Page 85 of Love Out Loud

My eyes just about bug out of my head. “Watch it, young lady.”

She unsurprisingly doesn’t back down. “Seriously! Look at you! I mean, you look like crap because you’ve been worried since before dawn, and you smell like an airplane, but underneath that. I’ve never seen you seem so…what word am I looking for? Relaxed. Confident. Dare I say tan?”

I open my mouth to respond, but all that comes out is an incredulous bark of a laugh.

“You’re practically glowing,” she adds. Her mouth twists into a cocky smirk. “So, let me ask you again. How’s Lennon?”

Frantically, I search my brain for something—anything—to tell her to get her off this train of conversation but come up empty. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s been her and me for ten years. I’ve tried to protect her from a lot, but we’ve shared almost all of each other’s vulnerable moments for the past decade. This isn’t all that different. And while I don’t want to shake up her entire world by telling her I’ve fallen in love with my best friend, she’s going to find out eventually. It might as well be now.

“Lennon and I have been… Well, we…” I sigh. Okay, this is going to be harder than I thought.

Devin tries to come to my rescue. “Did you go out there and finally fall in love with him?”

“What do you mean, ‘finally’?” I blurt out.

She gives me her epic eye roll, and I realize just how much I had missed her, because I even missed that, of all things. “Mom. Please. I’m your kid, but I’m not a kid. So, what? He’s not here, so I’m guessing you had some kind of fallout, and now you’re trying to pretend you don’t want to run back to him in LA now that you know I’m okay?”

“What the hell?” I mutter under my breath. “I’ve got to say, this is really throwing me off.”

Her face softens. “I want you to be happy, Mom. You’ve done so much for me, but it’s your turn now. Lennon makes you happy. He always has. Go be with him.”

“What about your home in Ann Arbor? You said you already couldn’t wait to be home for break.” It’s a feeble protest, but I have to know. That text from her really made me reconsider some things.

“You’re my home,” she says simply. As if that single sentence isn’t meant to fill me with joy. As if it doesn’t change my entire life.

I’ve done a pretty decent job of holding back the waterworks. Until now. Silent tears stream down my face as Devin sits in her hospital bed with a dopey smile on her face.

“Don’t get all emotional,” she deadpans. “I already told you I want to visit you in LA. This is mostly selfish on my part.”

I stare at her in awe. “How did I get such a great kid?”

She shrugs. “You basically made me. Must be that thing about the apple and the tree. So”—she claps her hands together and rests them in her lap—“are you going to patch things up with Lennon and move out there and live happily ever after?”

I wish it were that easy. But I can’t get past the look on his face when I said I had to go. The suggestion that I should ignore my instincts about my kid for his benefit. The fact that I was scared and he didn’t offer to come with me. And that nagging knowledge that he has never really told me he loves me. What if he doesn’t, really? What if this is too much too soon? What if we can’t ever figure out how to fit our lives together? It’s crystal clear to me that this is more convoluted than just picking a place to live.

But Devin doesn’t need to know all that, so I tilt my head, sigh, and say, “It’s complicated right now, kiddo. Let’s get you healthy, and then I can worry about the rest of it.”