One Big Mistake: a friends to lovers rom-com

by Whitney Barbetti

  “Where’s Auntie? And the twins?”

  Violet walked me to the window. “Talking to Asa.”

  My heart thundered, echoing its reverberations in my ears as we approached the window that gazed out over Asa’s cabin.

  “Keane isn’t there,” she said, answering the question I hadn’t asked and delivering a swift kick to my stomach in the process.

  “Oh,” I said, nearly out of breath. “Right.”

  Violet was silent for a moment as we took in the twins chatting up with Asa and our aunt taking in the sunshine. “I’m sure you’re upset about people knowing I was in Amber Lake. You’re worried it might get back to Tyler.”

  I took her in. Yes, I was worried. And I’d placed all my anger on Keane, expected him to be the only one between him and Violet to have worried about it. It was if I had trouble separating Violet from the child I’d always protected, from Violet who was an adult. Who’d seen things I couldn’t understand. Who held her head up, despite the pain. “What will you do if he finds out?”

  Violet shrugged. “I guess I don’t worry about it too much.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe that.

  “Navy.” She placed a hand on my shoulder. “You’re the one who got me out of Amber Lake, because you knew that’s the first place he’d look. So, if he’s looking, and if he finds out somehow that I was seen in Amber Lake, it’s not really much of a surprise. Is it?”

  She wasn’t wrong. And that only made me feel worse for how I’d punished Keane.

  “He told me not to tell you we’d seen his ex. Megan.”

  “I know. He told me.” And it still stung. Every girl that had been a part of Keane’s life had him in ways I hadn’t. It was hard not to feel jealousy at that, hard to not compare myself and wonder why there’d been all of them and until that fateful night, he’d never looked at me the same as he’d looked at them. That smile he’d given them, the one I’d always yearned to have directed at me, had never been mine.

  “I dunno if it makes a difference, but he didn’t seem to even want to see her.”

  “Well, relationships are complicated.”

  “You think I don’t know that? Hello.” Violet pointed her thumbs at her belly. “But it was more than that. He… just didn’t care. It sounds callous, but he didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t look at her like someone might look at someone they loved.”

  “You don’t really know that side of Keane,” I began, but Violet cut me off.

  “He didn’t look at her the way he looks at you. I bet Megan wouldn’t have dumped him if he admired her the way he admires you.”

  My stomach flipped. What did she mean by that? I knew how Keane looked at me. Like his best friend, and more recently someone he had complicated feelings for.

  “He doesn’t love her,” she continued, and I shook my head, giving her a look that said I couldn’t talk about that. Couldn’t go there.

  Aunt Isabel sat in one of the Adirondack chairs, stretching out with her hands behind her neck while Rose walked across a two-by-four like it was a balance beam and Jade picked up a screwdriver that Asa immediately but gently removed from her hand with a shake of his head. Clearly, he could sense imminent danger.

  “I wonder if this is what having divorced parents feels like.”

  It caught me off guard. “What?”

  “You and Keane. He only left because he knew you were coming.”

  My fingers curled on the windowsill.

  “Is this what divorced parents are like? Always avoiding one another?”

  “That’s how you think of us?”

  “It doesn’t help that you both look like you’re running from something that hurts too much to face.” She blew out a breath. “But yeah. That’s what you guys seem like. I mean, I’m not an expert on divorced parents. We lost both of ours in one go.”

  Asa handed a hammer to Jade and instructed her use it to pound a nail in. Rose yelled something at Jade that had my aunt turning and giving her a look like, Did you really just say that? which caused Jade and Rose to laugh as my aunt shook her head in resigned amusement. And Asa looked at all three of them like they were crazy.

  “We didn’t lose our parents, Lets,” I said, after a minute of staring out at the family we’d made. “They lost us.”

  27

  KEANE

  On Saturday, I was up before my mom, pouring cereal into a bowl and starting a pot of coffee before I heard the light padding of her feet down the hallway.

