“I don’t think that’s true. I think you kiss boys in hopes it hurts him.”
Thanks for blowing my spot, Mom, I think.
I shrug. “He screwed my cousins to hurt me, because when I got depressed after the move, I withdrew, and he knows me. He knows that’s what I have always done.”
He knows me so well that, sometimes, when I went to hide, he’d already be waiting in the place he thought I’d go. And he always had fruit snacks and picked out all the red ones because he knew I didn’t like them.
“We talked to Valentina.”
“Of course you did,” I huff.
“You can get upset, Tris, but if it were your cousin’s, Truth, kids, you’d do the same.”
I say nothing, because I hope I would, yet fuck those two twats. I hope they get herpes or something as equally as nasty.
“The girls played along with Marc’s plan to hurt you because, apparently, they felt like you abandoned them all because they weren’t ‘true crew’.”
I laugh. “Is that so? Do you think they’d tell their parents about the incestuous ménage they are involved in or being lying little hobags?”
Mom takes my hand. “I don’t think they lied to their mother, Tris.”
I pull my hand away. “See? No matter how honest I am—”
“Francesca has a girlfriend,” Dad says.
“Yeah, her freaking sister.”
Mom shakes her head. “A girl at the Seashore, Meghan.”
“Francesca thought it would be easier to tell her parents that she and Antoinette were with Marc than tell her she likes girls.”
“Or maybe it’s easier to tell them she likes girls than admit she is an incestuous hobag. I know I’d rather go down on a girl than admit I was an incestuous hobag.”
“They didn’t tell her, Tris. It came out in therapy.” Mom delivers the news like it’s going to change my mind about them.
“PTSD from the roses?” I shrug.
She looks down.
“If that’s true, awesome. It doesn’t change the fact that they are hobags, and traitorous ones, at that.”
She pushes my hair away from my face. “We all make mistakes, Tris.”
“You ever hear the phrase, screw me once, shame on you; screw me twice, shame on me?”
She smiles sadly.
“Neither them, nor Marc, will ever get the chance to pile any more shame on me. So, it will remain; shame on them.”
Dad looks at Mom. “Not gonna disagree with her on this. It was wrong.”
“Zandor, how is that helping her heal?”
“I think she’s doing okay.” He now sits back against the headboard. “I mean, aside from the drinking and drugs.”
“I promise not to do it again, if you promise to get back to Jersey for Brisa and My.”
He looks out of the corner of his eye at me skeptically.
“Dad, I have Momma Joe, Ranger, and Tricks, all one hundred percent on your side.”
“And Xavier and Taelyn.” Mom moves to my other side.
“Maybe Taelyn, but Uncle X”—I hold up my pinky—“wrapped.”
“Mom and I think one of us should stay.”
“No,” I say firmly. “And you and Mom need to realize I’m ready to date, so stop trying to—”
“Maybe you should talk to Marley first,” Mom interrupts me.
“Trust me; I know.”
“Because Matteo Arias’s lips didn’t taste like a rubber chicken?”
“Oh my God, of course you know his full name,” I groan.
“You bet your behind I do. And seriously, what’s the rubber chicken thing even mean?”
I don’t want him to know how crazy I actually am, so I tell him the partial truth. “They felt warm and real. No one has made me feel that way, not since …” I shake my head. “No, he doesn’t get to share the same space. And you—”
“As your father, that’s my duty. I’ve done the same with Brisa.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “But not Amias.”
“We know Amias wouldn’t treat a woman disrespectfully. And we know we’ll make damn sure you never will be again.”
Maybe not now, and not to a girl’s face, but he’s said some crap, I think.
“Matteo hasn’t been anything but respectful.”
“Matteo is a twenty-five-year-old man whose family’s wealth is generations deep.”
“So is ours,” I defend him, even though he ghosted me, or I think he did. I shut off my phone when notifications began popping up from the pictures that I was tagged in online after the kiss.
“Ours came late in life. We lived struggles, and we’ve made sure you all never took it for granted, even when our friends didn’t do the same.”
By friends, he means Melyssa and Sabato, Marcello’s parents. Marc and his sister, Torrance, have never tried to hide that they are privileged.
“He’s a famous sculptor and painter, Tris, and he disappears for months at a time and reappears with a new woman on his arm, and sometimes, apparently, men.”
“So?” I cross my arms. “I’ve kissed girls, too.”
“Tris,” Mom sighs. “We don’t want you to get hurt again.”
I whip my head around and look at her. “No one, and I mean no one, will ever get deep enough to do that to me, not ever again.”
“Sweetheart, you may think that, but hearts”—he pauses—“they break easily.”
When I yawn, Dad pushes his arm behind me and holds me while Mom rubs feather-soft circles on my back in a slow, steady rhythm.
“You can’t drink any more, Tris. Doesn’t matter if it’s legal here or not. Not when you blacked out in Paris, and not when you drink three glasses of wine and get belligerent with a bartender here.”
“He was a dick,” I tell him.
“When we figure out why you get messed up so quickly, then we reassess. Until then, no drinking.”
“Fine.” I yawn again. “As long as you and Mom promise to go back home for Brisa and My, after this show, I’ll stay off the sauce.”
“And after the show, we figure out your meds until we get home and can see what else we can put you on.”
WiZink Center
Madrid, Spain
Tris
“It was sweet of them to come again.” Mom hands me a bottle of water between saying goodbye to Matteo’s nieces and the next group of VIPs.
Would have been sweeter if their hot uncle came and not their father, who looks at me like I wish his brother would, is what I would like to say, even though he ghosted me days ago. Obviously, that’s bitchy and, of course, I loved seeing them.
“Do you think they’ll be in Italy?” she asks as she peels back the skin from the banana that she’s probably going to try to physically feed me, and I will let her, because I need a break from them, from guilt and shame, and she needs this in order to head back to Jersey without me.
I shrug as I lean over and take a bite before she has a chance to put it in my face.
Her eyes light up, as I knew they would. She’s so simple, and not in a bad way. I wish I could be more like her. I wish that little things could make me happy.