Chapter 24

On Sunday morning, while Conor’s out with the guys helping Coach Jensen get his kitchen in order, I do laundry and clean my own disaster of an apartment. It tends to be that the deeper into the semester it gets, the more my habitat starts to resemble the harried chaos shuffling around in my head.

When my phone rings, I drop the fitted sheet I’m struggling to fold, grinning to myself. I don’t even have to check the screen to know who it is. I knew this call was coming, and I knew it would happen this morning. Because my mother is the most predictable person on the planet and basically it went down like this: after driving back to Cambridge Saturday afternoon, she would’ve stayed up reading and grading papers with a glass of wine, then gotten up this morning to start her own laundry and vacuum, all the while rehearsing in her head how this conversation would go.

“Hey, Mom,” I say, answering the phone and plopping down on the couch.

She gets right to the point with a soft opening: “Well, that was some dinner.”

And I politely laugh in agreement and say, well, it wasn’t boring.

Then she agrees and says, good spring rolls, too. We’ll have to go back to that place.

So for two minutes we’re just stuck in a ping-pong match of platitudes about pad thai and plum wine until Mom works up the nerve to finally ask, “What did you think of Chad?”

How did this happen to us?

“He’s nice,” I reply. Because it’s the truth and reassuring enough. “He seems cool, I guess. And Conor says good things about him, so that’s something. How’s his hand?”

“Not too serious. It’ll heal in a few weeks.”

I hate this. Neither of us saying what we mean to say—that I don’t know how to like the guy my mother is dating, and that she, in turn, will be broken-hearted if Chad and I can’t find a way to be friends. Or if not friends, then at least something that looks close enough from a distance, because the alternative would be some awful feeling of incompleteness every time the three of us are in a room together.

I’ve never needed a father. Mom was more than enough, and if you asked her she would say the same thing—that I was enough for her, too. Yet I feel like there’s this programed patriarchal voice buried deep inside her, maybe the remnants of the society that raised her, saying she’s a failure as a mother and a woman if she doesn’t have a man in her life or can’t give her only daughter a male role model.

“Do you like him?” I ask awkwardly. “Because really, that’s more important. I saw no glaring flaws in him other than maybe don’t let him near an oven again.”

“I do like him,” she confesses. “I think he was nervous last night. Chad’s a private guy. He likes simple things and not a lot of fuss. I think getting you two girls together for the first time, having all of us together, was a lot of pressure for everyone. He was worried you might hate him.”

“I don’t hate him. And I’m sure he and I will find a way to get along if, you know, this is going to be a thing.”

Although I suppose it already is a thing. Wasn’t that the point of last night? Why we all nearly burned to death for a pot roast or whatever that blackened mess was?

My mother has gone and gotten herself into a thing with a Chad. A hockey Chad, to boot. What the fuck is it with us and hockey?

Did my dad play hockey? Isn’t it also a huge sport in Russia?

Has this been festering in my DNA this whole time like a dormant virus?

Am I going to be one of those fucking clichés who grows up to marry her dad?

Did I just insinuate I’d marry Conor?

Fuck.

“How will it work long term, though?” I ask. “I mean, if long term is where this is headed. Are you going to keep commuting or—”

“We haven’t discussed that,” she cuts in. “At this point it isn’t—”

It’s my turn to interrupt. “Because you realize you can’t leave MIT, right? For a man. I don’t want to be a snob or a bitch or whatever you want to call it, and I’m not trying to be mean. But you’re not leaving MIT for him, okay?”

“Taylor.”

“Mom.”

A flicker of panic tears through me, and I realize that maybe this new development is getting to me more than I’ve been willing to admit. It’s not like MIT and Briar are that far apart. But for a moment there, I imagined Mom selling our house, my childhood home, and—another jolt of dread hits me. Yeah, I definitely haven’t quite processed everything yet.

“Taylor. I need you to know something,” she says firmly. “You will always come first.”

“Yeah.”

“Always. You’re my daughter. My only child. We’ve been a team your whole life, and that’s not going to change. I’m still here for you above anything else. And anyone else. If you decide—”

“I’m not going to tell you to stop seeing him,” I blurt out, because I can see where she’s going with this.

“No, I know—”

“I want you to be happy.”

“I know. I’m just saying, if it came to it, I’m always going to pick my daughter over anything and anyone. It’s not even a question. You know that, right?”

But there were times she didn’t, and we both know it.

There were times when she was competing for tenure and promotions, writing books and touring campuses for speaking engagements. When she spent all day on campus then all night locked away in her office or hopping from one plane to another. Forgetting what time zone she was in and waking me up in the middle of the night to call me.

