“Oh, stop,” she says, but she’s glowing. “I know you put on an act out there for the wedding, and I appreciate it, but you can be honest with me. How are you doing?”
I appreciate that she hasn’t judged me for lying on air to thousands of listeners. She must have known I had enough of it from every corner of the internet.
“I’m not okay,” I admit, running my fingers along the petals of a nearby calla lily. “But I’m trying to be.”
“And Dominic?”
“He’s back at PPR. As a researcher.” His apologies must really have been empty if he was okay staying on their payroll, working with Kent. The fact that he’s still there, siding with Kent over me, feels like a tremendous betrayal. If only my heart could realize it. “I think I got so caught up in the idea of the show that it didn’t matter that we were lying to people, that they were giving us money because they bought into the lie, and when you think about it that way, it seems . . . really shitty.”
“You wanted to make good radio,” she says simply. “You made an error in judgment. From the sound of it, Dominic made the same one.”
“It would all be fine if I could just stop loving him.”
“You know how many times I thought things would be so much simpler if I could stop loving your dad?” She shakes her head, and maybe it’s strange to bring him up on her wedding day, but this is the proof that he’s never gone. “All the years of therapy, lone
liness, grief . . . if I could flip a switch and just stop, it would have been easier, right?”
“That would have been awful,” I say. “Easier, sure, but still awful.”
Now I’m thinking back to all the times in my past relationships I said I love you too soon. I’m certain I meant it, but it didn’t feel anything like loving Dominic. I crave the smallest, simplest things: his rare dimple, the jokes about our age gap, his passion for cast-iron cookware. The way he felt in my bed, yes, but also the way he trusted me with his painful memories, and the way I trusted him with mine.
Maybe not so small and simple after all.
The quartet transitions to a cover of “September,” and more dancers rush onto the floor.
But my mother appears lost in thought. “You know, I used to be jealous of the two of you. You and Dan.”
“You what?” I say, positive I heard her wrong.
“It’s silly, isn’t it? Or at least, it sounds silly now. You and your dad had this thing you were both so in love with. You’d fully inherited his passion for it, and it was fun to watch the two of you, but . . . sometimes I wished, just a little bit, that you could have liked music, too.”
Oh. I had no idea my mother felt this way. It’s reality shattering to hear your parent confess something so . . . human.
“Mom,” I say quietly. “I—I’m sorry.”
She waves this away. “It’s not your fault! You liked what you liked. I couldn’t force it on you. You tried piano lessons, and you tried violin lessons, and you tried choir, and you just didn’t click with any of them. And that’s okay.”
She’s being generous. I was terrible, no rhythm and no patience. Music on the radio, especially the kind of music my mother listened to, didn’t excite me the way NPR did. And maybe I was the only nine-year-old geeking out over Car Talk, but I didn’t care.
“I loved that the two of you had that special bond,” my mother continues. “But you go into parenting hoping, maybe selfishly, that your kid will love the thing you love, and you can share that with them.”
“And I let you down.”
“No,” she says firmly. “Especially now, I’m so, so glad you had that time with him.”
I lean my head against her shoulder, and she combs her fingers through my hair until Phil tows her back onto the dance floor. I watch the couples as the sun dips low in the sky and the stars blink on, but I don’t feel like the odd one out, the third or fifth or fourteenth wheel. I’m not lonely, exactly. I don’t need someone next to me, and I’m not rushing to fill an emptiness. It’s that I want one person in particular, and it’s the person I don’t know how to forgive.
I used to think that without my dad, I’d never be whole again. But maybe that’s what we all are—halfway-broken people searching for things that will smooth our jagged edges.
35
Dominic eventually stops texting. I guess it confirms that whatever we had, it’s really over.
I don’t expect to miss it as much as I do, but the love lingers like a bruise, aching even when I’m not actively thinking about it. My past breakups never made me this miserable. Maybe it’s because I was forcing those guys to fill a space I thought needed to be filled, while Dominic slid into my life so naturally. A want, not a need.
Every now and then, Ruthie texts to check in. She’s still processing, but she says she wants to be there for me, wants to remain friends. I don’t think I could have forgiven myself if I’d torched that relationship, too.
I have enough savings to last me through January if I manage to avoid any major crises, but I’m not used to being idle. So I focus on my job search. If Dominic can be content working at Pacific Public Radio, then I can at least send out a few résumés. I don’t know what’s out there for a disgraced public radio host. I try a TV station, a few PR firms, a handful of companies looking for whatever the hell a content creator is. But I don’t get any bites. Maybe I’m unqualified, or maybe they’re googling me and don’t love what they find.