Set the Record Straight

by Hannah Bonam-Young

She’s not a closed-off person. More like a cavern you can only explore on low tide.

It only took my mom thirty seconds to say she could stay with us. Not many more to send my dad with his truck over there to pick up her things—which had already been tossed into a snow mound.

I’d key her car if you asked. I’d go full Carrie Underwood. A Louisville slugger to both headlights.”

I might have a crush on my fake girlfriend.

I actually have a really good feeling that this could have been the first day of waking up next to the love of my life.

She’s got so many hidden talents. She claims it’s from a lifetime of picking up hobbies, focusing on them until she’s had her fill, then dropping them for the next best thing.

I love that there are no games between us. No carefully chosen words. No unspoken thoughts. Just honest, blunt enthusiasm for what’s to come. It’s freeing to not have to pretend.

I’d spent my life as a half, and now I’m whole.

“I actually thought there were only two kinds of love before. That it was just love like your family or romantic love. But I think there may be hundreds of kinds. Love like a new lease on life. Love like a place to exist freely. Love like being understood. Love like the contented quiet. Love like freshly baked cookies. Love like a thin veil between wishing it’d started earlier and loving the way it began.”

That’s wonderful, Teens. Nice work. Work? Daryl, she didn’t get a promotion. Our daughter found love. Why don’t you just write down what you want me to say, and I’ll say it, Maggie.

“You’ve earned a happily ever after, and I hope that’s me.”

“I just wanted to be good enough for them. My whole life. That’s all I wanted.”

“And this fucking… hole… inside me. It’s never going to close. I’ll always be that kid who was thrown out.”

“It’s an LG-BLT flag, I’m told.”

I look around at these three people I love and feel an overwhelming sense of security. Suddenly, I realise that all I’ve wanted since leaving this town ten years ago was to feel wanted. Wanted for who I am, as I am. Welcomed with long hugs, cups of coffee, baked goods, and presents. They’re not my blood, but this is my family. This was and will always be my home. This is where I belong.

Because nothing in my life has ever felt as easy or right as this. That little version of me in my mother’s home movie knew it. Evan is my best friend. You hold on to that person tightly. And now—she’s so much more.

And, with nobody paying us mind at all, we exit the couples’ skate and begin planning my official move into Evan’s place. The start to our forever.

If I’ve learned anything about the dynamic of Clara’s family in the past year, it’s that Daryl and Clara like to team up against Maggie. Playfully, of course. But it seems as if this also means Maggie and I are becoming a team too. I like that. Our team has baked goods.