Page 8 of Tech Bros

Work. Software. Deacon.

So, yeah. I want to see my roommate before he disappears for the weekend, and Isaac clearly needs to find a man who’s worth all he’s got on offer.

On the train home, I give my mom the weekly phone call she expects from me. I know she’d prefer daily, but once I finished grad school, I told myself to start cutting the umbilical cord.

She answers the phone crying.

Oh God. “What’s wrong?”

She sniffles, and I go through my mental rolodex as to what the cause could be. I check the time—I’m not late with my call. I rerun our conversation from last week when I told her about the latest bug in my scheduling software, and she told me she was sure I would figure it out because I’m so smart. Frowning, I look at the date on my watch.Ah.

“Hey,” I say gently. “Take a deep breath. Talk to me.”

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out. “It just caught me all of a sudden. I was watching the news, and there was a commercial about some drug for psoriasis, and it had a beautiful bride in a sleeveless gown, and I just?—”

“I get it, Mom.”

“I promise I haven’t been like this all day.”

This would have been my parents’ twenty-eighth anniversary. She never remarried. I don’t know what my father broke in her, but I can only imagine it’s something similar to what Hunter broke in me. I don’t mourn my relationship with Hunter the way she mourns the loss of her marriage, though. But, like her, I haven’t tried to find anything to replace it, either.

“I have plans with the girls tonight and everything,” she’s saying.

I give her some encouragement. “Good. That’s perfect. Did you get your nails done or anything?”

“I did.” She sniffs again and seems to get herself under control. My shoulders relax out of the stiff hold I had on them since she picked up the call. “A facial, too.”

“Amazing,” I say.

“Oh, and I meant to ask if you have plans for Easter weekend.”

“Easter?” It’s February. “Is it early this year?”

“April eighth.”

“Uh, no. Nope. No plans.”

“I’d love for you to spend the weekend. Do you think you can manage it?”

I bite my lip and wince. It’s still sore. “Let me look when I get home, and I’ll let you know.”

“Has your father already asked?”

“No,” I say quickly.

“Then, what do you have to check? Surely your boss doesn’t expect people to work over Easter weekend.”

“No…”

“Then it’s settled. You’ll spend it with me.”

“Of course.” I nod to myself and make the mental note even as I begin to prepare the inevitable conversation I’ll need to have with my father to explain why I can’t see him that weekend and try to come up with a compromise.

“Perfect,” she exhales.

Being an only child of divorced parents is a little like being constantly stretched on a rack with the purpose of being split in half. Their guilt over divorcing when I was five manifested itself into aggressive love and possessiveness from both ends, both of them wanting to reassure me it wasn’t my fault, and they loved me no matter what.

One would assume since I’m now an adult and custody is no longer an issue, this “pick me” pressure would have let up some, but old habits die hard. No one values my time and my presence quite like my mom and dad do. It’s just that I can’t be in two places at once, and they can’t be in the same place together. The balancing act is fucking exhausting.