Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

Milo

I spent most of the weekend trying to pull myself together.

I didn’t often feel ashamed, but I sure did when Monday came around and it was time for my study session with Starlet after she’d witnessed my full-blown meltdown.

“I’m sorry about Friday. I wasn’t myself,” I muttered to Starlet as I sat down in the library study room. I tossed my backpack onto the table and grumbled from my aching headache. No amount of ibuprofen was easing up the discomfort. I probably should’ve drunk more water throughout the weekend, but I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to take on those actions.

Starlet smiled at me. Her look held no annoyance, judgment, or blame.

“You’re not pissed,” I commented.

“No, I’m not.”

“Why aren’t you pissed? I could’ve gotten you in a shit ton of trouble.”

“It’s fine.” She shifted around in her chair and then reached out and placed a hand against my forearm. My eyes moved down to her touch. I should’ve pulled my arm away from her, but the warmth was too addicting.

“Why are you touching me?” I asked.

“I spoke with Principal Gallo. He mentioned what Friday was.”

Oh.

That explained it.

She was pitying me.

I pulled my arm back and placed it in my lap. “It was just a day.”

“No.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t.”

No , I silently agreed. It wasn’t.

I shuffled in my backpack to pull out my math book and said, “I figured we should start with the math assignments and—”

“What’s her name?” Starlet cut in.

I arched my eyebrow. “What?”

“Your mother. What’s her name?”

My throat tightened as I froze in place. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Because I can tell she’s important to you. I want to know about the things important to you.”

She is important to you.

As if my mother were still around.

I hated how she said that.

I loved how she said that, too.

I grimaced. “No, you don’t. You feel bad for me.”

“I do feel bad for you,” she confessed. “But I also do want to know the important things. Two things can be true at the same time.”

“You’re supposed to tutor me. Not ask about my personal life. So how about you do your job,” I huffed.

Her eyes locked with mine, and she smiled, completely unmoved by my bad attitude. She crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair, not taking her stare away from mine. “My mother’s name is Rosa. She’s my best friend. Her favorite thing in the world was making homemade items. Soaps, lotions, and fresh homemade applesauce from the apple tree in our backyard. She was allergic to dogs but still always snuggled them whenever one approached her. She hated vegetables but pretended not to in order to get me to eat them. And she loved my father and me to her core. We loved her, too. Losing her felt like losing ourselves for a very long time. It took years for me not to cry when I saw a photograph of her. I still cry sometimes, but it’s less. She once built me a bike, too. She built one for me, one for her, and we’d ride said bikes together down the steepest hills. I’d stretch my arms out wide, and she’d hold my hands in hers as she did the same thing, and we’d ride down the hill together.”

“What are you doing, Star?” I whispered.

“Sharing a few of my scars to make you feel safe enough to share your own. If you don’t want to share, that’s fine. I won’t push anymore, but I feel happy when people ask me about my mother. I love talking about her because it’s like she’s still here when I get to share. Most people say they’re sorry and carry on with their lives. I don’t want to do that with you, Milo. I want to know more.”

I sat back in my seat, debating how to move forward. A big part of me wanted to get up and leave, never returning to school again. Yet another part of me knew Starlet was right. Most people offered their condolences and left it at that.

What’s her name?

How did those words from Starlet rock me sideways?

“Ana,” I confessed. “Her name was Ana.”

“That’s a beautiful name.”

“Yeah. It was.”

“What’s her passion?”

“Cooking. She was a chef. She was Italian and lived in Italy until she was thirteen. She studied cooking her whole life and had a restaurant here called Con Amore.”

“With love,” she breathed out, translating the name. Her hand flew to her chest. “That was my mom’s favorite restaurant. She was Italian, too. She said it was the most authentic Italian food you could find around our parts. We used to go there every Sunday for freshly baked rolls and ham. Your mother was very gifted at her craft, Milo. I’m glad I was able to experience a piece of her.”

I wasn’t one to cry, but that comment almost brought it out of me.

“How did she love to spend her weekends?” she asked next.

My tongue pushed into the side of my cheek as I tried to press down the emotions stirred inside me by Starlet’s questions. No one had ever asked me that question. No one had ever given me the space even to share my mother’s name.

I stared down at my hands and cleared my throat. “By the water. She loved fishing. My grandfather took her out on the water when she was a kid, and it became her favorite hobby. Every weekend during the summer, we’d go fishing down at Estes Park with my father. It’s his favorite park and Mom’s favorite part of the lake. We found a hidden area that people didn’t know about, and we’d fish there for hours. We’d even go ice fishing up north during the winter. That was her and my dad’s favorite time. I hated it. It was cold, and we’d just sit there for the longest time. But I always asked to go with them. It was kind of our thing. Now, I miss the cold-ass days on the ice, doing that with them.”

