Again, I can’t seem to hear her. The words are registering in my head. I know she’s talking. And I get their meaning. But they aren’t sinking in. Instead, my tongue is tripping over itself to throw my deepest fears at her. Like I’m daring her to run away from my inner mess.
Perhaps that’s what this is. Throw my fears and worries in her face and scare her back to her glitzy, rich world. I know she’s leaving anyway. Perhaps this anger is a way to control it, to make someone disappear on my terms for a change.
I snort at her assurances that Ma will always know my face.
“Gee thanks, Lizzie,” I sneer in a tone that I don’t recognize as me at all. “Good to know one afternoon with my mother has made you an expert of Alzheimer’s.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it!” Lizzie shouts back. “I’m just trying to get you to see sense! You’re talking like a crazy person.”
“Right. You’re trying to fix me. Again.”
“Again?”
I’ve lost it. Totally lost it. We’re in a full-blown fight, the volume is rising and all of my whispering insecurities from the last month are pouring out. There’s nothing I can do to stop them. Like a child trying to win an argument, I raise a finger at a time to list off my evidence.
“Money for my Ma’s move, advice on how we should just let her live in her own little fantasies, the hair dye. The fact that she won’t damn well stop asking about you! You’ve molded my mother into something domestic and sweet. Something that fits the pretty little image you want for your life here. Screw the rest of us who have to live with it long term.”
Lizzie reacts like she’s been slapped. Her eyes start to shine and that defensive anger, that wrathful protector inside me smells weakness.
“Then,” I continue, “there’s the casual rules on our relationship and how that should be going.”
“You were the one who—”
“Plus,” I interrupt, “your house and the renovations. Sanding, painting, carving, fixing. You just can’t leave it alone. All so that it can all be your… your…” I stumble, unable to find the right word.
As I’ve rambled, Lizzie has grown quieter. She’s folding her arms now and speaks with a deadly stillness. Like she’s daring me to continue the hurt spewing from my mouth.
“My what?” she challenges.
For a moment, my inner, more rational, Caleb had breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that perhaps being tongue-tied would shut me up entirely.
But I’m not that lucky.
“Your… sandbox!” I declare, finally finding the right word and flinging it at her like a barbed dart. “That’s what the Forge is to you, right? Your playground to come in and fix up so you don’t have to think about your real life.”
“That’s unfair, Caleb. I think I’ve done a lot to prove I’m staying here. That this is my real life. I’ve bought a house, I’ve made friends—including your mother.”
“And thankfully, I won’t have to put up with her memory of you for that long.”
Lizzie pulls up short.
Just saying the words makes me feel sick. Not only are they unwarranted, but they’re also untrue. Especially given how I’ve just spent most of my day reminding Mom that Lizzie wasn’t coming to visit today.
The truth is that when Lizzie goes back to her New York life, I’m going to be left with the ripples of her presence here, hitting me over and again. Like a tide that never gives the shore a moment’s rest.
Each time I go by Jace’s shop, I’ll see her bent over an engine or with her head under a hood. Whenever I visit Ma, she’s going to make damn sure I don’t forget the ‘pretty blonde girl’ I once brought. The old Jessop place is going to become a haunted house for me, with a very personal ghost.
Memories of Lizzie’s time in the Forge are going to be inescapable.
Just like they are with Matty.
“Is that what’s bothering you?” Lizzie finally asks, eyes narrowing. “That I’m going to leave? That David being here means I’m about to pack up my bags and jump on the next plane back to New York?”
“Why wouldn’t I think that?” I snap. “It’s not like you have any grit.”
“And just what’s that supposed to mean?”
Only a few minutes ago, Lizzie had been making the rational call to halt this conversation, to save it for a time when emotions weren’t running so high, and anger had cooled. Now, she seems as caught up in the whirlwind of frustration as I am. Dragged there by me. Now, she’s pissed, I’m pissed, and neither of us wants to let go.