Read Online But I Love Him by Amanda Grace - Free Book Online Page B

and gives me a kiss on his way to the shower. “Be out in twenty.”
    But she doesn’t last that long. Jack calls and she is gone, saying nothing to me as she glances back just before the door shuts. When Connor leaves the bathroom he sees only me.
    And he doesn’t have to ask to know. He grabs a plate and smiles at me, but it’s not the same smile as twenty minutes ago.
    We each dish up too many tamales, more than we can eat, so the pan won’t be filled with the ones Nancy would have eaten. And then we sit across from each other at the table, but the only sounds are our forks and knives.
    “I baked you a cake,” I say.
    “Thanks,” he says, between bites.
    I wish she was still here. I wish she hadn’t ruined it. I wish, for one night, she had picked Connor over Jack.
    But I know the repercussions of doing that and I know why she didn’t.
    When we’re both full, I scrape our dishes into the trash. We didn’t eat it all. There is too much left. The pan sits on the stove like a neon sign.
    Connor joins me in the living room, on the couch he bought at the Salvation Army. He has no TV yet.
    I pull a small wrapped gift from under the couch and hand it to him.
    “You didn’t have to.”
    “Yes I did. Open it.”
    The box is tiny, wrapped with silver paper and invisible tape I’d carefully chosen. He rips it off and slides off the lid. A slip of paper is all the box contains, and he looks up at me, confused.
    “It’s a reservation. We’re going sailing.”
    His eyes light up. I’ve done well.
    “Oh, babe, thank you.” He wraps his arms around me and I close my eyes, reveling in this moment.
    His dad had a sailboat when he was a kid. It only lasted a year, but Connor was hooked. He talks about it constantly.
    I can’t wait for it. A whole day, just me and him and the water. I hope that on that day, we will have peace. Just for a day, away from everything.
    I wonder what would happen if we could just sail away and never come back.
    March 19
    Six months, nineteen days
    I’m in my room when she comes home. I had hoped I wouldn’t see her today.
    It’s my birthday. I’m eighteen, and today I plan to leave and never come back.
    I’m not going far. Just to Connor’s apartment across town. It’s his, not mine, but I will stay there. I just feel like an unwanted house guest here.
    I’m tired of my mom. I’m tired of the fights. Every time she sees me, she brings him up. He is all I am to her, and until he is gone, I am no one. She uses every second she can to poke at him, pick at our relationship, to find the cracks and exploit them.
    If she thinks that’s going to make me choose her over him, she’s wrong.
    I’m tired of having to defend him to her. She doesn’t understand that he’s going to be someone. She doesn’t get that he may seem like a bad person on the outside, he may be aloof or cold, but if you give him a chance, he’s so much more.
    Even though all his life people have put him down, he wants so much to get out of it. He got his GED when he was sixteen, after his dad made it hard to get to school every day. He started working right away, saving for the day he could move out and get his own place. He’ll triumph even after all his dad has done to keep him down. These are the things I see in him. The way he makes lemonade out of lemons.
    It’s not his fault his life is one big lemon. All he needs is for people to give him a chance. I think one day, when we have some money saved up, we will move away and get a place far from home. And we will start over, and he will leave everything behind and forget everyone who doubts him.
    Together we will find happiness again. We will take back everything that was robbed from him.
    From me.
    My mom proved exactly what he said: that people see him and judge him and don’t give him a chance.
    My stomach sinks when I hear the gentle hum of the garage door. I knew I should have left the rest of this stuff. I knew it. I could have gone back to Connor’s and