super relieved to see him—one, because he’s my dad, and two, because I thought he was going to handle it.”
“But he didn’t?”
Meg shook her head. “He and my mom wound up immediately getting into this giant screaming fight.”
Colby grimaced. “About what?”
“Him being late, I guess? Her being drunk? Does it matter?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I guess not.”
“The two of them just lost it in front of everybody,” Meg told him, shame spreading like a rash all over her body at the memory, hot and itchy. “Yelling, calling each other names, hurling these awful accusations back and forth. And I was begging them to be quiet, and all these little grade school kids were staring at them, and everybody else—my friends, my friends’ parents, every teacher I’ve ever had—was trying to act like they didn’t notice.” She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again. “Finally, the principal had to ask them to take it off school grounds.”
“Woof.” Colby rubbed a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“What did Emily say?”
“We never talked about it,” Meg admitted.
“Wait, seriously?” Colby’s eyes were two full moons. “Why not?”
“She never brought it up,” she said with a shrug. “And, like, I definitely wasn’t going to. And then my parents decided to split up over the holidays, and she was really great to me while that was happening.” Meg blew a breath out. “But it was just, like . . . all of a sudden I realized how I must look to everybody else, you know? How my family must look. That what I thought was normal, all that fighting . . . wasn’t.”
She lifted her face to look at him. “I told myself that I was going to do everything I could never to be part of another scene like that.” She heard the challenge in her own voice. “And so far I haven’t been.”
Colby raised his eyebrows. “Sounds exhausting.”
“Sometimes.” Meg smiled. “Lucky for me, I get to blow off steam arguing with you.”
“You do, huh?”
“Uh-huh.” She sighed again, then heaved herself up. They’d been gone too long already, and disappearing was almost as noticeable as causing a fuss. “I like Lisa, for the record,” she clarified as they headed back around the corner, tucking her hair behind her ears and fanning her face a little bit so that nobody inside would be able to tell she’d been crying. “I mean, like is the wrong word, maybe. She’s a huge nerd—”
“She’s a huge nerd,” Colby agreed with a grin.
Meg laughed. “But the point is, she’s not a wicked witch or anything. So what’s my problem?”