Being at home for break wasn't nearly as stressful as I anticipated it to be. I expected it to be similar to, if not worse than, Parent's Weekend now that my mom and I were confined to the same space for a week. I walked into the house after Van dropped me off, preparing for the onslaught of questions and good-natured scolding for not calling enough, but to my pleasant surprise nothing more than a "How are you, sweetie?" passed her lips when she greeted me with a hug. As she pulled back to arm's length and studied my face, I again braced myself, but all she added through a beaming smile was that she was happy to have me home and that my favorite meal was already waiting at the table.

Through a dinner of Alfredo pasta with mushrooms, broccoli, and kielbasa, I willingly fed Mom the answers I knew she was looking for to questions like, "How is school?" "Have you been sleeping?" and "Have you started studying for finals yet?" My words were mostly true with just a sprinkling of hyperbole, and I made sure to season it with some typical college duress; she would be equally as worried if everything sounded too perfect.

After dinner, Dad retreated to his den, not because he didn't care, but because he could sense I wanted space. For all her intuition, Mom seemed to think more talking would help when I usually craved silence. She squeezed some more half-hearted answers out of me as I helped her load the dishwasher before I managed to shake her off on the pretext of going to shower and unpack. And it was as I was dragging my suitcase upstairs that I realized for the first time how much I had missed my house and the things that made it home.

The subtle smells of the potpourri in little bowls strategically placed all over the house which were reminiscent of a spice shop when you walked in the front door. The living room with its wall of couches that swallowed you whole, watched over by a painting of a rustic barn that always tilted slightly to the left. The fireplace that yawned on the far side of the room with its chipped hearth from when I knocked over the grate at six-years-old. I even missed the third step on the staircase that always squeaked and made sneaking out in high school feel like an adventure.

I had missed the feeling of living in a space where there was always a sense of belonging, where people who actually cared about every aspect of my well-being breathed the same air and touched the same objects and lived their life under the same roof—as claustrophobic as it occasionally got.

It was good to be home.

At first, I had been afraid to walk through the door, afraid to encounter any form of Danny's presence. After years of spending school day afternoons and lazy summers at each other's houses, his presence was imbibed in the house as much as mine or my parents. I was afraid to come in and see his apparition sitting on the couch teasing me about my taste in movies, rummaging through our stacked refrigerator complaining that there was nothing to eat, or coming up the basement stairs with a super-soaker locked and loaded. I could still feel him in the house, but it wasn't as unbearable as I had feared and I did my best to ignore it.

Instead, I wiled away my days of vacation in front of the TV, watching too many baking shows and eating too many cheese doodles. And I tried to make up for things I had been neglecting. I spent time with my mom, trying to silently make-up for still not calling enough and not going to counseling—the latter of which she was still unawares. I offered to go grocery shopping with her (which I usually refused to do), crawled into bed with her to watch old movies and let her braid my hair (which I had stopped doing at twelve), and played board games with her and my dad by the fire at night (which I had called lame and stupid the last time she asked if I wanted to join them).

I also texted Tyler over break too, to make up for blowing him off the last few days before break. We kept up a running, casual conversation through the days like we had been doing before the Mia reveal.

It was the second to last day of break when things went sour. Just after 8pm, I pushed my way through the front door, stamping my feet from the cold and trying to shake off the muddy slush that coated my boots from the sidewalks outside. My parents were sprawled in their usual couch positions, watching reruns of Shark Tank.

"You had a visitor," Mom said as I hung my coat on the rack.

"Who?" I asked bewildered. I had just been at the movies with Vanessa, I hadn't spoken to Charlotte since last summer, and everyone I had been vaguely friends with in high school had melted into the past after the accident when they seemed to think grief was contagious.

"Chris," she said simply, gauging my reaction over the rim of her chipped blue mug.

"Did he say what he wanted?" I asked casually, pretending to preoccupy myself with scraping the last bits of mud from my leather boots.

