“I didn't—” I start.
“You ungrateful brat,” she says. “Do you realize what I put into you? Do you know how much I'm responsible for you growing up to be this person? Do you know how much better you deserve to be treated than as some bonus girl for some guy with a girlfriend?”
“You're right, what I really deserve is someone calling me an ungrateful brat.”
“Oh, you know what I—”
“This has nothing to do with what I deserve,” I say. “Your problem is that this is something you don't know about and it's something that you think is weird and you won't even take a second to think that there might be some other way to have a relationship!”
“So what,” she says. “This is just some experiment?”
“I didn't say that.”
“You think this is going to last?” she says. “You're going to let this boy find new girls forever?”
“No, I don't think it's going to last forever, okay?” I scream. “And not because it's polyamory, because I'm fucking sixteen years old, and the only people who are going to marry their high school boyfriend are freaks like Aanya and Jake. Why does everything have to be about my future, can't I just be happy for right now?”
“And you're telling me you're happy right now.”
“What, in this very fucking minute? Yeah, I'm delighted.”
“You watch your language.”
“It's not them making me unhappy, Mom,” I say. “It's been worrying about what people will think. What you'll think. And you're living up to every single fear I had about how you'd react, so I hope you're happy.”
“Well, at least you know me,” she says. “Because I sure as hell don't know you.. I raised you better than this.”
That's enough. “No, Sara,” I say. “Apparently you didn't.”
She doesn't stop me on the way out to the car. No one does.
I drive two blocks before I'm crying too hard to see. I pull over and call Theo.
“Holy shit. Taylor. What's wrong? Taylor, breathe, are you hurt? Baby, what's—”
“I'm on Sycamore,” I manage to say, eventually. “By the playground. Come get me.”
“I'm on my way.”
“W-wait,” I say.
“Okay.”
“Bring Josey.”
I'm out of the car and sitting on the swing set by the time they pull up in Theo's car. They find me quickly. It takes them a second a half to figure out that I've had a fight with my mom, but it’s got to be five minutes before I can cry out the whole story, about what we said to each other, and about Lucas, and Lucas's mother, and how the whole school probably knows by now because God only knows how many parents she's had time to call.
“Gotta love adults who ruin teenagers' lives,” Theo says. He's trying not to punch something, and I like it.
“She thinks I hurt her son,” I say.
“So?”
“So parents do stupid things when they think their kids are getting hurt,” I say. “Like call them sluts, for example.”
Theo paces, and Josey sits on the swing next to me and holds my hand.
“I just need somewhere to go tonight,” I say. “I can't go home right now. I can't think about school tomorrow, I just...”
“My house,” Josey says. “Of course my house.”
I hug her.
Josey's parents have a few choice words to say about my sort-of stepmother and hover around some making hot chocolate just like they did for Josey's college rejection. I don't know what they would have done if they'd found out she was pregnant. They probably would have caused some world chocolate shortage.
Her aunt Annie kisses the top of Theo's head while her father gives me my mug. “It's good to see you around again,” she says to him.
“Annie,” Josey says.
“I know, I know. So complicated. Everything with your generation is always so complicated.”
Theo gives me a half-smile, which seems kind of out of place until I feel my mouth relax and realize I was smiling at him first.
“Maybe everything will be okay,” I say. “At school, at least.”
“Totally,” Theo says. “After all, everyone in our generation should be used to complicated by now, right, Annie?”
“He listens after all!” she says, on her way back to the kitchen to help Josey's mother clean up.
“God,” I say. “I don't know if I have it in me.”
“It's gonna be okay,” Theo says. “You go to school. You did your History presentation on Friday, so you listen to the other half do theirs. You take that vocab quiz in English. You eat tater tots with me. And hey, now we can make out in front of people.”
I groan. “I am not going to make out in front of people.”
“It's pretty fun,” Josey says. “Especially when you're a social pariah and everything you do makes everyone uncomfortable anyway. Sometimes it's fun to just milk that.”
“Oh, God, I'm going to be a social pariah now, aren't I.”
“There are worse things,” Theo says.
“Until you two graduate and I have literally no friends!”
“You'll have to make friends with freshman who don't know about your scandalous past,” Josey says.
“Stop making it woooorse.”
Theo kisses my temple. “You need popcorn,” he says.
“And bad movies,” Josey says.
“How about good movies?” I say.
Josey stands up and clears our mugs. “No. Bad movies. No thinking.”
We spread out pillows and blankets on their basement floor, each of us a few feet away from each other, me in-between the two of them. How tired and comfortable that makes us answers my unspoken question of what the sleeping arrangements are going to be. Josey's parents make a point of wandering down unexpected two or three times, just to let us know that there's not going to be any sex tonight, I think. That