  “Oh, you’re awake!” she said, stunned. She wrapped her robe more tightly around her and noted the time on the clock twice, like she couldn’t believe I was up and at ‘em this early. “Is something going on? Just give me a minute, I’ll get some eggs going.”

  I dropped a spoon into my cereal bowl and turned to her. “I got it, Mom.” I showed her the box and put it back into the cupboard. “Not as good as yours, but it’ll do.”

  “Do you need to be up at the cabin early for something?”

  “No.” I shoveled the first bite into my mouth. “Oh, in the freezer is mint chip.”

  “Mint chip,” she repeated, like it was of a foreign language. “Why?”

  “You said you wanted it,” I reminded her. “So I got you some.”

  “Uh… okay.” She held the collar of her robe as she stared at me, like I was an alien from another planet.

  This conversation was a long time coming, a loose end I’d never tied. And I knew it would probably hurt—but I needed to rip the bandage off sooner.

  Like she hadn’t heard me, she put a pan on the stove and turned the burner on. “How many eggs?” I could tell she was half asleep and the part of her that was awake was disoriented.

  “Mom, I’m okay with cereal.” I shoveled another bite, just to prove it to her. “Delicious.”

  “You don’t like cornflakes.”

  The bite went down heavy, but it was no fault of the cereal itself but rather the things I wasn’t saying. “I don’t mind them, Mom.” I pushed the bowl away from me for a minute. “Would I rather have a breakfast you make for me? Fuck yeah. But you don’t need to do that for me all the time. I shouldn’t have made you feel like it was expected. I do like cornflakes. And frozen waffles and even straight up buttered toast.”

  Her hands paused with an egg in each hand. There was a flicker of confusion that flashed in her eyes. Eyes that were mirrors of Asa’s.

  “You don’t have to wait on me. You know that, right?”

  “But I want to.”

  “And I don’t want you to.” The coffee maker switched to warm and I stood, grabbing a mug for her and me both, pouring the coffee before she could. I poured a decent amount of creamer and sugar in and handed her hers. “I appreciate it, Mom. But you don’t need to do this every morning. We’re big boys. We’d be okay if you threw a bag of bagels at us and told us to figure it out.”

  “I would never do that.”

  I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and leaned so that my head rested on top of hers. She was so much shorter than me and it made me feel like shit that I hadn’t helped her more. “I know. You’re the best. But you don’t need to be our chef and our maid.”

  “I’m confused. Are you okay?” She angled her head so she could look up at me, her brow furrowed in concern.

  What a loaded question. The short answer was: no. The long answer was: fuck no. What Navy had said to her sister, about what her life had been like before I’d know her, had landed in me in a way I couldn’t totally process. But it had put my life into perspective, reminding me of the mom I was fortunate enough to have. “I just had an epiphany. Should’ve had one a long time ago. Someday, I’m gonna need to grow up. And that means you won’t be making me breakfast every day or packing me a lunch to take.”

  I saw the first crack in my mom’s veneer. “But I like doing those things.”

  “I know,” I said. “But you don’t have to.” How did I tell my mom it was okay to have a life outside of her sons? She’d beco
me a stay at home mom when our dad’s career had taken off, had practically raised us on her own. And now that we were both spreading our wings, I didn’t like the idea of her lacking other things to fill her time; other things that could give her happiness in our absence. “Pretty soon, Asa’s cabin will be finished. And once my cabin is done, I’m going to get an apartment here in town.”

  My mom’s chin wobbled. “You don’t need to move out.”

  I gave her a sad smile, bringing her around the counter so that we could sit at the island together. “I do need to.”

  “I know Asa needs his space, but—”

  “It’s not about me needing space. It’s about you needing something more than just me and Asa to fill your days with.” Fuck, this sucked. But I loved my mom enough to want to see her happier. Even if that meant going through sadness first.

