The Exception by Lauren H. Mae
Eleven
You can do this.
Sonya stood on her mother’s porch trying to psych herself up for what was going to be a difficult conversation. She’d been dodging her mom’s calls ever since she’d gotten back from Hawaii and she had a feeling her mom knew something was up.
Her mind drifted to Trav, and she wondered if he’d made it to dinner with his dad yet. Just the thought of sitting at a table with Jack Travis made her shudder, but she couldn’t imagine being there as his son who didn’t quite measure up.
She shook her head. She didn’t have time to psychoanalyze the Travis family dynamic. The focus needed to be on her own. The monthly Sunday dinner with her family had been a tradition ever since she and her mom moved back to Virginia after the divorce. She was an only child, so it was just her mom, her aunt and uncle and a few cousins there, but she always looked forward to the food and the company.
Except for today where it felt more like she was walking in front of a firing squad.
“Mom? I’m here.” She pushed through the door of the mid-century modern house her mom bought after divorcing her dad.
Cassandra Pope peeked around the corner from the kitchen, stirring a bowl of what Sonya hoped was cornbread batter. She was still in her church suit and she looked as beautiful as always with her greying, but mostly dark-brown hair pulled away from her face into a bun. Her smooth pecan complexion practically glowed and Sonya could only hope she’d still look that good when she got to that age.
“You didn’t bring Marcus with you?” she asked.
Cassandra loved Marcus to the point that Sonya wondered if he’d inched past her own daughter. She’d never worried too much about that since she was going to marry the man. Her mom adoring him had been a good thing.
But now she wasn’t marrying him and that was not going to go over well with his biggest fan.
She ignored the question and kissed her mother’s cheek. “Good to see you too, Mom.”
Following her mother into the kitchen, she waited as Cassandra poured her batter into the waiting pan and raised an eyebrow her way.
“You know I’m always happy to see you, baby. I just don’t understand how you and Marcus are going to plan a wedding if he’s gone all the time. I know he’s a pilot but is he planning to slow down once y’all are married?”
Sonya took a deep breath. She needed to tell her now before the rest of her family got there. Dealing with her mom was one thing, but mom plus aunties, and cousins was something else entirely.
“It’s not really an issue because Marcus and I broke up.”
Cassandra stilled for just a minute before she closed the cornbread in the oven, then she rested her hands on her hips and gave Sonya The Look. It was the look she’d given her every time she brought home a grade that wasn’t an A, when she’d announced she was accepting the UVA scholarship instead of the one from Duke, and when she’d decided to become a nurse instead of going on to medical school. It was the look that meant: explain yourself and it had better make sense.
“When did this happen?”
Sonya shrugged and slid onto one of the barstools at the kitchen island. “A few weeks ago.”
Her mom’s eyes narrowed. “Is this why you’ve been too busy to talk to me lately? You didn’t want to tell me about Marcus?”
Her mom had always been able to read minds. That was probably why she was such a good realtor, and she’d tell you she was voted Best Realtor in the city of Richmond five years running any time she had the chance.
“I know how much you liked him,” Sonya offered, like that excuse was good enough to erase her mistake when she knew it wasn’t.
Her mom’s frown deepened. “I liked him. But I love you, and you know better than to keep things from me. Now tell me what happened.”
Sonya launched into the story of Hawaii and the breakup, carefully omitting the elopement part. If she had any chance of leaving that house without getting an old-fashioned whupping, her mom did not need to know about that. Aside from Emma, and unfortunately Marcus, that was an error in judgement she’d take to her grave.
After a minute of unsettling silence, her mom shook her head and sighed.“Are you sure y’all aren’t getting back together in a week or two?”
“We. Are. Done,” Sonya confirmed, punctuating each word with finality.
“I always thought Marcus was a good man. He was stable and he took good care of you. I’m not even going to go into how nice he was to look at and those hugs he gave, but I thought he was the type of man to give you what you needed. I shouldn’t be surprised that he turned out to be messy.”
