Page 99 of Kiss and Tell

“I’m home from a business trip for a couple of days before taking off for another few weeks. I thought it would be nice to have dinner before I go away again,” she said.

“I’d love that,” I told her. “It’s been a while since we’ve really talked.”

“It has.” She went silent for a moment. “Are you sure you’re okay, honey?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You sound different. Usually you’re so energetic and full of stories about work. And you never ignore your emails, not even that time when you had food poisoning. You were tapping on your phone even as you were lying on the bathroom floor after throwing up.”

“Things have just been…” I gripped the phone in my hand and wandered from the kitchen to flop onto the sofa. “Things have been hard.” I hugged a throw pillow to my chest and played with the frayed edge. “Mom, did you ever regret it?”

“Regret what, honey?”

“You’ve done so much in your career,” I started. “You’re so accomplished. But… did you ever regret spending so much time on work?”

There was a heavy silence.

“Are you asking about me?” she finally said. “Or are you asking for yourself?”

My fingers clamped down on my phone.

“Both,” I said.

She let out a sigh through her nose, the sound loud through the phone’s speakers.

“Why don’t we talk about this over dinner?” she suggested. “It’s been a while and I want to catch up with my daughter.”

“I want to catch up with you, too, Mom.”

I ran my hands over my blotchy face, knowing that I’d have to put on more makeup than usual to avoid looking ghastly in public. I’d spent so much time crying I was afraid my eyes would be permanently bloodshot.

I’d never cried this hard over anything in my life, and certainly not over a guy.

But Connor wasn’t just a guy. He was the man I was in love with.

And I had no idea how to deal with losing that.

Thirty-Two

When I walkedinto my favorite restaurant and saw my mom already sitting at a table, my heart lifted. Her long hair fell down her back in a sleek waterfall, the dark color close to mine but without the messy waves of frizz I was sometimes plagued with. Her perfectly manicured nails with French tips held the menu open as she scanned the options.

My mom always did that, spending long minutes perusing the menu, even though she always ended up ordering the same thing she always did.

“Reservations under Margaret Browning,” I told the hostess, who gestured for me to come in.

When my mom looked up and saw me approaching the table, a wide smile graced her lips and she stood with her arms out.

Her face was eerily familiar, so similar to the face I saw in the mirror every day, albeit with extra creases around the corners of her eyes. I hoped I aged as gracefully as my mom one day.

“Hi, honey,” she said as she pulled me into a hug. “I’m so glad to see you.”

The scent of her subtle perfume sent me back to my childhood, when I would run over and hug her legs as she came to pick me up from school.

“It’s really good to see you, too, Mom,” I said.

She held me at arms length, examining me. Concern lined her face.

“Are you still not feeling well?” she asked. “You look a little pale.”