I sucked in a breath as his hands fell away, and felt a shiver down my back.
“I think about you all the time,” I confessed. I looked at him, and felt that emotion in me, rising up through my chest as if it might choke me. I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or laugh. “I want to see what happens when I’m not so guilty. When you’re not performing exorcisms. When it’s just us.”
“Are you asking me out?” Scott asked, laughing. I laughed too then, but had to wipe moisture from my eyes.
“See, but I don’t understand why you would want to be with me.” I couldn’t tell if I was crying or not, but the words kept coming. “You know firsthand that I’m a cheater, and a liar, and I’m mean when you don’t deserve it.” I waved him off when he made as if to move closer. “Why would you want to be with someone who is only just this minute figuring out who she might be? What’s wrong with you?”
He closed the distance between us and tucked a stray tendril back behind my ear, and then smiled a little bit as he wiped away the tears beneath my eyes.
“I’ve had this thing about you, Meredith, in one way or another, since I was five years old. And you have some stuff to work on, but so do I.” He stared down at me, his eyes almost silver in the light. “Trust me.”
I let out a laugh, which sounded more like a sob.
“We’re just about to start,” he said, and suddenly he was even closer, and I had to tilt my head back to look at him. “All you have to do is believe in the possibilities.”
He cradled my face between his hands but it was me who stood up on my tiptoes and kissed him. All that heat and magic, and a sweetness to it as well.
It was about as close to perfect as I was likely to come.
“I have too many people to talk to tonight,” Christian said, “so I have to dance with both of you at the same time.”
“That’s genius in terms of the photo op,” Hope replied brightly. “But you might have presented the whole thing in a more attractive package.”
“Leave the man alone!” I chided her. “It’s his wedding day!”
“My wedding night, actually,” Christian said. “I’m an old married man.”
“Is that excitement or terror?” I teased him.
“Definitely excitement.” He laughed.
All three of us went out onto the floor and commenced dancing together, the way, legend and photographs had it, Christian and I had done with little toddler Hope at Uncle Martin’s wedding some twenty years ago. I could hear the combined “aw” from the relatives.
“You really can’t dance,” Hope observed, looking down at Christian’s feet.
“Shut up, brat,” he replied easily. “Did you guys see Jeannie’s uncle rocking out to Elton John? How scary was that?”
“Please,” I scoffed. “Aunt Marion has been downing rum since noon and ran barefoot and half-dressed down the street. Uncle Jules had to force her to lie down in the guest room.”
“I love family events,” Hope said with a smile. “It’s always such an excellent way to remember that I’m really not the black sheep Mom would like to believe.” She glanced over to where most of our cousins sat gathered around a single table. “I mean, I have no visible tattoos, I didn’t try to sell the younger cousins marijuana at the church, and I’m not pregnant. That’s pretty much a home run in this family.”
All three of us laughed, and then the song came to an end. Jeannie wandered over from her own dance, and the way she and Christian smiled at each other made even Hope grin.
“Two girls at once?” she asked archly. “Good thing they’re your sisters. This is the wedding, not the bachelor party.”
“Very funny,” Christian said.
“And now”—Jeannie tipped her head back and smiled up at Christian—“I want to dance with my husband.”
“You know what,” Hope said as they danced away from us, “I actually really do think they’ll be happy. Not that they’re not boneheads with untold issues.”
“Of course.”
“But I think it’ll be good.”
“I agree,” I said. I slid a sideways look her way. “Is that a tear I see in your eye?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hope said. “I don’t do emotion.”
But she smiled at me as she wiped at her eyes.
Much later that night, the guests were dancing up a storm and I was taking a breather at one of the tables. I had lost track of my shoes hours ago, and my sides ached from laughing at Hope’s antics with some of our cousins. Jeannie and Christian were still out on the dance floor, both of them possessed of enough energy to light up the tent on their own, which was a good thing, as everyone expected the power to go out next.
“Well,” my mother said, settling into the chair beside me. “Isn’t this a lovely night after all?”
“You did a great job,” I told her, and watched her smile.
“I remember when your father and I got married,” she said now, her eyes far away. “My mother insisted I wear the most uncomfortable pair of shoes, and she wouldn’t let me take them off all day.” She laughed. “That should tell you how happy I was to be marrying your father—I danced all night long and when we finally took the shoes off that night, my feet were bleeding. I hadn’t even noticed.”