  “But you’re my boys. My only babies.”

  “I know. And we love you, Momma. I know things have been different with Asa, but he’s still your boy. And so am I. We’re just finally ready to grow up.”

  Her eyes watered. “I’m not.”

  “Well, I know I just said I was ready, but I’m not. I love having you around. I’m not saying I’m gonna leave and never come back. But believe it or not, I know how to fold socks. And I’m perfectly capable of making myself a sandwich. You’ve taught me well, Momma.”

  She wrung her hands, dropped them in her lap and then wrung them again. I hated seeing her struggling like this, knowing I was the cause. But I was confident that this was the push she needed. It wasn’t just a baby bird that needed to learn how to fly, the mama bird needed to learn to leave her babies too.

  “I’m not saying that I don’t want you around, or that I don’t need you around.”

  “Keane,” she said, her eyes covered in a layer of moisture. “My baby.” She ran a hand over my arm until her fingers curled around mine. “You were my independent baby. Asa was the one who needed me. And then you switched roles when you became adults.”

  I didn’t tell her I’d become more needy in an effort to fill the hole my brother’s injury had caused for her. Because she was still my mom. I’d always need her.

  “Asa needed me more as a baby. He doesn’t need me anymore.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “It’s just different.”

  She sighed and wiped the back of her hands over her cheeks. “That’s something that no one prepared me for. That the less you needed me, the more I needed you. How did that happen?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her. “You don’t need us, momma. You need to take care of yourself first now. Dad’s hardly ever home and you guys don’t do anything when he is. You should take a cruise or go drink margaritas on a beach somewhere.”

  “It’s hard to think about doing that.”

  “Yeah, because you can kind of be a martyr.” As soon as the word slipped through my lips, I thought of Navy. Fuck.

  “What’s wrong?” my mom asked. I must have made a face, because she pressed a hand to my forehead. “Are you ill?”

  “No.” I pulled her hand away. Fuck me, Navy was like my mom in so many ways. Both martyrs, both willing to suffer needlessly for the ones they loved most. “I’m okay. But I want you to be okay too, when we’re not here for you to feed or clean up after.”

  “It’s hard for me to think of doing anything else.”

  “And that’s why you need to. You did a great job raising us to be strong men. We might fuck things up, but you did more than your fair share.”

  “You know,” she began after a moment. She stared into her still full cup. “I don’t remember when the last time I carried you was, Keane. You used to grab ahold of my legs and let me swing you around while I did dishes. Got a great leg work out that way,” she said with a conspiratorial smile. “And now I don’t even come up to your shoulders. At some point I picked you up without ever realizing it was the very last time I would.”

  “Maybe it’s my time to pick you up,” I said as a joke. But her eyes were sad. I stood in front of her and offered my arms to her. I couldn’t heal her hurts, but I needed to do this. That’s what I told myself, at least. When she went into my arms for a hug, I bent further and then lifted, picking her up several inches off the ground.

  “Keane,” she said with a laugh and a squeal. “Put me down!”

  I did as she asked, and her laughter continued.

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “And I can’t believe you woke up at the ass crack of dawn for two decades to make me eggs. Believe it or not, but I can use a stove.”

  “I’ve hardly seen you in the kitchen to wash even a single dish. Hard to believe you know how to turn a burner on.” She stood to refill my mug and I stopped her.

  “I got it, Mom. Drink yours, so I can fill up your cup.”

  “Oh, okay.” She sat back down and raised the mug to her lips.

  “You’re getting the hang of it,” I said. “Sit more, ask for more help. I probably don’t know where the dishwasher tablets are, but I bet I can figure out how to turn the dishwasher on.”

  “That would be a miracle,” she said with a small, teary smile. “Where’s Asa?”

  “Sleeping,” I answered. “I turned off his alarm since he wasn’t waking to it. He worked late yesterday at the cabin. Might’ve gotten a bit too much sun.”

