Regretting You

by Hoover, Colleen

  “I still can’t believe you’re on Tinder,” Jenny mutters. “You’re sixteen. Don’t you have to be eighteen to even open an account?”

  Lexie grins. “I am eighteen on Tinder. And speaking of things that surprise us, I’m still shocked you’ve had the same boyfriend for more than one night. It’s so unlike you.” She looks at Jonah. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Jonah says with a mouthful.

  Jenny and Lexie have always had this kind of banter. I find it entertaining, mostly because they’re so much alike. Jenny had a string of boyfriends throughout her twenties, and had there been Tinder back then, Jenny would have been Tinder Queen.

  Me, not so much. Chris is the only guy I’ve ever dated. The only guy I’ve ever kissed. That happens when you meet the man you’re going to marry at such a young age. Hell, I met Chris before I even knew what I wanted to study in college.

  I guess it didn’t matter, though, because I didn’t last that long in college. Having Clara so young put a hold on any dreams I had for myself.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. Now that Clara is getting older, I’ve been feeling this gaping hole inside me, like it’s sucking the air out of each day that passes by, where all I do is live for Chris and Clara.

  Clara finally walks into the house in the middle of my self-deprecating thought. She stops about five feet from the table, ignoring everyone and everything around her as her finger moves over her phone screen.

  “Where have you been?” Chris asks her. She’s only about thirty minutes later than usual, but he notices.

  “Sorry,” she says, placing her phone down on the table next to Lexie’s. She reaches over Jonah’s shoulder to grab her plate. “Theater meeting after school and then one of my classmates needed a ride.” She smiles at me. “Happy birthday, Mom.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Who needed a ride?” Chris asks her.

  Jenny and I look at each other right when Clara says, “Miller Adams.”

  Shit.

  Chris drops his fork to his plate.

  Lexie says, “Excuse me? Where was my phone call about this?”

  Chris looks at Jenny and then at me like he’s about to scold us for lying to him. I grip his leg under the table. A sign I don’t want him to mention we were talking about it. He knows as well as I do that Jenny is a good source of information for what’s going on in our daughter’s life, and if he reveals Jenny was telling me about their conversation, we’ll all suffer.

  “Why are you giving Miller Adams a ride?” he asks her.

  “Yes,” Lexie says. “Why did you give Miller Adams a ride? Don’t leave out a single detail.”

  Clara ignores Lexie, responding only to her father. “It was barely a mile. Why do you seem so bothered by it?”

  “Don’t do it again,” Chris says.

  “I vote do it again,” Lexie says.

  Clara looks at Chris in disbelief. “It was hot out—I wasn’t going to make him walk.”

  Chris raises his eyebrow, something he doesn’t do very often, which makes it all the more intimidating when he does. “I don’t want you involved with him, Clara. And you shouldn’t be giving guys rides. It isn’t safe.”

  “Your father is right,” Lexie says. “Only give hot guys rides when I’m with you.”

  Clara falls down into her seat and rolls her eyes. “Oh my God, Dad. He’s not a stranger, and I’m not dating him. He’s had the same girlfriend for a year.”

  “Yeah, but his girlfriend is in college, so it’s not like she’ll be in your way,” Lexie says.

  “Lexie?” Chris says her name as more of a warning.

  Lexie nods and runs her fingers across her mouth, like she’s zipping her lips shut.

  I’m a little in shock that Clara is sitting here acting like she didn’t just call Jenny and slightly freak out that this kid was flirting with her. She’s acting like she doesn’t care, to both Chris and Lexie. But I know she does, thanks to Jenny. I stare at Clara in awe of her ability to pretend otherwise, but that awe is accompanied by a slight disturbance. I’m equally as impressed by her ability to lie as I am Jenny’s ability to lie.

  It’s scary. I couldn’t lie if my life depended on it. I get flustered, and my cheeks flush. I do whatever I can to avoid confrontation.

  “I don’t care if he’s single or married or a billionaire. I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t give him another ride.”

