30 Lucas vs Cheyenne

July 26th

Mom met me at the ranch with a hug and two pints of Ben Jerry's ice cream.

"I told myself I wasn't going to indulge until my cheat day," she said, her hair brushing my chin as she squeezed me, smelling like her hibiscus shampoo, "but my baby is sad, so screw it."

She'd been messaging me periodically to see how I was doing ever since I had, in a stupor, incoherently texted that Darren had dumped me and then had failed to articulate anything more. But I'd been to the gym twice since leaving Rick and Andie's, and I was dressed and outside the house, so even though the world still looked like a gray-filtered apocalyptic hellscape, that was an objective improvement.

"What am I supposed to do?" I asked after I'd given her all the details I hadn't been able to manage before. I stabbed half-heartedly at my pint of Phish Food. "Like, how is anyone supposed to move on after finding out that the last ten years of their life was a lie?"

"Well, first off, you could consider my offer to move back in with me here, at least until you find your footing again," she said, gently running her fingers through my hair like she used to do when I was a kid, "or go see the world like I suggested. And keep reminding yourself of what I've always told you: you're a kind, brilliant, loveable man, and that one day someone will come along who will appreciate you for all you are."

My heart ached with the desire to believe her—Mom was always so confident and persuasive, but ... "Right, a kind and brilliant man who was just proved to be unlovable—and who also apparently is the world's worst judge of character."

She sighed, setting down her cookies and cream on the end table, and perched her chin in her hands. "See, I knew something like this was bound to happen at some point."

I blinked incredulously. "You knew that Darren would dump me out of nowhere in his kitchen?"

"Of course not, but I've had a bad feeling about that boy, ever since you both became joined at the hip in high school. He was far too self-involved to ever be a good partner for you."

My chest knotted. "So, what, this is ‘I told you so'?"

"Not ‘I told you so,' more ... maybe this is the universe's way of finally taking out the trash."

I tasted bile in the back of my throat. "Okay but if Darren is trash, then what does it make the person who fell in love with that trash?"

"Human, baby, not trash." Mom pulled up her legs to sit crisscrossed on the porch swing. We'd done this so many times over the years, the patio serving as a confessional where we could gossip or rant or cry. I immediately felt fifteen again—depressed and insecure and bitter at the world.

The setting sun cast a pink and purple glow over our backyard down the hill toward the ranch, where the horses were grazing. It was too pretty for the situation, and a prick of irritation rose up. "At the very least it makes me stupid. Because only stupid people stay with trash for that long, right?"

"You were a teenager, Lucas. That doesn't make you stupid. You were in a vulnerable place, so it only makes sense that you—"

"I don't want to be vulnerable!" It burst out of me before I could stop it. "I shouldn't need to be with someone to be strong. I mean, you're not like that. You raised a child alone, you run a business alone, but I'm—" Repulsive. Unloveable. Pathetic.

Mom's face was pinched with lines that she had worked so hard to be rid of. "I had hoped," she said slowly, "that I had raised you to know that you were never alone."

"Right, because my mom being the only one who loves me is supposed to make me feel better."

Mom's face fell. "Lucas—" She reached for me, but my whole body tensed. If she hugged me right now, I would shatter. "Baby, there are other people out there who'll love you. You don't only get one love. If you just put yourself out there again—"

"What, like you?"

She pulled in a sharp breath.

My chest was too tight, and every molecule of my body was bloated from the quarter pint of ice cream I'd eaten. It didn't matter that she was trying to help—everything sucked and I was so tired of her being a hypocrite. "How many years did you spend telling me how Dad was your one and only and you would never love again? And it's not like I don't know that you sometimes go out on dates, but no one's ever serious enough for me to meet them. So which is it, Mom? Because how come when it's you, you claim you'll only ever love once, but when it's me, when it's Darren, suddenly it's ‘there's other fish in the sea'?"

Her mouth dropped open, but I wasn't about to wait around and let her try to talk her way out of this one. I stood, letting the porch swing fall backward behind me. "I'm going to go down and see the horses."

I considered taking Dakota out for a ride—work off the calories—but didn't want to put her through that. That horse had already been with me during the darkest years of my life—she didn't deserve to be dragged into this too. Instead, I stopped at Grandpa Milkshake's stall, because hanging out with a sick and dying horse felt far more appropriate right now.

He was hanging in there like the fighter he was, but it was only a matter of time. He was resting in the corner, his rib cage visible past his struggling breaths. I stroked his neck. "Hey, boy," I whispered, and something unspooled in my throat. Here was this horse, alone in the world, deteriorating in a cell while the others—the younger, healthier geldings—were the ones most beloved of the children and visitors. No one ever asked to see the dying horse in the corner of the corral.

Would I also die in a corner somewhere, alone and unloved?

Probably.

I did my best to make him eat what he could before leaving him to rest. Every muscle in my body seemed to have evaporated, leaving me weak and heavy. I desperately wanted to return to my childhood home and curl up in the room that Mom had preserved, snuggling in bed while she made me soup. But I didn't want to deal with her right now.

So I drove back to the Briars apartment. It wasn't quite home, but at least I wouldn't be surrounded by reminders of my shortcomings as well as mementoes from my earlier years when I'd somehow been exactly as stupid as I was now.

The front door closed solemnly behind me as I entered the kitchen, and I was hit with the warm and unmistakable smell of baked goods. I scoured the room for evidence that Armand had been baking again.

On the counter, staring me in the face, was another plate of muffins.

These ones were bigger than the last batch, and appeared to be stuffed full of chocolate chips. Thousand-calorie death traps. A note accompanied these muffins as well: didn't realize I'd made meat muffins.

Meat muffins?

My note was still hanging on the fridge—the one I had hastily scribbled to remind myself never to contemplate eating frozen beef burritos again. Is that why he thought I didn't eat his muffins before?

I stared down guiltily at the miniature heart attacks.

He'd bothered to bake muffins for me, and I'd just blown it off. I really was a terrible person.

Waving goodbye to all my future diet plans, I reached for the nearest chocolate chip muffin and took a generous bite. It was delicious, better than it had any right to be. My hips still remembered the ice cream from earlier, but what was the point of keeping healthy? What was I if not a lonely dying horse in a world that had tossed me aside?

I grabbed the plate of muffins and started out of the kitchen. In the living room, Gaston and LeFou were swimming slower than usual. "I get it, guys. Life sucks and there's nothing you can do about it. But you two have no excuse. So snap to it, okay? You're making me depressed."

Leaving Gaston and LeFou to clean up their act, I turned back around, plate of muffins in hand, and locked myself in the bedroom. I was going to eat every single one of these deliciously deadly sugar grenades, and I would hate myself, but I couldn't possibly hate myself more than I already did, so what the hell.

Armand's gesture was sweet but misguided. Hopefully he'd never know that his muffins were wasted on a miserable, undeserving piece of shit like me.