To her mom, messy meant unnecessarily complicated, and Marcus waiting to tell her he didn’t want to get married on their elopement trip put him firmly in that category. Her mother had warned her to stay away from messy men because they’d break your heart ever since she was old enough to like boys, and she’d managed to find one anyway.
“He wasn’t always messy.” It came out a little defensive and her mom was going to make herself dizzy if she rolled her eyes any harder.
“Baby, they never are. He said y’all aren’t in love enough? What does that mean?”
“It means we both deserve better.”
Her mother pursed her lips and hummed. “That man knows damn well he’ll never find anyone better than you. You didn’t give him the ring back did you?”
Sonya frowned. “Of course I did. I don’t need a reminder of this… fiasco. I just want to be done with it.”
“Well, what’s your plan for moving forward so you can be done with it? You’ve already wasted some of your prime years on Marcus, and it could take a while to find someone else, you know.”
Sonya shook her head. Getting involved with another guy was so far at the bottom of her to-do list that it was practically five years into the future. “Finding someone else is not in my plan right now. I think I’m just going to take some time to focus on my career and that’s it.”
The corner of her mother’s lip tilted up in a smirk. “You’ve been focusing on your career ever since you were in middle school.”
“You’re the one who taught me to always have my own.”
Cassandra nodded. “That’s right and you got it. Maybe now it’s time to focus on your life outside of work because that’s the area in need right now. ”
Her mom meant no harm, but she didn’t understand that focusing on work was the only thing keeping Sonya from dissecting every minute of her relationship with Marcus to figure out what went wrong.
“Thanks a lot, Mom,” she mumbled.
Cassandra rounded the counter and draped her arm over Sonya’s shoulders. “I’m just saying, don’t let Marcus be a stumbling block to what you want. What did I used to tell you when you were a little girl and upset about having to move?”
Moving had been a constant of Sonya’s childhood due to her dad being in the Air Force. They’d moved every few years until he finally got out when she was in high school.
“The destination isn’t changing, just the scenery along the way,” she said.
“That’s right. You know what you want, Sonya. Now it’s time to…”
Sonya knew the words that would come next like her own name. The words she’d scribbled on every notebook she had throughout high school, college, and grad school, and the words that had gotten her through every tough moment where things didn’t go according to her plans.
“Reflect, regroup, revise, and refocus,” she recited, as her mom pulled her into the kind of hug that only a mother could give. It felt like sunshine and comfort food, and exactly what Sonya needed.
“And rebuke the very memory of that trifling ass man,” she said, adding a fifth R to the Pope family mantra.
Sonya’s laugh tumbled out of her. “I’ll add that one to the top of my list.”
Her mother swept a few stray braids behind her ears and cupped her face in her hands just as she’d done when she was a child. “Are you okay?”
Sonya nodded. “I’m upset of course, but I’m okay. I haven’t cried or anything. Maybe I’m broken.”
“No daughter of mine is broken. I think deep down, you know he wasn’t the one.”
Her mom was right and she’d hit the thing that had been bothering Sonya the most since the breakup. Because she had known. And she still wasn’t sure why she’d let it go so far.
Cassandra continued, “You deserve the world, baby. Don’t let this stop you from getting it. Now. The rest of the family will be here soon and we can’t just say y’all broke up.”
“What do you want to tell them?”
Cassandra waved her hand in the air and went back to the steaming pots on the stove. “They’re not going to understand that mutual breakup stuff, so I’m telling them you kicked Marcus to the curb and you don’t want to talk about it.”
Sonya agreed. The less details for her family, the better. They were going to make up their own version of events anyway.
“Got it,” she replied, already thinking hard about implementing the four… now five R’s. The time for reflection was over and if she was going to make it through this, she had to go through the rest no matter how hard it would be. Marcus would not be her stumbling block.