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Alana

I was staring at my phone like it had just grown legs and started walking.

I’d just told Liam I loved him. Not the casual ‘love’ that I said to people I knew well, but the weightier version. I. Love. You. And I’d told him over the phone. I had planned on saying it to his face the first time, but every time I went to say it, I chickened out. My brain was too conditioned to refrain from blurting it out to him and it hadn’t quite caught up with the fact that it was fine now.

Except, I guess, if I was on the phone with him trying to, once again, get his dad off his back about hockey and I wanted him to know that I was there for him. Then I could say it easily. Maybe he didn’t notice. Maybe he’d been focused on something else, like a shooting star, and hadn’t heard the way I signed off the call.

“Did you just tell Liam you loved him for the first time?”

Oh yeah, I was in the kitchen with my parents and Aaron around the table, pretending not to listen to me talk to Liam.

My dad had asked the question. Gently, like he was worried he was going to startle me.

“Uh, yeah, I kind of did. How could you tell?” I picked up a tea towel and took my tray of cookies out of the oven. Aaron had been bugging me since he got home to make peanut butter cookies. Now that it was my final night, I’d finally made them. They’d turned out perfect.

“Just the general air of alarm around you when you hung the phone up. Everything okay?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, everything is fine. Just not what I planned.”

“And did he say it back?” Mom sounded wary. I laughed softly.

“Oh, he’s already said it. A few times, actually. I just…couldn’t, I guess.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“Because I’m still that eighteen-year-old girl who can’t admit her feelings for him, and so she won’t let thirty-one-year-old me say it. Unless he’s next door and there are several walls between us and I don’t have to look directly at him, I guess,” I joked.

“He already knew. It’s probably why he wasn’t feeling insecure about the fact that you hadn’t said it back, which by the sound of things, he wasn’t. You’ve always been good at showing him that you love him. I’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it. You might have lied about the timeline of your reunion, but you can’t fake the kind of love that you two have for each other. We’re glad that you both managed to find your way back to each other,” Mom said.

My brain snagged on the word ‘fake’.

“What do you mean, lied?”

I looked at Aaron. He wouldn’t have told her, and I definitely hadn’t. The slight shake of his head confirmed that he had said nothing. Yet my parents were looking at me like they were in on the joke. Dad took a deep breath before he started speaking.

“Alana, we weren’t born yesterday. You didn’t mention that Liam had been to the bakery between the birthday party and you getting back here. You went into great detail about how annoying you found it when he transferred to Detroit because you were so sure that you were going to see him, so not mentioning when it happened didn’t seem like you. That and, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but photos of you two keep popping up on the internet. Now I know you don’t go outside much, but to be dating him for six weeks in the city that he retired in, and for there to be no sign of you in the background of a picture didn’t make sense. Not when you’ve been so clearly in them over the last ten days. I’m sorry that you felt like coming home was going to be so bad that you felt like you needed something to deflect from that. We care about you, that’s all. We want to know that you’re happy, not put you under an interrogation process.”

The three of them waited for me to say something.

“It wasn’t just to get you off my back. I mean I didn’t know what I was walking into because we’d only talked about it on the phone, and I figured maybe you’d want to talk about it more when we were face to face and I didn’t want that. It was kind of a big deal but everything I told you over the phone was all that I really had to say about it. I thought I wanted to marry Kai, but he asked, and I hesitated and, in my hesitation, I saw the answer and the answer was no.

“I mostly did it for him. He gave up his job. A job that was, in a lot of ways, also his life. And he gave it up for very valid reasons, but in doing so, he lost his girlfriend and whatever version of his future he thought he had with her. Then he was going to come home to a dad who did not agree with the career choice his son made. So, when he suggested we give them something else to talk about it, felt like the easiest yes I could give. And it was only really a lie for about two days because, in the lie, we found the truth. And the truth is that I love him. I’ve always loved him, and he loves me, and it feels good to be loved by him. He said something the other day about how we lived the lives we were meant to live and those lives let us back to each other and that’s that.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Alana, we had no intention of bringing Kai up again. I know it’s easy to say that now, but it’s the truth. Sometimes the answer just can’t be yes, and it is what it is. However, I can’t say that I am not thrilled about the development,” Mom said.

“Yeah, yeah, I know you’ve been wishing us together since we could write whole sentences or some shit like that,” I said teasingly.

“Yes, I can acknowledge that a small part of me had always hoped that you two would fall in love and live great, big lives by each other’s sides, but more than that, I just wanted you happy. And you were always happy with him. He was always your calm, and I think you might have been his. I understand why you ran away from your feelings for him when they changed. Big feelings can be terrifying, especially when they are about someone who is such a huge part of your life. So, I don’t think you made a bad choice when you went to Michigan. It made you happy at the time. And Kai made you happy. In different ways, he made you happy and that was good. We’re proud of you for knowing that marrying him wouldn’t keep making you happy. We know that it can’t have been easy, but when you know, you know.

“And you’ve been happy since you got back home. The kind of happy you were when you were younger. Except it’s different this time because you’re much more open to the idea of being in love with him and it’s everything we could want for you,” Mom continued.

“It feels good. It feels right,” I admitted. I couldn’t help but smile as I said it.

“Can he still get us tickets to games if he’s out of it?” Aaron, who had been surprisingly quiet throughout this, asked. I laughed.

"He mentioned something about one of the perks of dating him was getting access to tickets to hockey games, so yeah, probably.”

Although even if that wasn't the case, Liam would still try to find a way to get Aaron tickets to whatever game he wanted because he loved Aaron like he was his own brother and always wanted him to get what he wanted.

“Amazing. Keep him. I want forever access to games.”

“I haven’t even confirmed if it's possible yet and you’re already planning your future games.”

“Ally, everyone in this room knows that if you ask Liam for something, he will move heaven and earth to get it for you. So yeah, I like my odds with this one. I don’t want to go to Detroit a lot though because of work, so if he could get me tickets for games in and around this state, that would be great.”

“Enough, Aaron. Don’t get so ahead of yourself.” Mom playfully slapped Aaron’s shoulder and all conversation of Liam died down while we sat down for dinner.

In the quiet of my room after dinner, while reading a book with the hot chocolate that Dad had made, I remembered that I told Liam I loved him, and immediate panic rushed over me.

I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would bring it up. I wouldn’t blame him, either. But I still needed to buy myself a little bit of time before he made me confront my feelings face to face.

I quickly stripped off my leggings and sweater and slipped on his jersey. I didn’t know how much time it would give me, but it would be enough.

I took off my underwear as well, for good measure.