Royally Crushed (32 page)

“But I was stupid and I never did anything about it.” He twists a few strands of my hair around his finger, then lets go and starts running his hand along my shoulder. “I kept asking out other girls, thinking that they were what I wanted.”

Yeah, the future prom queen types. Who wouldn’t want them?

“So why me?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I really want to know.

“I think it took hearing you were going away to realize that, in the end, all I’ve wanted is someone who thinks like I do. And Winslow, I believe you’re it.”

Hoo, boy. If he only knew.

I let him give me a few more quick kisses, then say, “I think your brother’s waiting.”

“I doubt it. But I don’t want you to miss your curfew.” He walks me to the door and says he’ll call me—he wants
to see me as much as possible before I have to go back to Schwerinborg.

I thank him for dinner and trivia, then duck in the door. As I watch him walk back toward his brother’s car from the glass windows of the stairwell, I feel tears burning up in my eyes. After they drive away, I sit down on the stairs.

I realize that I want the same thing David does: Someone who thinks like me. Or, more accurately, someone who understands me. Who doesn’t just spout his opinion and expect that I’ll agree. Someone who will listen to and respect my opinion, even if he doesn’t agree.

Someone who won’t expect me to be his Armor Girl.

I let myself into the apartment as quietly as possible. Mom left on the reading light in the living room, but it looks like she’s gone to bed.

Good thing, because I know she’d want to talk. And I need time to digest what has happened.

Maybe I’ll make a list. David in one column, Georg in the other. Just to be certain. Although, in my gut, I know what the answer will be.

No. Too
Glamour
magazine. Although it did help when I did it at the PFLAG meeting, so maybe—

“What’s wrong, honey?”

I jump about a mile. What’s she doing lurking in the
kitchen without the light on? “Mom! You scared the crap outta me!”

“Sorry. I was just getting a glass of milk,” she says, holding it up as proof. “I was reading in the living room, waiting for you to get home.”

Of course she was.

“You look upset. Did something bad happen on your date?”

“No, we had a good time.” At least, until I woke up to reality. And now I feel horrible. I never should have gone out with David tonight. Going to the movies was one thing. That was supposedly casual. A favor to Christie, sort of, and because I’d committed to it when I thought Georg and I might still be “cooling off,” even though apparently he never meant it that way.

But tonight—tonight was a massive, no, make that a monster (ha-ha), mistake. Because if I’d taken a fraction of a second to think about it, I’d have known I want Georg, not David. And I never would have David that e-mail telling him I’d meet him.

Why did I do that?

Why did I not realize that’s the reason I felt wrong all night? I should have been here, either thinking about Georg or hanging with the girls. Doing anything except going out with David.

“You don’t look like you had a good time, Valerie. You look disturbed.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Mom.”

“Okay. But it might help to get it off your chest.” She walks past me and picks up her book—the latest bestseller by her favorite self-help guru—from the end table and gives me one of her
I’m an understanding mom
looks before sitting down. “And Gabrielle’s not here. She went out to dinner with some of her friends from Weight Watchers after their meeting tonight.”

“So they can pig out on pizza?”

Parallel lines of disapproval appear between Mom’s eyes. “Valerie—”

“I’m
kidding
. I know Gabrielle takes it seriously.”

Mom just stares at me. Doesn’t start reading her book, doesn’t give me the usual spiel about how Gabby lost a ton of weight a couple years ago with the program, and how she now feels she owes her low cholesterol levels and Earth-friendly vegan lifestyle to the good folks at Weight Watchers.

Clearly she’s not going anywhere until I spill about my date. But I just can’t.

I feel too rotten to talk to anyone, let alone my mother. I mean, what does
she
know about staying loyal to someone?

I toss my purse on the counter because I know she’s not
going to let me go to bed. And I don’t know that I can sleep, anyway. “Mom, stop staring at me.”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

Fine. Two can play this game. I put my hands on my hips. “Okay, then answer a question for me. Did you cheat on Dad?”

I LET MY HANDS FALL TO MY SIDE.

Where in the world did
that
come from? What is
wrong
with me? The way I’m acting tonight, I have to wonder which circle of hell I’m destined to occupy.

“I’m sorry, Mom, it’s totally none of my—”

“I didn’t cheat on your father. Nothing happened with Gabrielle until after I told you and your father I wanted a divorce.” She takes a deep breath and fiddles with the ties on the front of her robe until they’re pulled tight. “Is that what you’re upset about?”

Wow. This was so
not
the answer I expected to hear. “You didn’t cheat?”

“No.” She doesn’t look the least bit uncomfortable with
this topic—when, if our roles were reversed, I’d kill me for asking—so I figure she’s been planning her answer for a long time. “But when I met Gabrielle, I knew. Sometimes, you
just know.
In here.” She taps her chest as she talks. “And it woke me up. I realized that I wanted Gabrielle in my life, most likely for the rest of my life, and to pursue that, I needed to leave your father first.”

“How did you know Gabrielle would want you?”

