I grab my keys and a towel from the bathroom. “Help me tape up the side window that cracked last night.”
Margot hops into action. “I’ll grab a plastic bag from my dry cleaning in the closet.”
“And I saw some electrical tape in the pantry. Meet me at the car.”
I pull up the hood on my sweatshirt and wait for Margot in the entryway. The rain pours down like daggers. Together, we make a run for it. I grab the passenger-side door, while Margot runs around to the driver’s side.
“I think you should break it off with Eden,” Margot says, handing me the plastic bag.
Because she’s coming at me with a threat, I refuse to admit to the confusion I’ve felt since last night when Eden said she loved me for the first time. Instead of filling me with promise for the future, her words turned sour in my mouth.
And my doubt has only gotten worse. During our little car spinout, my first thoughts were of Aimee. Not my sister next to me, or our girls at home, but my wife. The only person in the world I committed my life to in front of a hundred guests. After the Moon Men event I went to bed instead of finding Eden. Nothing happened between me and Aimee, but she was in my head.
With my back turned to her in the bed, I kept scrolling to the picture Aimee posted of us yesterday. As the comments rolled in, I found myself convinced. We are the perfect couple. Or we were, but could we be again? Or was it too late and that’s why I’d given up? It was a chicken-or-the-egg argument and I kept going round and round. I love Eden; I miss Aimee. I can’t anchor myself in reality.
I tell none of this to Margot. In fact, I push this all out of my head.
“Margot, the end is inevitable,” I say.
“I don’t believe that. You and Aimee could be good again.”
I gesture for Margot to lean over and hold the bag in place while I rip off a long piece of tape. It’s a tiny crack, no bigger than a pebble, but a hurricane could blow the whole window out, so I don’t half-ass it. I pull a second piece of tape and rip it with my teeth.
“I saw that picture she posted on Instagram yesterday. You two are in love,” Margot says.
“What do you know about love?” I ask.
Margot drops her hands and backs away, hurt.
“You don’t love me?” she asks, her voice small as a child’s.
“That’s not the same.”
“Well, I know what I have with Ted, I know what I saw of you and Aimee in the beginning, and I know what was modeled for me as a child,” she says.
I finish covering the window and fall into the passenger’s seat.
“Wait. What?” I ask.
This is typical Margot. Last night I planted the seed of evil into our parents’ dynamic, and she’s doubling down on how perfect they were.
“They were committed to each other and us, and no one else,” Margot says.
“You think Mom and Dad were in love? Are you kidding me?”
When it comes to Margot, I avoid the topic of Mom and Dad no matter how hard she pushes. Inevitably, we sound like we lived in different houses with entirely different parents.
“You’re pissed off because I’m not buying your car-accident fantasy. Just like you’re mad because I don’t believe you’re in love with Eden,” Margot says.
“Don’t change the subject. Tell me what gave you the impression of love between our parents. Name one example.”
“I don’t know. I was young, Adam. But I could feel it. I felt it stronger than anything else.”
Margot has a warped vision of love. She thinks the fact that Dad hugged Mom was evidence of his love, but I know he took her into his arms so she would leave him alone to watch TV. He was placating her and her bottomless pit of need, not actually trying to fill it.
“Why do you think I’m obsessed with love, Margot?”
“Because it’s a natural human need?”
“Because there was no love between Mom and Dad.”
“No love? That’s an absurd thing to say. Why did they get married? Why did they bring two children into this world? Why did they stay together for twelve years until they died? Because they were in love. What you’re saying makes no sense.”
“I don’t know how it started, Margot, but what we saw wasn’t love. It was demoralizing, the way Dad treated her.”
“Stop it.”
She turns away from me, but she won’t go anywhere. I continue.
“Mom was the textbook definition of a micromanager. She ruled with white knuckles because she was ineffective. Mom didn’t have the power to make what she wanted happen.”
Margot shakes her head in disbelief. My words are hitting a little too close to home. I push harder.
“The truth is, Mom would have had to love herself more to leave. And she didn’t. She wasn’t capable. If she had more time, maybe she could have gotten there, but even that is a reach.”
But it’s not a reach for me. It’s not easy to teach yourself what healthy love looks and feels like when no one truly loved you growing up. Nana cared in her way, but she wasn’t enough. She was old and grief-stricken and too worn out to be a parent to us. It’s taken me years of trial and error—in life and in my writing—to figure out love. Still, the alchemy is not an exact science. It’s possible to get it wrong, to confuse love with familiarity, or lust, or insecurity. It happens in my books all the time.
I’m on the precipice of not only understanding what I need and what I can’t live without, but also achieving it. That knowledge has to be found inside me, without comparing Aimee and Eden.