"He just said that he needed to talk with you. That it was urgent." Her eyebrows nearly disappeared beneath her overgrown bangs at the word 'urgent'.

"It's always urgent with him," I muttered under my breath. "I'll text him later. My phone's dead," I said aloud to my mom.

Later on, while I was beginning to pack for my return to school, Mom knocked on my door. I beckoned her in and turned the music down a bit.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I don't mean to pry, but what's going on between you and Chris?" she asked, coming to in to perch on my bed. The blue mug was still in her hands, steaming slightly from her second cup of evening tea.

"Nothing," I said, shrugging. "I texted him a little while ago. Everything's cool."

"He said you've been ignoring him for weeks."

The shirt I had been concentrating on folding slipped from my hands. Leave it to Chris to pull the five-year-old card.

"He said he's been worried about you," she added.

Goddamn it, Chris. That was why my mom was up here—he was playing on her fears.

"He has nothing—you have nothing to be worried about. He's just pissed off I don't want to talk to him."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mom flinch. She hated it when I cursed, like she took the words as a physical assault.

"I know you're an adult," she began carefully. "But I'd hate to think what happened in April got between you guys. Spending time with Chris could help. It'll give you guys someone to lean on."

I snorted in spite of myself. "Believe me mom, spending more time with him is the last thing I need."

Mom picked up a crumpled shirt on my bed and began folding with me. She couldn't stand to look at clothes in disarray for too long.

"I just don't want to see you pushing your close friends away."

"Chris and I broke up," I said firmly. Why did I have to keep clarifying this for people? Did I have to tattoo it on my forehead to get the message across?

Mom's eyes wandered around my room as she placed the folded shirt in my bag. They lingered on the places where the pictures of me and Chris were noticeably absent. She reached for her mug to take another sip of tea and I could see her gearing up for another angle of attack. I said the first thing that came to mind.

"Besides, I'm kinda talking to someone else."

"Who?" she asked, surprised. I could see her trying to decide this was a good thing, forward progress, looking towards the future and all that. She had doted on Chris when we together and breaking up with him had been a "step back."

"His name is Tyler. He's a senior," I added hesitantly.

"A senior?" Her mug paused midair on the way back to its resting place on her knee.

Danger.

"We met at a support group. He lost someone too," I said. Well, it was half true.

This eased her tension slightly, but I could still see her lips puckered around the word "senior." Her mind was processing the age gap between us and all the possible pitfalls it could contain.

"He's helped me a lot," I said.

"Well that's—that's good, honey. But a senior, he'll be graduating this year, won't he?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, mom. But he's applying to grad schools in the state, and we're just talking."

Mom looked me full in the face and I saw my reflection in her eyes. I saw my stubbornness in the set of her mouth, the hereditary curls escaping her pinned up hair, the carefulness I approached life with in her expression.

"You know to be careful with boys, right?" she said, pinning me in place with her gaze.

I flushed, realizing that was really what she was concerned about.

"Oh god, Mom, we are not having the sex talk again. I took health ed in high school, they drilled it into us," I said, trying to play if off nonchalantly. Not to mention, we had had this talk already when I started dating Chris, God knows why it needed to be brought up again.

She patted my knee, not in the least bit sorry for the embarrassment she was inflicting on me. "It's a mom thing, honey."

"Well can we make it a retired mom thing?"

She laughed, leaned over to plant a kiss on my forehead, and got to her feet. "I'll always be your Mom first, Dash," she said. And surprisingly, without any further probing into my private life or well-being, she left the room with one last smile and accompanying wink over her shoulder.

Shaking my head, I turned back to finish packing. But now I had a grin on my face I couldn't seem to shake off.

_____________________________________________________________

I know, I know, not super exciting. But Dash has earned some quality down time, no?

And things are about to heat up....

Haha anyway, please let me know any and all thoughts you had while reading! Was this chapter too slow? Any predictions you have for what's coming next? :) Can't wait to read them!