*Four Years Later*
*Caterina*
I stopped in front of my mom’s front door and took a deep breath. It had been two years since I had last been inside, and it hadn’t been easy for my mom to convince me to come back for Thanksgiving this year.
She’d been guilt-tripping me for months trying to get me to agree to come home this year instead of our usual arrangement of her coming to see me, and I had finally relented. But now that I was here, about to walk in the door, I was second-guessing everything.
Now that I was older, I could look back and recognize that everyone had just been trying to help me stay on the right path as a kid, but it had been exhausting to be constantly looked after, especially by Elio.
I felt guilty when I thought of how I’d ghosted him when I first moved to college, but I knew the separation was needed. I’d been so resentful of his presence in my life that it was impossible for me to be objective about the fact that he’d been really helpful to my mom.