Which is when I thought I finally understood my mother. She’d given up a lot to be the Madonna of our town. It wasn’t a small thing at all. There were costs I would never know about. And love, of course, in forms I’d overlooked my whole life. All those smiles—they weren’t my mother pretending, or acting. They were her way of loving.
“I don’t know what made me think of that,” she said, and shook her head.
I looked around at my family, scattered across the reception. Jeannie and Christian couldn’t bear to let go of each other’s hands, and had yet to stop beaming. Hope was holding court in the corner, no doubt wowing our cousins the way she wowed everyone else with what could only be called her star power. My father looked dapper and charming, taking care of Aunt Beth so she wouldn’t feel lonely at her first big event following the divorce.
My father had his little worlds to rule, all in separate tanks in the basement. My mother ran their life together. Everyone found the things they were good at, and those things didn’t necessarily make sense to anyone else. It was pointless to look, or judge. It was possible my mother would confound me until her dying day, but then again, that was her job. She was good at that too. As Rachel said, we all ended up as our mothers in one way or another. It was all a question of degrees.
And, possibly, a good plastic surgeon.
In the meantime, I could be exactly as free as I wanted to be. I’d gone out of my way to wreck my so-called perfect life, after all. If I’d really wanted it, I might have fought for it, but doing so had never crossed my mind. It was time to stop licking my wounds and start living the life I had. It was time to stop worrying about being nice, being good. Saint Meredith was well and truly dead.
Love, I thought, is dancing for joy when your feet are bleeding. Because the joy was what mattered. Feet would heal. Everything healed, given enough time. All you had to do was want it.
“Come on, Mom.”
I surged to my feet when the band swung into a new song.
“Let’s dance,” I said, and held out my hand.
About the Author
I wrote the bulk of Everyone Else’s Girl while involved in what I like to call an “extended move” from York, England, to Los Angeles, which really means I spent six months hidden away in my parents’ attic finishing up my dissertation, something I felt I was unlikely to do once I escaped west.
What, I thought at the time, was more likely to make a grown woman revert to her absolute worst than an extended stay right smack in the middle of her adolescence? I knew what that was like, after all. I spent most of my twenties living in short-term housing in random cities (four months in Hoboken, NJ, I’m looking at you), student housing (as detailed in my first novel, English as a Second L
anguage—that communal kitchen cured me of being a slob where years of my mother’s tutelage never could), or crammed into my childhood bedroom on the second floor of my parents’ house. Complete with twin beds, rules concerning the use and placement of towels, and all those surround-sound memories of my hideous teen years. And that was just in the bedroom.
I hope you enjoy Meredith’s journey back to the family home!
Come visit me at www.megancrane.com.
5 Reasons you should never move back home with your parents
(No matter how many times you tell yourself “It’s different now because I’m an adult!”)
1. No more privacy. Close your eyes for a moment and consider what it was actually like to be sixteen. Sure, no responsibility, no bills, yada yada yada—but now really think about it. Intrusive personal questions. No independence. Shared mealtimes. No such thing as escape, or alone time! Kind of makes that pesky utility bill look good in comparison, doesn’t it?
2. Not that story again! You know when you visit home for the holidays and find yourself stranded with your parents’ friends and neighbors for sixty hours as they tell that story about the time you [insert humiliating teenage adventure—which you only recovered from after years of therapy—here]? Okay, now imagine having that conversation every single day.
3. High school reunion. You keep running into all those people from high school who you can’t even identify when you look through the yearbook. You know the ones—they all run together in a strange mush of bad hair, weird extracurricular activities, and terrifying fashion decisions. There’s a reason you “grew apart” before the end of the graduation ceremony.
4. Forget about dating. Oddly, being in your mid-twenties and living with your parents is not considered a big pull for attractive members of the opposite sex. For some reason, the idea of having to greet Mom and Dad when entering the house puts a bit of a damper on social engagements.
5. Watch out, you’ll become your mother! First you hear yourself using some of her catchphrases, which doesn’t even bother you too much, because it’s along the same lines as arranging the kitchen in your own home to resemble hers. But then you start joining her for the semiannual sale at Talbots, because good quality is good quality. After that it’s a downhill race to a house in the suburbs and a constantly revolving selection of festive sweater vests to celebrate the seasons. Mark my words, young lady.
Megan Crane, Everyone Else's Girl
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