There were times when I wondered if I’d already lost her and that’s just how it was supposed to be: your parents get you walking and talking and able to heat up your own Hot Pockets, and then they get to go back to living their own lives while you were supposed to start creating your own. I thought I wasn’t supposed to need my mom anymore, and I started taking care of myself.

But then it would change. Get better. She would realize we hadn’t had dinner together in months; I’d realize that I’d stopped asking when she’d be back or for permission to borrow the car. She’d notice me coming home with my own groceries while she was eating a pizza on the couch and we’d realize neither of us had even considered checking with the other one. That’s when we’d realize we’d become roommates, and it would get better. We’d make an effort. She’d be my mom again and I’d be her daughter.

But to say that I have and will always come first for her?

“Yeah, I know,” I lie.

“I know you do,” she lies back. And I hear her sniffle as I’m rubbing the blur out of my eyes.

“I liked Conor,” she adds, which makes me smile.

“I do too.”

“Are you taking him to the Spring Gala?”

“I haven’t asked him yet, but probably.”

“Is this serious, or…dot, dot, dot.”

That’s the question everyone wants an answer to, Conor and me included. The question neither of us have wanted to look directly at, instead catching it in glimpses and flashes out of the corners of our eyes. The moving target floating in the periphery of our vision. What does serious mean and what does it look like? Do either of us have an idea or would we know it if we saw it?

I don’t have a good answer, and I’m not sure Conor does, either.

“It’s still new,” is all I can think to say.

“It’s okay to try things, remember. You’re allowed to be wrong.”

“I like things the way they are for now. And anyway, it’s probably not a good idea to put a lot of expectations on each other right before finals, and then it’s summer break, so…dot, dot, dot.”

“That sounds like an exit strategy.” She pauses. “Which isn’t a bad thing, if that’s what you need.”

“Just being realistic.” And reality has a way of smacking you in the face when you least expect it. So, yes, Conor and I might have something good going right now, but I haven’t forgotten how this whole accidental relationship started. A dare that turned into a revenge plot that morphed into a full-blown situationship.

I have a feeling that someday, many years from now, Conor and I will cross paths at an alumni banquet and, squinting at one another from across the crowded room, remember the semester we spent in each other’s pants. We’ll laugh about it and share the amusing anecdote with his statuesque supermodel wife and whomever I wind up with, if anyone.

“I do like him,” she repeats.

I almost tell her he invited me to California over the summer then bite it back. I feel like she’d make a big deal of it.

Granted, I already opened that stupid door when I let him meet my mother.

It didn’t even occur to me that bringing Conor to dinner last night was crossing that major relationship threshold of introducing him to Mom. I just couldn’t stomach the idea of sitting through the evening without some backup.

You’ve got to hand it to Conor—he didn’t even flinch or fluster. He’d just shrugged and said, “Sure, if you don’t mind picking out my clothes.” His biggest concern was whether he had to shave, and I’d told him if I had to shave then so did he. After a week of his stubble rubbing a raw patch on my chin, I had put my foot down on the facial hair situation. Thinking about it now, that was another relationship milestone.

Mom and I chat for a while longer while I putter around my apartment. We talk about the Spring Gala and finals and whether I want to keep the apartment in Hastings over the summer or move my stuff into storage…a decision I realize I’m putting off until certain other summer plans are determined.

Later, when Conor texts to say he’s coming over with takeout, I consider throwing together some elaborate high school display as a way of asking him to the Spring Gala. Like writing it across my chest in red lipstick or spelling it in underwear on the floor. Then I realize that making a big deal of the ask makes a big deal of the date and maybe that sends the wrong message. So I keep it casual and bring it up over a bowl of my favorite tomato soup and grilled cheese from the diner.

“Hey, so, there’s this Kappa gala coming up. And I was going to ask my other fake boyfriend to be my date…”

Conor raises an amused eyebrow.

“He goes to another school, you wouldn’t know him. Anyway, then I figured, well, since you’ve already met my mother and we’ve escaped a burning house together, maybe you’d go with me?”

“Is this one of those parties where you drag me around the room making other girls jealous and generally treating me like a dick with feet?”

“Yes.”

“Then I accept.”

A giddy smile threatens to break free. Conor makes everything so simple, it’s no wonder I’m so comfortable with him. He makes it easy for me.

I watch as he shoves the last piece of his cheeseburger into his mouth, munching happily, and my good humor falters slightly.

No matter how comfortable I feel, there’s always that whisper of doubt, fear. It’s like white noise, a hum in my head when I’m falling asleep, a persistent warning that maybe we don’t really know each other at all. And that at any moment, the elaborate fantasy we’ve designed could completely and utterly collapse.