Page 11 of Surrender to Me

“What’s bothering you?” she asked. “I know that tone of voice.”

“What do you do if you want someone but you know you shouldn’t?” I asked. She seemed like the perfect person to ask, because, for a solid decade, she yearned for a man she knew didn’t deserve her, and yet she waited, saved herself, and had never spoken a bad word about him, even if I did. Even now.

“Do you love him?” she asked.

Did I love Owen Lowell? I didn’t know. I knew I couldn’t stop thinking about him, even when I moved to Orange County. He was the opposite of what I told myself I always wanted: a normal person who came from a middle-class background like myself, but above that, someone who understood my art. Owen understood my art, but he was anything but a normal person. We were from different economic backgrounds and on different paths, and yet I couldn’t forget about him, even though I wanted to. I knew I would do anything to help him, all he had to do was ask. Was that love? I didn’t know.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“This is about that Lowell, isn’t it?” she asked. I sighed. “Riles, baby, you have your whole life to follow your dreams. You can pick it back up when you’re in your fifties, like me. You don’t have to stop because of old age.”

“But you stopped your dream for love,” I said. “And he still left you in the end.”

“All I wanted was to raise you like you deserved. I never wanted to be an artist,” she laughed.

I was in shock. I had always assumed my mother gave up her dream for me. “I didn’t know that.”

“But love, Riley? True love? The kind of love that leaves two people inseparable, willing to do whatever it takes to make each other happy? That only comes around if you’re lucky.” She paused, then added, “Not many of us are.”

The way she said ‘us’ made me think that it didn’t include her. We both knew Grayson’s love wasn’t reciprocal.

I knew in my heart that my mother was right. I had my whole life to devote to my art, even if the Foundation was here in front of me. If Owen moved from the West Coast like he had said he would when we first started seeing each other, I didn’t know if I would see him again. I didn’t want to think about what the future held for us, if it held anything at all.