Read Ambrosia (A Flowering Novella) for Free Online Page B

afternoons than sitting in the car, eating chicken nuggets, and trying to dry out your clothes using the crappy car heating vents. But this is what I signed up for. I’ll leave the rock stars and the billionaires and the fairy tale princes to the girls who want them. Jack is my dream come true, even like this. He’s my best friend and I wouldn’t trade cold chicken nuggets and rainy Sundays for anything.
    “What about Alana?” I ask.
    He looks at me. “What about her?”
    “What about doing the mother-son dance with Alana? Yeah, it’s not really traditional, but she’s family.”
    “Really?”
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know. I mean, Alana and I... well, I mean, it’s probably not normal to dance with your ex-whatever she is at your wedding,” he points out.
    “So? I’m not jealous. I’m grateful, really. Alana is part of you and, without her, I don’t know if you would have survived long enough to be here today, so I’m not going to get into what’s normal. I love you both. A wedding is supposed to be a celebration of people, of family, of love. She’s all of that. For us both, so why not?”
    He pauses and stares out the window at the parking lot. “I’ll think about it. Is that okay? Do I have to decide today?”
    I shake my head. “Nope. It was an idea. I still need to pick out a song for my dad and me. I figured I would try to see if we could visit them next weekend and maybe he and I can talk about it. Is that okay? Do you have to work?”
    “No, it’s fine. I’m sure I can get time off,” he says, distracted.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “I’m never going to be okay, Lily. You know that, right? I mean, I’m trying like hell and I’m better. God, it may not seem like it, but I feel like you came into my life and you taught me how to breathe. But I guess I thought that maybe someday I wouldn’t be the kid who watched his mom die. I suppose I thought someday I would be something more than that.”
    “You are more than that,” I argue.
    “No, I know. I’m not saying it right. I just mean that I thought someday that something would define me instead of what happened. But I guess I realized today that anything that defines me is always going to be in addition to that. Like I could be the fucking president and I’d be the president who watched his mom die.”
    “You’re going into politics?” I tease.
    “You know, you’re lucky you’re so damn perfect, princess.”
    “I get it, Jack. And I’m serious, too. You just need to tell me what you need. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the damn wedding. I don’t care when it comes to you. When that darkness starts again, you just need to say the word. I can’t change it and I can’t fix it, but you never need to put it aside because it’s inconvenient. You’re not inconvenient.”
    “Are you writing your vows?” he asks.
    I pause. “I don’t know. We hadn’t really talked about it, but maybe. Why?”
    “You’re gonna make me look bad if we do. I’ll be up there like, ‘well, Lily, I love you, and you’re awesome, and you’re hot, and I like your toes,’ and you’ll be all, “profound comment and heartfelt expression of love.’”
    “Yeah, I’m not the one who used to write lyrics that people fell in love with,” I remind him.
    “That was ages ago. And no one loved the lyrics. They liked feeling badass because they knew someone in a band. There’s a difference. It didn’t even matter that we were some shitty band from school. People are dumb.”
    “My point,” I say, “is that you have so much more to say than you give yourself credit for. I love listening to you, even when you’re talking nonsense about math.”
    “Math is never nonsense.”
    “Sure. Speaking of nonsense, I have to do an annotated bibliography.”
    “Ah, I see. ‘I’m here for you, Jack, as long as I don’t have to write an annotated bibliography.’”
    I know he’s teasing, but it breaks my heart a little anyway, and he must see it