Getting Over Garrett Delaney(65)
Author: Abby McDonald

I nod. “I’m fine. No, I’m better than fine,” I correct myself, feeling a smile creep across my face. “I’m good.”

“Oh.” Mom is clearly thrown. She waits while we go inside and then broaches the subject again as she crosses the kitchen to the kettle for her ever-present cup of herbal tea. “And is everything all right with Garrett?”

“Not really.” I give her a smile, slinging my purse on the kitchen table. “But that’s OK, too.”

She looks confused, so I reluctantly continue. “I just can’t do it anymore. Being friends with him, or more than friends. . . .” I shrug. “I’ve spent enough of my life revolving around him. I had to stop.”

“Oh, Sadie.” Mom comes over and pulls me into a hug: swift and strong. “I’m proud of you, sweetie. I know how much he meant to you.”

I blush.

“Don’t look so embarrassed,” she laughs, going back to her tea. “It’s not easy to do, separating yourself from someone like that.”

I pause. “Is that what happened with dad?” I ask slowly.

She looks up, surprised. “Not exactly,” Mom begins, checking to see if I’m really going there. I’ve never asked what happened, not directly. They sat me down, of course, for that talk about how even though they weren’t going to be together anymore, they both still loved me. But as for actual details, the breakdown of what went wrong. I’ve never asked, and she’s never told.

Still, something about tonight makes me tell her, “I want to know.” So she continues.

“Well, you know how he gets so caught up in his music, it’s like nothing else in the world exists? Not even us.” She pours the water carefully, a distant expression flitting across her face, and I can tell she’s back there — in this house, all those years ago. She holds out a mug, and I take it and follow her to the back porch.

It’s dark out in the backyard, so Mom lights the lamps, and we curl up on the long wicker couch with a blanket around our legs. “He was just starting to tour,” she explains. “So I was on my own with you all the time, waiting for him to get back. And my art wasn’t paying anything, and the bills were mounting up, and, well, there came I point when I had to decide.” She gives me a tired smile.

“Decide to divorce him?” I ask.

“No, it wasn’t even that.” She pauses, thoughtful. “It was more about whether I was going to shape our world around him or make a life on my own terms — for the both of us.”

I nod. After this summer, I understand exactly what she means. Even I can see that I’ve had to fold myself into pieces for Dad — making myself small enough to slot into the spaces he has around this show or that session. In twenty years, he’s never put anything — or anyone — ahead of his music, and I doubt he ever will.

“I think you’re right about Europe,” I say at last. She raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t think it through before, what it would actually be like,” I explain. “But Dad will be in rehearsals all day, or on the road, and I . . . well, I’ll probably be waiting around backstage most of the time.”

She smiles, full of regret. “I’m sorry. I wish it were different, but . . .”

“But it’s just the way he is,” I finish for her. Dad, and Garrett, and probably plenty more besides. They live their lives, and in the end, I have to choose to live mine, no matter how much I care.

We sit in comfortable silence a while longer, the crickets sounding out in the dark, and my exhilaration fading into pleasant tiredness. “Do we have any cookie dough?” I ask at last.

“Are you hungry?” Mom asks. “There are some leftovers, I think.”

I shake my head. “I need to apologize to Kayla,” I explain, feeling that guilt push through my fatigue. “And I figured it would go easier with baked goods.”

She smiles. “I think there’s some in the freezer. We’ll whip something up in the morning. But now, bed.” Mom pats my feet decisively. “It’s late, and you’ve had a long day.”

“The longest,” I tell her, but before I get up, I pause, awkward. “Thank you,” I say quietly. “For everything.”

“Always.”

The next morning, I drag myself out of bed extra early, bake two dozen sugar cookies from the pack of instant dough in the freezer, and decorate them with M&M’s reading I’m sorry. I leave them on Kayla’s front steps, along with a copy of Grey Gardens and twenty packs of my mom’s gold stars.

“Is this your way of saying I was right about Garrett?” Kayla opens the door just as I’m nudging a cookie into place. I look up.

“Yes,” I admit, shameful. “I nearly fell back into it again, trailing around after him. But you saw it coming.”

“I’m smarter than I look.” Kayla bites into a cookie, aloof. “My vast wisdom is often underestimated.”

I laugh. She gives me a look. “Sorry,” I mutter. “And I’m sorry for what I said, about you and Blake. I shouldn’t have been so mean.”

“You really can look wretched and pathetic when you want, you know?”

“It’s a skill,” I agree, waiting. Finally, she smiles.

“Fine, OK. Get over here!” She pulls me into a hug.

“Watch out!” I yelp, shifting us out of the path of cookies.

“Whoops.” She grins, then settles on the front steps, still in her penguin-print pajamas. I sit beside her and try a cookie of my own. “And I’m sorry, too,” she adds. “I was kind of a bitch. I just couldn’t stand to see you fall back into the same old pattern again with him.”

“Me neither.”

“So, what finally made you realize he isn’t your soul mate?” Kayla asks, perking up. “The flakiness? The pretentious angst? That hair?”

“All of the above.” I laugh. “And when he decided to declare his love for me.”

“What?” Kayla chokes on an M&M, but I shake my head.

“I’ll tell you later. But can we not talk about Garrett for now? I feel like I’ve spent way too much of my life focused on him. Let’s just say, that thing is done.”

“Thank God.” Kayla reaches for another cookie. “So what now?”

“I don’t know. Work, I guess.” I shrug. “The rest of summer. School.”