  Lexie makes a move like she’s unzipping the imaginary zipper on her lips. “You’re her dad—you shouldn’t say it like that. If you make a guy off limits to a teenage girl, that only makes us want him more.”

  Chris points his fork at Lexie and looks around the table. “Who keeps inviting her to these things?”

  I laugh, but I also know Lexie is right. This isn’t going to end well if Chris keeps this up. I can feel it. Clara already has a crush on the guy, and now her father has made him off limits. I’ll have to warn Chris later not to bring it up again unless he wants Hank Adams to be Clara’s future father-in-law.

  “I feel out of the loop,” Jonah says. “What’s so bad about Miller Adams?”

  “There’s no loop, and there’s nothing wrong with him,” Clara assures him. “It’s just my parents, being overprotective as usual.”

  She’s right. My mother didn’t shelter me as a child in any sense, which is part of the reason I ended up pregnant with Clara at seventeen. Because of that, Chris and I take it overboard with Clara sometimes. We admit that. But Clara is our only child, and we don’t want her to end up in a situation like we did.

  “Miller is a good kid,” Jonah says. “I have him in class. Nothing like Hank was at that age.”

  “You have him in class for forty minutes a day,” Chris says. “You can’t know him that well. Apples don’t fall far from their trees.”

  Jonah stares at Chris after that response. He chooses not to continue the conversation, though. Sometimes when Chris wants to make a point, he doesn’t let up until the person he’s arguing with gives in. When we were younger, I remember him and Jonah always going toe to toe. Jonah was the only one who wouldn’t give in and let Chris win.

  Something has changed since he’s been back, though. He’s quieter around Chris. Always lets him get the final word. I don’t think it’s a show of weakness, though. In fact, it impresses me. Sometimes Chris still comes off as the hotheaded teenager he was when I met him. Jonah, however, seems above it. Like it’s a waste of time to try to prove Chris wrong.

  Maybe that’s another reason I don’t like that Jonah’s back. I don’t like seeing Chris through Jonah’s eyes.

  “What makes you say that about him? Apples don’t fall far from their trees,” Clara asks. “What’s up with Miller’s parents?”

  Chris shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Clara shrugs and takes a bite of her burger. I’m glad she’s letting it go. She’s a lot like Chris in that she can sometimes be combative. You never know which way it’s going to go with her.

  I, on the other hand, am not combative at all. It bothers Chris sometimes. He likes to prove a point, so when I give in and don’t give him that opportunity, he feels like I win.

  It’s the first thing I learned after marrying him. Sometimes you have to walk away from the fight in order to win it.

  Jonah seems just as ready to move on from the conversation as the rest of us. “You didn’t turn in your application for the UIL film project.”

  “I know,” Clara says.

  “Tomorrow is the deadline.”

  “I can’t find anyone to sign up with. It’s too hard to take on by myself.”

  It bothers me that Jonah entertains this idea of hers. Clara wants to go to college and study acting. I have no doubt she’d be good at it because she’s phenomenal onstage. But I also know what the odds are of actually succeeding in such a competitive industry. Not to mention if you are one of the few who do succeed, you’re dealing with the price of fame. It’s not someth
ing I want for my daughter. Chris and I would love acting to be a backup major to something that can actually sustain her financially.

  “You don’t want to help her with it?” Jonah asks, his attention on Lexie.

  Lexie makes a face. “Heck no. I work too much.”

  Jonah returns his attention to Clara. “Meet me before first period starts tomorrow. There’s another student looking for a partner, and I’ll see if they’re interested.”

  Clara nods, just as Lexie starts to wrap up the rest of her burger. “Where are you going?” Clara asks.

  “Tinder date,” Jenny answers for her.

  Clara laughs. “Is he at least our age?”

  “Of course. You know I hate college boys. They all smell like beer.” Lexie leans down and whispers something in Clara’s ear. Clara laughs, and then Lexie leaves.

  Clara begins asking Jonah questions about the film project requirements. Jenny and Chris are in a conversation of their own, discussing everything she missed at the hospital while on maternity leave.

  I talk to no one and pick at my food.

