I did need to throw myself into a book rather than a relationship.
I do need to find myself.
“You need to let him go, sugar,” Lauren tells me when I confess I’ve been thinking about Felix on our daily FaceTime. She’s still shooting in Australia. Her television work has given her a lot of new content to pivot to, which is convenient, as she’s now dating Colin and moving away from her sugar baby brand.
“He knows where to find you if he wants to say he’s sorry,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “I’m not going to contact him.”
But that doesn’t stop me from tracking down Pear’s email address from her company website and writing her a note.
Hey Pear! Thank you so much for the box of goodies. I feel radiant just looking at them. No plans to cross the pond soon, but get in touch if you’re coming to NYC. All the best to you and your family.—Hope
She writes back within minutes:
Will do, darling. By the way, you didn’t hear it from me but Felix is hopeless without you. xx
My stomach flips so violently I feel like I’m back on the cruise ship.
I can’t come up with a reply. If I let myself dwell on what it means I’ll obsess.
So instead, I bury myself in my story.
Months go by and the manuscript slowly expands into three chapters, then five, then eight. The words not only flow, they overflow far beyond the amount of time I can devote to capturing them. I’m living for Christmas break, when our office closes for two weeks and I can go home to Vermont and use every spare hour not spent with my parents to write. I’m already stressed that I can’t just hunker down in one place—that I’ll have to spend my time going back and forth between their two couches, navigating the tension between them as the only child of their divorce.
I leave for the airport straight from work and arrive at Burlington International just after seven. As I step onto the jet bridge, my bones immediately snap into the understanding that we are now in Vermont in winter. Brutal, but nostalgic. The feeling of home.
My dad is picking me up, so I text him to let him know I’ve landed. He says he’s parking and he’ll meet me at baggage claim. But when I get there, the first person I see is my mom.
My tired eyes cross at the cognitive dissonance, and I wonder if this is a coincidence—if she’s here to collect some other relative.
But then my father walks up beside her.
They smile and wave, looking both happy and sheepish.
“Hey,” I say, walking up to them, unsure who I should be hugging first. I haven’t seen them together since they told me they were separating.
Mom makes the decision for me, pulling me in for a hug.
And then the damnedest thing happens: my father wraps his arms aroundbothof us. It’s the hug of my childhood. I’d get this same hug—her around me, him around her—every night before I went to bed, every morning before I left for school, every time I was sad or happy or needed comfort.
I never thought I would experience it again.
Which does not change the fact that it pisses me off.
I shrug out from under them. “What’s going on?” I ask. “Why are you both here?”
They look at each other, having one of the silent conversations I grew up trying to parse.
“We wanted to tell you in person,” Mom says, taking my father’s hand. “We’re back together.”
I gape at them. “Since when?” I ask, feeling childishly outraged. “I thought you had a boyfriend. I thought his name was Harold.”
I admit I haven’t asked her a lot of questions about her new man over the past few months. The idea of her moving on from my dad made me a little uncomfortable, even if I was happy for her. And given how busy I’ve been, I haven’t been talking to either of my parents as much as usual.
But even so, this is a total blindside.
“We’ve been finding our way since the summer,” Dad says. “We didn’t want to tell you in case it didn’t work out.”
