Page 82 of Sounds Like Love
Can I ask you a personal question?I asked.
“Sure, bird.”
How did you get over it? Missing your mom?
He thought for a moment.“You don’t. At least, I didn’t. I still miss her every day. But some days I miss her more than others. Some days I’d give up everything just for one of her hugs. And then I have to remind myself that she’s gone, but bits of her stay. The parts that made me, the parts that raised me, the parts she left behind. They all stay, bird. The things that matter always do.”
Tears burned at the edges of my eyes. I wiped them away quickly. “Thank you for being honest.”
“I can’t be anything else with you,”he replied earnestly. Probably because we were in each other’s heads. I wondered if his answer would have been any different if we weren’t.
Chapter29I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)
WHEN GIGI FINALLYshuffled out of her bedroom, she found me at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee already brewed. Buckley had kicked me off the couch a few hours ago, and I wasn’t about to fight him over it.
After I’d knocked last night, Gigi let me in without a word and gave me a blanket as I fell onto the couch next to Buck and went to bed.
Now she yawned and sank down at the table with an exhausted groan. “Remind meneverto do a retirement home ever again.”
“Vienna Shores Retirement Home parties hard?” I asked.
“Bingo,” she deadpanned, “forfive straight hours.”
“At least it wasn’t six.”
She gave me a dead look. “At least I got paid on time. Thank god for old people.”
“Hey, more than I can say,” I admitted.
“I’d trade you any day,” she replied wholeheartedly. “At least you’re living the dream.”
My smile faltered. I looked down at my coffee. “Right, yeah.”
Gigi noticed. “Wanna talk about last night? Is it Sebastian?”
Yes, no. It was mostly about me. “Sometimes, I think I’d give just about anything to have a nine-to-five job where I can leave my work at the office,” I said. “Where I can have corporate health insurance, and overtime pay, and weekends off.”
My best friend frowned, confused. “I don’t know why you’d want to, but you can.”
I scoffed. “Sure.”
“No, youcan,” she reiterated. “You can do just that, but you don’twantto because it’s not good enough.”
That surprised me. “What does that mean?”
“You’d never be happy with a nine-to-five. And why would you want one? You’re living the dream.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” I muttered, more to myself than to her.
“Because it’s true, Jo. You’re so lucky.”
“Iknow.” I pushed my coffee cup away. “I … I’ve been …” The truth was lodged in my throat. But … then I thought about Sasha. About how he had no one to lean on, how hechoseto have no one, and how small and bitter that made him. I was no better. “I can’t write, Gigi.”
The admission felt like both a nightmare I’d finally made real and a weight off my chest.
“I haven’t been able to write since Mom’s diagnosis. And it’s so hard to try. I just feel—I just feelempty.There’s nothing there. I can’t even remember the way I used to feel whenever I wrote. So yeah,I think an office job would be so much easier. I could just turn off my brain and …”
“And give up.”
