Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 132951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
She widens her eyes and waits.
“I mean, obviously I’m jealous. But I know there’s nothing going on between them.” Mildred sleeps beside me every night. I’m the only man who gets to touch her, kiss her, love her. But I’ve never said those words. “Their friendship is easy. They’re very close.”
“She’s an easy person to love,” Meems says.
“She is,” I agree. I want to claim her forever. To make her love me back. “But I’m not.”
“That’s not true,” she argues.
“My father hates me.”
She sighs, her expression softening as she sets her fork on the edge of her plate. “He doesn’t understand you. Your father is very much like your grandfather. His entire existence is a business transaction.”
“But Pops loved you,” I point out. How am I any different when my own marriage is based on a contract?
“He did, but that took time. And unfortunately for your father, I was the only person your grandfather was soft for. You can’t escape genetics, but you also have pieces of me and your mother. You have kindness and compassion.”
I don’t see these things about myself. I’m not selfless. “Mother lets my father walk all over her. My sisters do the same with their husbands.”
Meems sighs. “I hoped that Courtney would soften your father the way I did your grandfather. But instead of softening him, he hardened her. Your mother is too conditioned to be what everyone else wants. You played your part, but you never stepped in line for either of them.” She reaches out to squeeze my hand. “It isn’t hate they feel. It’s frustration, confusion, fear. The ultimate failure as a parent is being unable to see your children for who they are. It isn’t your fault they don’t understand you.”
Growing up, they always wanted me to be more like so-and-so’s son. After my sisters married, they wanted me to be more like Julian and Bryson.
And now here I am, still defiant, still a disappointment, still seeking acceptance where there is none. “What if I don’t know how to love any better than my father?” I feel like I’m running toward a cliff, and what lies at the bottom is an unknown that could ruin me.
Because I’m falling. I’ve fallen already. And I’m afraid of the landing.
Meems reaches across the table and takes my hand. “You love me.”
“It’s a different kind of love.”
Meems is the only person who has accepted me for who I am and doesn’t put her own aspirations on me. Well, Mildred doesn’t push me to be something else, but I don’t know if that’s because our relationship is transactional. Just like my mother is bound to my father for the good of her family, Mildred is bound to me for the good of hers.
But when we’re alone at night, it doesn’t feel transactional. And it didn’t feel that way when we were out with our friends last week. She seemed genuinely happy—not just with them, but with me, too. For the first time in my life, I feel like I fit somewhere, and it’s all because of her. She’s shown me how to make that happen. But if I lose her, then what?
“Different yes, but still valid. All love is important,” Meems says. “You also love Mildred.”
I nod. “I do.”
“And she feels the same way.”
I focus on my plate. Chemistry is not the same as love. “What if I can’t be a better man than my father?” Does Mildred soften me? Am I hardening her?
“You already are a better man. You didn’t marry Dred because she was going to further your career ambitions.”
But I didn’t marry her because I loved her at the time either. I do now, but at the beginning she was the answer to my problem. I used her softness and need against her. I could have just given her the money. She could have posed as my girlfriend for the next year, and wouldn’t that have made Meems happy, too?
Sitting beside her at Callie’s hockey games, watching her love that little girl like she was family made it easy to propose that contract. She came from nothing, had no one, and has managed to weave herself into the hearts of all these people without effort. Mildred is wholly loved by the people in her life. I wanted that same love for myself. Wanted to know what it felt like to be surrounded by friends who care deeply. And now I have it. I have her. “I worry that I don’t deserve the kind of family Mildred has created for herself.”
“My dear sweet boy.” Meems squeezes my hand. “Mildred isn’t the type of woman who would give her heart to someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
“I know.” The problem is, I took it under false pretenses, and I don’t know how to ask to hold it on my own.