This draws a smile out of her. “I had my suspicions. Well, they were more than suspicions, I suppose. She’d been flirting with me a little, and I with her. But neither one of us acted on our attraction—we never even spoke of it—because I was married. But even if she’d never flirted, I knew that I couldn’t be with your father anymore. Staying with him when I felt that way about someone else—anyone else—would be cheating both myself and him. And you, too. I’ve always wanted you to be true to yourself, and if I lived a lie, what kind of example would I be to you? How could you respect me if I couldn’t respect myself?”

She lets out a little sigh, then continues. “So before things got out of hand, I told Gabrielle how I felt about her, and that whether she returned my feelings or not, I’d decided to leave your father that night. It was a huge, huge risk for me to do that. Not just emotionally, but financially,
too, because I knew leaving your father also meant I’d have to go back to teaching. And I wasn’t sure I could do that and enjoy it.”

I am beyond stunned. I cannot picture my mom having all this angst without my realizing it. Ignoring the teaching thing for the moment, I say, “But Gabrielle returned your feelings?”

Mom nodded. “She said she had fallen in love with me and that she wanted us to be together. She just knew the same way I knew that we belonged together, and for the long term. But, again, neither Gabrielle nor I acted until
after
I came home and told you and your dad. It would have cast a pall on our relationship to have taken that first step physically before I’d ended things with your father. And Gabby and I wanted to start clean.”

Wow. She sounds like she’s been reading way too many self-help books (probably because she has been), but still . . . I never realized how hard all this has been for her. And how much she worried about what
I
might think.

I cross the room and sit on the arm of the chair next to hers. “So you didn’t
just know
with Dad? Before you married him?”

She gives me a sad little smile and wraps one of the ties to her robe around her wrist, then unwraps it. “I wanted
your father to be the love of my life. I really did. I wanted a nice life in the suburbs with kids and the whole she-bang.”

“But . . . ?”

“But no, there was never any lightning bolt,
aha
kind of moment. I always had fun with your father—I liked him a lot, and will always love him on some level—but I know in my heart that I’m attracted to women and I’m just not capable of loving any man the way I should.” She takes a long drink of her milk, then sets it on top of the book on the end table.

“I just wish I’d been honest with myself about it sooner,” she adds. “I could have saved us all a lot of pain.”

“But then you wouldn’t have had me.
I
wouldn’t even have me.”

Her face splits into a wide grin at this. “No, and I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“I’m sorry I thought you were cheating,” I tell her. “I should have known better.” I think.

“It’s all right. I figured you’d have questions after you went to the PFLAG meeting. That’s why I’ve stayed up late the last couple nights, so you could talk to me if you wanted to. You’re not visiting for long, and I wanted to make the most of our time.”

“Well, I’m not asking because of PFLAG. I’m asking
because of me. I—I feel like I’m cheating, and I guess I needed advice.” I wave my hand in front of me, as if I can erase the words from the air. “That just came out all wrong. I’m not saying that—”

She frowns. “How, exactly, do you think
you’re
cheating?”

So I flop backward into the chair and tell her everything. Well, not everything. But I do tell her about Georg’s “cool off” call, and then the e-mail from Zermatt, and how I went out with David, anyway—that the first time was theoretically casual, even though I let him hold my hand in the theater and I could have pulled away and just stopped everything right there. But then I was even worse and went out with David a second time. Where it was just the two of us and it was definitely a date.

And I tell her that now I feel like I’m being one of those evil, bitchy types of girls who cheat on their boyfriends, and that’s just beyond wrong.

“Valerie, how old are you?”

“Um, Mom, you should know.”

“Fifteen, honey.
Fifteen.
And, to my knowledge, you and Georg aren’t married.”

“Not to my knowledge either.”

“And you made no promises to each other. So you’re not cheating. In fact, you’re perfectly normal. You and Georg
have only been together a short time, Valerie. Far too short a time to be committed, even though the connection you felt with him sounds pretty intense.”

Intense? “Mom, don’t try to sound cool.”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to get it through your head that you’re doing the right thing. Think—what if I’d taken the time to date around, to make sure your father was really the right guy for me? What if I’d taken the time to be certain about my decision? That’s all you’re doing.”

“So going out with David was a good thing?”

She grins and reaches over to grab my foot where it’s hanging over the side of the armchair, then gives it a little shake, exactly the way Dad does. “Yes. It sounds like you’ve learned what you don’t want, at least for now. And in many cases, learning what you don’t want is as important as learning what you do want. Or
who
you want.”

“I think I know who I want.”

“For now.” She lets go of my foot. “Remember, you’re fifteen. You have plenty of time to learn as much as you can—about Georg, about other boys. About yourself. Use that time wisely.”

I must still look uncertain, because as she stands up to go to bed, she says, “And trust in your friends. Jules and Natalie will understand. And so will Christie. Make the
choices that are best for you, not the choices you think will please them.”

As she walks down the hall, I say to her back, “I don’t know what you’re thinking about teaching, Mom, but if you do go back, you’re going to be great.”

She stops, looks back at me, and says, “You know, I think I will. I wasn’t ready when I was young. Now I’m looking forward to it.” Her face splits into a big grin, and she adds, “Proves my point that it takes a while to learn what you really want in life.”