  It’s my birthday, and I’m surrounded by everyone important to me, but for some reason, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt. I should be happy right now, but something is off. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe I’m getting bored.

  Or worse. Maybe I’m boring.

  Birthdays can do that to you. I’ve been analyzing my life all day, thinking about how I need something of my own. After having Clara so young, Chris and I married, and he’s always taken care of us financially since graduating college. I’ve always taken care of the house, but Clara will be seventeen in a couple months.

  Jenny has a career and a new child and is about to have a new husband.

  Chris got a promotion three months ago, which means he’s at the office even more now.

  When Clara is away at college, where will that leave me?

  My thoughts are still stuck on the state of my life an hour after we’ve finished dinner. I’m loading the dishwasher when Jonah walks into the kitchen. He stops the door from swaying before it even starts. I appreciate that about him. He’s a good dad, and he hates my kitchen door. That’s two things.

  Maybe there’s hope for our friendship yet.

  He’s holding Elijah against his chest. “Wet rag, please.”

  That’s when I see the spit-up all over Jonah’s shirt. I grab a rag and wet it, then hand it to him. I take Elijah from him while he cleans himself up.

  I look down at Elijah and smile. He looks a little like Clara did at this age. Fine blond hair, dark-blue eyes, a perfect little round head. I start to sway back and forth. He’s such a good baby. Better than Clara. She was colicky and cried all the time. Elijah sleeps and eats and cries so little that sometimes Jenny will call me when he does cry just so we can gush over how cute he sounds when he’s upset.

  I glance up, and Jonah is watching us. He looks away and reaches toward the diaper bag. “I got you a birthday present.”

  I’m confused. Before dinner he seemed so tense with me. Now he’s giving me a birthday present? He hands me an unwrapped gift. A gallon-size ziplock bag full of . . . candy.

  What are we, twelve?

  It takes me a moment, but as soon as I see that it’s an entire bag of watermelon Jolly Ranchers, I want to smile. But I frown, instead.

  He remembered.

  Jonah clears his throat and tosses the rag into the sink. He takes Elijah from me. “We’re about to head home. Happy birthday, Morgan.”

  I smile, and it’s probably the only genuine smile I’ve given him since he’s been back.

  There’s a moment between us—a five-second stare, where he smiles and I nod—before he leaves the kitchen.

  I don’t know exactly what that five seconds meant, but maybe we’ve come to some kind of truce. He really is trying. He’s great to Jenny, great to Elijah, one of Clara’s favorite teachers.

  Why—when he’s so great to everyone I love—have I been wishing he wasn’t in any of our lives?

  Once Jenny, Jonah, and Elijah leave, Clara goes to her room. It’s where she spends the majority of her evenings. She used to want to spend her evenings with me, but that stopped when she was around fourteen.

  Chris spends his evenings with his iPad, watching Netflix or sports.

  I waste mine away watching cable. The same shows every night. My weeks are so routine.

  I go to bed at the same time every night.

  I wake up at the same time every morning.

  I go to the same gym and do the same workout routine and run the same errands and cook the same scheduled meals.

  Maybe it’s because it’s my thirty-fourth birthday, but I’ve felt like this cloud has been hanging over me since I woke up this morning. Everyone around me seems to have a purpose, yet I feel like I’ve reached the age of thirty-four and have absolutely no life outside of Clara and Chris. I shouldn’t be this boring. Some of my friends from high school haven’t even started families yet, and my daughter will be out of the house in twenty-one months.

  Chris walks into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of water out of the fridge. He picks up the bag of Jolly Ranchers and inspects it. “Why would you buy an entire bag of the worst flavor?”

  “It was a gift from Jonah.”

  He laughs and drops the bag on the counter. “What a terrible gift.”

  I try not to read too much into the fact that he doesn’t remember watermelon is my favorite flavor. I don’t necessarily remember all the things he liked when we first met.

  “I’ll be late tomorrow. Don’t bother with dinner.”

  I nod, but I already bothered with dinner. It’s in the slow cooker, but I don’t tell him that. He starts to walk out of the kitchen. “Chris?”

