For two people with big mouths, my mother and I were having an easy time keeping them shut.
Carolina and I rode up I-5 from downtown without speaking, the only noise being Ben Harper’s whispering from the speakers of the Jeep. The wedge of silence sat between us like an uninvited passenger.
I took the Sea World Drive exit, went east, then made a left on Morena, heading back into a neighborhood that I always did my best to avoid.
Bay Park is a small community cut into the hills that face west over Mission Bay and out to the Pacific Ocean. The majority of the homes were built in the 1950s, but the views and sprawling decks kept their values in the half-million-dollar range.
Sandwiched between the bottom of the hills and the highway was a small cluster of bungalows. Small lots, drab paint, and no views made it an area that the other residents in Bay Park tried not to claim.
I’d grown up in the bungalows and I didn’t want to claim them, either.
My mother lived in the same house two blocks off of Morena that she’d raised me in. The blue paint was still faded, the small lawn was still overgrown, and the garage door that always stuck was still half a foot away from closing.
And I still hated it.
I eased the Jeep next to the curb and shut off the engine.
My mother turned to me. “You’re living in Mission Beach, right?”
“Yep.”
“Same place?”
I nodded. “Same place that you’ve never been to.”
“You’ve never invited me.”
“You needed an invitation?”
She shrugged. “You usually grimace at the sight of me. I figured it would only be worse if I came to your home.”
I stifled a sigh. “My grimace is usually related to your level of intoxication.”
She looked away from me, out the passenger window.
I stared at what used to be my home. The front window was off my bedroom. I had climbed through it regularly during high school, not because I was sneaking away, but because I hadn’t wanted to see Carolina passed out on the sofa as I left. The window had become my portal to the sane world.
My mother turned back to me. “Do you see Carter these days?”
“Almost every day.”
“Is he good?”
“Sometimes, but not usually.”
She smiled. “I always liked him.”
“That makes you one of the few.”
“He was a loyal friend. Everyone needs someone like that looking out for them.”
I looked at her. “Most of my friends called those people parents.”
Her jaw tightened and she looked down at her lap. She folded her hands together tightly, one of the knuckles cracking. “I suppose. But I meant that I was simply glad that you had such a close friend.”
I fought the impulse to feel badly about what I’d said. As a teenager, I’d rarely said what I’d wanted to say to her. I’d been afraid. No matter how absentee, she was the only parent I had. Now, as an adult, I wasn’t going to regret whatever came out of my mouth. She could try to make me feel guilty, but I would fight it.
She unbuckled her seat belt. “Do you want to come in?”
I looked at the house again. So many nights I had come home and stood outside, not knowing what I would find inside. A passed-out mother. A strange visitor. Or no one at all.
I didn’t have a choice then. I always had to go in.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I gotta get moving.”
She stared at me for a moment, knowing I was probably lying. But then she nodded quickly. “Okay. Thank you for the ride.”
“You’re welcome.”
She opened the door and stepped out of the Jeep. “And tell your friend thank you, too. For doing whatever she did.”
“Yeah. I’ll tell her.”
She cleared her throat, then hesitated as if she were going to say something. She pinched the bridge of her nose, shook her head slightly, and looked at me. “Okay, then. Goodbye, Noah.”
She shut the door and I watched her walk toward the house, stepping carefully on the cracked pavers that split the middle of the lawn.
I could feel it coming and I wanted to smother it, to shove it back down wherever it was coming from. I didn’t need it, didn’t need to set myself up for the disappointment that I knew would inevitably arrive with any attempt at a relationship with my mother. I didn’t want to feel like I needed Carolina Braddock in my life in any capacity.
But I couldn’t stop it.
I opened my door and stepped out of the Jeep. “Hey. Mom.”
She stopped on the front porch and turned around, a mild look of surprise on her face.
“Saturday night,” I said.
She stared at me, puzzled. “Saturday night what?”
My throat tightened and I had to swallow before I spoke. “Come to dinner. At my place.”
She looked at me for a moment, as if she thought I might be teasing her, ready to pull back the string when she reached for it. When I said nothing, she nodded.
“Saturday night,” she said. “Okay.”
I watched her walk inside, the anxiety over our next meeting already churning away in my stomach.