“You don’t still go with your father?”

My jaw tightened. “My father died the day my mom passed away.”

Her mouth dropped in shock. “Oh my goodness, I didn’t know—”

I shook my head. “No. He’s still physically here, but what I mean is, the day my mom left, my father mentally checked out, too. He’s like the walking dead.”

“Milo…I’m so deeply sorry. I cannot imagine how hard that is for you.”

I shrugged. “Tell me about your parents,” I said, needing to shift the conversation.

Starlet smiled, but it felt sad. Still, she accepted my request. “I’ve never been fishing, but my parents love nature. We’d go hiking and biking every week when I was a kid. I haven’t done it in so long, but that reminds me of my mom. I’m glad you have fishing to remind you of yours.”

“I don’t fish anymore because it reminds me of her.”

“I don’t ride bikes or hike anymore because it reminds me of her.”

I stayed quiet. I didn’t know how to process what I was feeling. Mom was better at explaining my own emotions to me than I was myself.

“What was her favorite candy?” Starlet asked.

The corner of my mouth twitched. “Reese’s Cups. She’d eat the jagged edge off first before eating the inside.”

“It makes sense. The peanut butter is the best part.”

I smiled a little.

Only a little, but she noticed, and then her smile grew wider, too. She was good at that—smiling. Smiles were probably created mainly for people like Starlet. The two things went together very well. I was more into grimacing myself.

“What was your mom’s favorite candy?” I asked.

She shivered in disgust. “Black licorice.”

“I’m sorry to hear that your mother was a psychopath.”

She laughed, and it sounded like something I’d want on a vinyl record so I could play it repeatedly. “Yes, she had her set of flaws, black licorice being at the top of the list.”

I relaxed a bit into my chair. “What’s your favorite candy?”

“Red licorice, but the rope kind that you can peel. Anything else is boring.”

“So you’re from a licorice family.”

She leaned in and whispered, “Yeah, but I like the good kind, not Satan’s flavor.”

I smiled a little more.

She made that happen involuntarily.

“My favorite is Sour Patch Kids,” I mentioned. She didn’t ask, but still, I shared.

She gave me a devilish look. “Do you relate to your candy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you first sour, then shockingly sweet?”

I huffed. “No. I’m just like a pound of sour.”

She laughed again.

Fuck me, that laugh.

“I like Sour Patch Kids. I lick the sour off the candy, though, instead of sucking them off in my mouth,” she explained.

The thought of her licking the candy pleased me more than I’d admit. “That’s weird.”

“I’m a weirdo.”

“Yeah, you are.” I shifted and fiddled with my hands. “Can you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Ask me more questions about my mother.”

She did exactly that. She asked me what felt like a million questions, and still, they didn’t feel like enough. We stayed at the library longer than planned. We talked about our moms as if they were still alive. I told her stories about my mother that I’d never shared with another. Starlet cried, but that wasn’t surprising to me. She seemed the type to feel everything a little deeper than others. I wondered what that was like—to feel everything so deeply at all times, no matter what.

It wasn’t until the librarian came and knocked on the study room that we snapped out of whatever weird world we’d created between the two of us.

“Sorry, the library is closing,” they told us.

“Oh gosh. I’m sorry. We got carried away. Thank you,” Starlet said as she gathered her things to leave. I did the same.

As we walked out of the library, she thanked me for opening up to her in such an intimate way.

“It’s not a big deal,” I told her. “But thanks for today. Even though we didn’t study.”

“You’re right, we didn’t,” she agreed, “but we did learn a lot, and I think that’s important.”

“Thank you.”

“For?”

“Asking about her.” I didn’t know how deeply my soul needed someone to ask me about my mother.

Her smile came back. “Thank you for asking about mine. I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”

“Yeah, see you.”

As she rounded the corner, I stood there, a bit dumbfounded about what had taken place over the past few hours.

Her smile lingered in my mind that night. As I lay in bed, I replayed our earlier conversations nonstop. I couldn’t remember the last time I stayed up thinking about a girl, but Starlet seemed damn near impossible to get off my mind. I couldn’t even process how she’d made me feel alive. She did that to me—she made me feel a little bit more alive than I had the days before.

Damn…

She made me feel again.

I almost forgot what that was like.

After she had to deal with me and my being high the other day, I should’ve not made her life harder than it had to be. So I did my homework that evening. I figured that would make her proud or some shit.