  “Oh, I have aloe vera somewhere,” she said. “I’ll grab that and maybe I can get his avocados mashed before he gets up.”

  “Mom,” I said when she stood up from her stool.

  “What?”

  I looked pointedly back at the stool, and then it clicked in her head.

  “Oh, right. Okay. There’s probably aloe in your bathroom. He can get it though, right?”

  I nodded, pouring more creamer in her coffee. “He can. He can also take care of his breakfast.”

  “Okay. Can I still make you breakfast on occasion?”

  “Like I would say no,” I told her, sipping my coffee as I swallowed my now mushy cereal. “But don’t wake up early to do it. We’re big boys. We can figure out how to fend for ourselves.”

  “What if I’m already awake when you guys come out for breakfast?”

  “Then you drink your coffee and watch your shows in peace.”

  “I’ll try. I guess I’ll need to start buying bagels when I do the grocery shopping, huh? Just so I can throw them at you.”

  "Yeah, you probably should. And you should use this money to do it.” I slid the envelope I’d picked up at the bank the day before. “Least we could do to pitch in around here.”

  My mom eyed the envelope and I knew it was going to take some getting used to for her, and for us too not to expect too much or take for granted what we already had.

  “Just take it. We eat a lot.”

  “Oh, I know you do. But the whole point of you guys living here was so you could save money while you built and worked on the cabins.”

  “And we’ve saved a ton on rent. Let us buy groceries, at the very least.” I shoved the envelope closer to her. “Don’t wait up on me for dinner tonight, though.”

  “Got a hot date?”

  I didn’t. Yet. But pulling off the bandage with my mom had inspired me to do it with Navy too. “We’ll see,” I said. “I hope so.”

  “Who is it this week?”

  “It’s Navy.” I finished my cereal and rinsed my dish, nearly leaving it in the sink before I remembered the talk I’d just had with my mom. I put it in the dishwasher, confused by my mom’s silence to my answer.

  “Navy. As in your Navy?”

  “Yes. My Navy.”

  I expected shock; I expected at the very least surprise. But my mom just smiled knowingly at me.

  “About time, Keane.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s yours. That’s what I mean. She’s always been yours.” She brought her coffee up to her lips. “And you’re hers, too.”

  It lightened the weight on my chest tha
t my mom thought so.

  I just had to convince Navy of it.

  28

  NAVY

  It was a quiet evening at the store—just Roger and me. My aunt had taken Violet to her doctor appointment a couple hours earlier after an appointment with a health insurance provider. She’d swooped in, doing all the things I hadn’t been able to do for Violet, for the twins. She had interviewed three people to fill in for Delilah, and didn’t blame me for Delilah quitting, saying, “It was bound to happen sooner or later.” Like that’s all there was to say about that. While she didn’t love the idea of Violet living forty minutes from town, even she agreed it was for the best, for the moment. Once the baby came, we’d have to figure out other plans.

  I could breathe much better now knowing my aunt was home. I’d been so absorbed in my failures to fully realize that much of it wasn’t my fault.

  But there was still that ache in the center of my chest. It was hard to move around it, hard to breathe deeply without feeling its pressure. Not talking to Keane—not being honest with him—had been so very much my mistake. I’d berated him for lying, but hadn’t I been doing that for years? Lying by omission was still lying. As he’d reminded me.

  “How ya doing?” Roger asked, leaning over the counter as I pulled small bills out of the safe and replaced the larger ones in the till with them.

  “Fine.” I started counting out fives. I was somewhere around fifty-five or sixty-five when Roger interrupted my thought to ask if I wanted a coffee.

  “No.” I took a breath and started counting all over again. “Thanks though,” I mumbled when I’d reached one hundred. I pulled one one-hundred-dollar bill from the tray and put it in the envelope we designated for larger bills and closed the safe.

  “You just look really tired,” he added, when I hadn’t asked for his opinion at all.