Mom and I sat together on the couch while Lizzie was in the shower.
“So, everything went well?” Mom asked, trying to keep her tone neutral.
“It did, actually. He helped Lizzie a lot, and she seemed to like him too.”
She nodded slowly. “It’s nice that he’s putting in the effort.”
“He is doing a lot more than putting in effort, Mom.” Derek had gone above and beyond for me, doing things he was scared of, but doing them for me.
She turned to look at me, ignoring the show we watched together every week. “This man is really something special to you, isn’t he?”
I turned to her, slightly incredulous. “Mom, you have no idea.” With every passing day, I was falling deeper and harder, moving into areas I didn’t think I ever could. My heart beat for him the way it beat for Lizzie, not just because I loved him, but because that love was unconditional. “I want to spend the rest of my life with him.” My eyes watered, not from sadness, but from the depth of my emotion, the profound feeling in my chest. It was like when I held Lizzie for the first time and that love rang true. I felt that way about Derek because I was so deeply in love with him.
My mom’s eyes softened. “What is it about him?” she whispered, not challenging me, just wanting to know.
“Everything,” I said with a sarcastic laugh. “He’s been on his own for ten years, you know, typical billionaire playboy bullshit. Then we got together, and he just…became this deeply committed man. He only has eyes for me. He’s always honest with me. He doesn’t go out with his friends anymore because he says there’s no purpose for him to be in the bars and clubs anymore. He’s made an effort with Lizzie even though it terrified him. He wanted me to go to lunch with his family…because I’m family. He told me I was his priority, that he doesn’t want to ever lose me, that he’s afraid Lizzie won’t like him because that means I won’t like him either. This guy could have anyone in the world he wanted, but he wants me. And he treats me like I’m some supermodel… I just don’t understand it. I don’t know what I did to deserve him.”
Mom continued to watch me, her eyes soft. “Emmy…”
I waited for her to tell me it was moving too fast, that I hadn’t been seeing him long enough to feel this way, that Lizzie still didn’t know who he actually was yet. But she said something else.
“Emmy.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and gave me the kind of squeeze only a mother could give. “You don’t have to do anything to deserve a man like that. He’s the one who doesn’t deserve you—and he knows it.”11DerekLizzie sat beside me at the dining table, opening her notebook and getting settled.
I could immediately segue into our lesson, but I thought about what my mother had said and knew I should try to cultivate a personal relationship with Lizzie, even though I could barely talk to people on my best days. “Do you play sports or anything?”
She grabbed her pencil sharpener and started to sharpen it. “Soccer and softball.”
I nodded even though she wasn’t looking at me. “Do you like one more than the other?”
She shrugged. “I guess softball. I’m a good hitter, so that’s my favorite part of the sport.”
“Cool.”
When her pencil was sharp, she pulled out the worksheet.
“Do you have friends on the team too?” I felt weird asking these questions. It was obvious in my voice that I’d never been more unsure of myself. I literally repeated the questions my mother had told me to ask.
“Some,” she said. “But most of my friends are people I met in class. Did you play sports?”
“Me?” I asked incredulously, unable to believe she asked me something.
“Yeah.” She smiled slightly, like she found my reactions amusing.
“No, I’m not a big sports guy.” Now I wished I had played one of her sports so we could talk about it. I didn’t even know the difference between baseball and softball. I wasn’t sure why there were different versions of the sport for men and women.
“Yeah, you seem more like an academics kind of guy.”
I definitely spent more time using my brain than my body. “You could say that.”
She showed me the worksheet. “I have to turn this in tomorrow. We have worksheets due at the end of every week.”
I thought it was a bit harsh that she was graded on these worksheets with a red pen as if it were an exam when it was just an assignment, especially when the teacher didn’t offer any feedback through his notes. How was a student supposed to learn if they were just told they were wrong and then they moved on? “Alright. Then let’s make sure there’s no red ink on this one.”