  He stops short and faces me.

  “I’ve been thinking about going back to college.”

  “For what?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know yet.”

  He tilts his head. “But why now? You’re thirty-four.”

  Wow.

  Chris immediately regrets saying that when he sees how much his choice of words hurts me. He pulls me in for a hug. “That came out wrong. I’m sorry.” He kisses the side of my head. “I just didn’t know it’s something you were still interested in since I make plenty of money to support us. But if you want a degree”—he kisses me on the forehead—“go to college. I’m gonna take a shower.”

  He leaves the kitchen, and I stare at the kitchen door as it swings back and forth. I really hate that door.

  I kind of want to sell the house and start over, but Chris would never go for it. It would give me something to put my energy into, though. Because right now, my energy is pent up. I feel swollen with it as I think about how much I want a new kitchen door.

  I might remove the whole door tomorrow. I’d rather have no door at all than a door that doesn’t even work like a door should work. Doors should slam shut when you’re angry.

  I open a Jolly Rancher and pop it in my mouth. The taste gives me a feeling of nostalgia, and I think back to when we were all teenagers, craving the nights the four of us would spend driving around in Jonah’s car, me and Chris in the back seat, Jenny in the front. Jonah had a thing for Jolly Ranchers, so he always kept a bag in the console.

  He never ate the watermelon ones. It was his least favorite flavor, and my favorite, so he always left the watermelon for me.

  I can’t believe it’s been that long since I’ve had one. I swear, sometimes I forget who I was or what I loved before I got pregnant with Clara. It’s like the day I found out I was pregnant, I became someone else. I guess that happens when you become a mother, though. Your focus is no longer on yourself. Your life becomes all about this beautiful tiny little human you created.

  Clara walks into the kitchen, no longer a beautiful tiny little human. She’s beautiful and grown, and I ache at the loss of her childhood sometimes. When she’d sit in my lap or I’d snuggle up to her in bed until she fell asleep.
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  Clara reaches to my bag. “Yay. Jolly Ranchers.” She grabs one and walks to the refrigerator, opening it. “Can I have a soda?”

  “It’s late. You don’t need the caffeine.”

  Clara turns around and eyes me. “But it’s your birthday. We still haven’t done your birthday board.”

  I forgot about the birthday board. I actually perk up for the first time today. “You’re right. Grab me one too.”

  Clara grins, and I go to my craft closet and pull out my birthday board. Clara may be too old to sit with me while I rock her to sleep, but at least she still gets just as excited about our traditions as I do. We started this one when she was eight years old. Chris doesn’t involve himself in this tradition, so it’s just something Clara and I do twice a year. It’s like a vision board, but rather than making a new one every year, we just add to the same one. We each have our own, and we add to them only on our respective birthdays. Clara’s birthday is still a couple months away, so I grab my board and leave hers in the closet.

  Clara takes a seat next to me at the kitchen table and then selects a purple Sharpie. Before she starts writing, she looks over stuff we’ve put on it over the years. She runs her fingers over something she wrote on my board when she was eleven. I hope my mom gets pregnant this year. She even cut out a tiny picture of a rattle and pasted it next to her wish.

  “Still not too late to make me a big sister,” she says. “You’re only thirty-four.”

  “Not happening.”

  She laughs. I look over the board, searching for one of the goals I wrote for myself last year. I find the picture I pasted of a flower garden in the top left of the board because it was my goal to uproot the bushes in the backyard and replant them with flowers. I met that goal in the spring.

  I find the other goal I had, and I frown when I read it. Find something to fill all the empty corners.

  I’m sure Clara thought I was being literal when I wrote it last year. I didn’t actually want to fill every corner in my house with something. My goal was more of an internal one. Even last year, I’d been feeling unfulfilled. I’m proud of my husband and proud of my daughter, but when I look at myself and my life separate from theirs, there’s very little I can find to be proud of. I just feel like I’m full of all this untapped potential. Sometimes my chest feels hollow, as if I’ve lived a life with nothing significant enough to fill it. My heart is full, but that’s the only part of me that feels any weight.