Page 52

Eden

“ W hat did you tell him?” Mari demands, crouching to love up Milo, who treats her to all the nose licking and face panting.

“I didn’t tell him to leave me alone,” I admit.

“I couldn’t. I opened my mouth and closed it.

Like a fish. But I couldn’t get the words out.

After a while he said, ‘Okay. I’m going to take that as good news for now.

See you around?’ and then he kind of laughed and said, ‘I actually do have to leave the store. But just the store, okay? I’m still here. ’ And he went out.”

“Aw,” she says.

I don’t admit how much I’d wanted to grab his arm and keep him here—in the store—a few minutes more. But also how much I wanted to tell him to take his certainty and his commitment and shove them, because I’d seen them before, and they hadn’t done me any good at all.

“I wish I’d told him to leave me alone,” I say.

Milo tilts his shaggy head, resting it against my leg.

“Do you really?”

I bite my lip. “No. But I wish I’d wanted to tell him to. I wish I didn’t… like him so much.”

I wish I didn’t love him.

Mari tilts her head, considering. “This reminds me of how it was with Kane and me,” she says.

“I was pregnant with Zara, and I didn’t know whether I should raise her, because I didn’t feel like I had any idea how to be a good mom.

My own mom had been such a disaster, and I was a hot mess.

But I had good people in my life, and they were all telling me, basically, that I didn’t have to figure out the rest of my life.

I just had to figure out that day, and if I stayed that day, and the next day, at some point it would start to make more sense. ”

“And did it?”

She nods. “Yeah. One day I realized I’d stayed more than a year and that it had been months since I’d thought about leaving.”

“But I’m not the one who needs to stay,” I say. “He’s the one?—”

She nods. “But he’s asking you to want him to, right?

He’s telling you he’ll leave you alone if you want him to, but what he really wants is for you to want him to stay.

So that’s the question you get to ask each day.

Do I want him to stay today? Should I tell him to leave me alone?

Today it seems like you didn’t want to tell him to.

Maybe tomorrow you won’t want to, either.

Or maybe you will, and that’s okay, too.

But I think it’s pretty cool that he recognizes that you’ve been hurt badly enough that the only thing that will help is seeing him stay and stay and stay. ”

“What if he can’t stay…forever?” I ask.

Mari takes a deep breath and sighs it out.

“Yeah, I don’t like that one, either,” she says.

“I mean, nothing is forever. We all leave this world eventually, and sometimes we leave people we don’t want to leave behind.

But that’s not a good reason not to live, right?

Being human is a giant fuck you to everything that can go wrong.

Putting one foot in front of the other and just showing up is so hugely brave.

And don’t get me wrong. It’s hard to be brave when shitty things have happened to you.

When the people who were supposed to love you sucked at it.

But the choice is, basically, shrink or grow.

You can stay safe, but it will always make you smaller.

Or you can be brave and get bigger. Let in more people and more light, and yeah, it’ll hurt sometimes, but sometimes it’ll be the best thing you ever did. ”

I stare at her. And then, unexpectedly, I start to cry.

She puts her arms around me and holds me until I manage to stop. Milo shoves his face between us.

“You want to talk about it?” Mari asks.

I tell her about the book my mom didn’t make for me and the moment of stupid hope that I allowed myself before I figured it out.

“I’ve been there,” she says. “My mom is still pretty useless. I let her see the kids from time to time because I want to model forgiveness and generosity for them—but she and I will never have a real relationship again. It never stops hurting, but it’s a lot better now that I can be the kind of mom I wish I’d had. ”

“I like that,” I say. “I’m not sure if I ever want to be a mom or not, but I could still try to be the kind of person I wish she was. The kind who would show up for her daughter’s wedding and make her own damn book instead of having her assistant do it.”

Mari smiles. “I definitely think you’re that kind of person.”

“So I just…what? I just don’t tell him to leave me alone?”

“Yeah,” she says. “And maybe someday you’ll feel like you can tell him you want him to stay—but there’s no rush.”

“And in the meantime? What do I do ?”

Mari tilts her head. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” I admit.

She smiles at that. “When I don’t know what to do, I don’t do anything at all.”

“That sounds…hard.”

“Yeah, it can be.”

“Like you do literally nothing?”

“I let things happen.”

“That sounds boring.”

She shakes her head. “The amazing truth is…it never is.”