Page 92 of Mom Com

“I can’t,” he breathes, and the jumble of emotions those words invoke slam into me like a giant wave, threatening to pull me under and scrape me raw.

“Why is it that every time I try to extricate myself from you, you find some way to pull me back in? Let me go, Wilder. Let. Me. Go.”

As he drops my hand, I know the days of us pretending things were okay are gone forever. We’ll go to college, move away. The Maddi and Wilder of our childhood, a unit so infallible that I couldn’t imagine a world without him, no longer exists.

I shake my head. “Don’t, Wilder,” I say, my heart straining with the effort, because I can’t unknow the things Kate and his mother said. I saw the truth of them on his face. “I can’t go through this again,” I manage through a voice thick with emotion, handing him back his note. “Or rather, I won’t.”

“If you’ll just let me—”

“Explain?” I say, fighting to keep my heart in my chest. “To what end? So that we can fall back into the same pattern we used to occupy—push and pull, hot and cold?” I choke a little on Kate’s words, hating them for the truth they hold. “It’s not a good idea. For either of us.”

His face falls. “Maddi, please, don’t walk away again. Just hear me out.”

It’s theagainthat kills me. “You’re blaming me for—” I swallow, my voice lodged firmly in my throat. I don’t know whether it’s the hurt or simply that I feel upside down, but I know I need to draw a line, a hard one that leaves no possibility of falling back into his gravity, circling around him and destroying myself in the process. “I’m going back to California, Wilder. You keep the bakery. Or sell it. I don’t care.” The words are bitter in my mouth, a lie I desperately need to believe. “But I’m done here. I was a long time ago. I just needed to realize it again.”

And I walk away. I don’t cry or yell, I just look for my son and lead him out of the house without fanfare. When Spence asks me what’s wrong, I say that I want to get some rest so we can wake up extra early and open presents. What I don’t say isso I can pack up the car right after.

CHAPTER27

Communication Is KeyLime Pie—

turning tart limes into sweet goodness

When I get home from the pizza place, my fight with Wilder still vibrating through me like an aftershock, I make the mistake of slamming the front door, not thinking that my parents might be in the living room.

“Madeline?” my mother says, which is the exact moment I realize I’m not carrying the pizza that I told her I’d pick up for dinner.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a second in the foyer, lifting my face to the ceiling before making my way to the living room doorway.

My dad lowers his book, pulling down his reading glasses, and my mom tilts her head.

“I, um, didn’t get the pizza,” I start, my lips suddenly dry, wishing I’d stuck it out at Tony’s a few minutes longer so I wouldn’t have to have this conversation. “Wilder was there and—” I’m about to explain, tilt the truth until I think she’ll accept it.

“Did something happen?” my mother says, her tone hesitant.

But I’m exhausted from spinning narratives, trying to put a rosy glow on things that don’t deserve it. And just like with Wilder, I give up trying. “We got into a fight.”

My mother deflates, and her eyes flick to the phone, telling me that in this moment she isn’t considering what I might be feeling, but rather whether or not Mrs. Buenaventura is going to call her about it. “Oh Madeline,” she sighs. “We literally just discussed this.”

My shoulders inch up toward my ears. “It was unavoidable.”

“Was it, though?” she asks like she’s not convinced.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, now back on the defensive, a position that’s grown all too familiar.

My mother spreads her hands. “Just that every time something like this happens, it’s always someone else’s fault. Never your own,” she says, her voice even-keeled as though she has ceased to be shocked by my behavior. Heat warms my cheeks and my shoulders transform into earrings. “And it always seems to take place at maximum volume. I’m certain the entire pizza place got an earful?”

I glance at my dad, but he just sits there frowning and listening to my mother. “Ah, now we’re coming to what you really want to know,” I say, the hurt tightening my voice, wanting to lash out in return. “How badly did your daughter embarrass you this time? What sort of a mark did she make on your pristine reputation? Be honest, Mom, that’s what you’ve cared about this whole time. Not what I might be feeling or how hard it might be, but about yourself and what people think of you. You’re selfish.”

“Madeline,” my mother says with a bright tone of shock. “That’s completely inappropriate.”

Which is when Dad decides to chime in. “Madeline, take it down a notch.”

I look at him, his frown carved deeply into his mouth and his eyebrows pushed together. “Of course you’re on her side. You’realwayson her side.”

“This isn’t about sides,” he replies.

But it is. He doesn’t stand up for me when it comes to Mom. He won’t tell her to back off or to give me a break. Ever.