Page 71 of Smash

“Hey, honey.”

Unfortunately, I still couldn’t suppress my hiccups. “Do you remember what the doctor—hiccup—had me do when I would get the hiccups as a kid?”

“Oh no. It’s happening again?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you stressed?”

“I’m just…” I trailed off, and there was a pause on the other end of the line.

Then Mom spoke with a softer voice. “It’s because of your father’s birthday this week, isn’t it?”

Oh God. I didn’t think it was possible to be a worse person than I already was, but I had completely forgotten my dad’s birthday was coming up. A new round of guilt threatened to pull me under.

I considered saying yes, taking the easy way out. But only a good person would be having anxiety because she missed her father. And I didn’t deserve to have my mother think that was true.

“No,” I said. “I forgot. I’m a horrible person.”

“Oh, honey. No you’re not. It’s okay to forget a birthday. You’re busy.”

Hiccup.

“Is something else going on that’s making you stressed?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. I could still lie. Lord knows I was an expert at it now. But instead, the truth tumbled out. “I did something terrible, Mom.”

She stayed calm. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

“I…I cheated on Calder.”

Silence.

“With his best friend.”

I started crying, and that made the hiccups worse. “I don’t even know who I am right now.”

“Well, it sounds like you made a mistake,” she said quietly. “And you’re stressing because you’re a good person, and it’s upsetting when we do something out of character.”

“I’m not a good person.”

“If you weren’t, you wouldn’t feel bad about what you’ve done.”

I wiped my face. “Calder doesn’t deserve this.”

“Have you stopped it?”

“Yes.”

Mom let me ramble on for fifteen minutes after that. When I finally paused for a breath, she pointed out that I had stopped hiccupping along the way.

“I didn’t even notice.”

“You must’ve needed to let it out. You should have called me sooner, honey.”

“I didn’t want you to know I was capable of something like this.”

There was a pause before she spoke again. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone except your father.”